Zimmer: Building Gab
Zimmer takes on the Hauser-Chomsky-Fitch vs. Pinker debate. Nothing
deep, but it’s an accessible summary (with a bit of background) of the
exchange. This is part I, and he ends with:
Now what? Do we have to wait another two years to see whether
Chomsky, Fitch, and Hauser crumble under this attack or have something
to say in response?
As I’ll explain in my next post, the answer, fortunately, is no.
Let’s see what he has to say next.
Posted by Carl Zimmer
Earlier this month I wrote two posts about the evolution of the eye, a classic example of complexity in nature. (Parts one and two.)
I’d like to write now about another case study in complexity that has
fascinated me for some time now, and one that has sparked a fascinating
debate that has been playing out for over fifteen years. The subject is
language, and how it evolved.
In 1990, Steven Pinker (now at Harvard) and Paul Bloom (now at Yale) published a paper
called "Natural Selection and Natural Language." They laid out a
powerful argument for language as being an adaptation produced by
natural selection. In the 1980s some pretty prominent scientists, such
as Stephen Jay Gould, had claimed that the opposite was the
case–namely, that language was merely a side effect of other
evolutionary forces, such as an increase in brain size. Pinker and
Bloom argued that the features of language show that Gould must be
wrong.