[Platt] I wonder what linguists say about the origin of language. [Arlo] There are many theories, as in any field. The one I find most promising (indeed, the one that begins with "shared attention") is Tomasello's account in "The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition". Check here (http://www.2think.org/humancognition.shtml) for a synopsis.
For Tomasello (and this is where I think it ties very smoothly into Pirsig), symbolic activity (social activity) derives from a very particular neurobiological configuration that evolved over millenia of early-human existence. Like carbon's "feature" that DQ "latched onto", this neurobiological feature provided man with the ability to share his attention, something previously unavailable to man's behavioral repertoire. And, like carbon's bonding feature, this neurobiological component evolved for likely entirely different reasons (there was not a grand design to plan man's ability to use language), but became the springboard for DQ in the biological-social evolutionary leap. Because we can point to specific biological patterns that led into the formation of the social level, I think this evolutionary point-in-time captures the Biological-Social division completely. [Krimel] I am about half way through Tomasello's book as we speak. I suspect your comments will be lost on Platt who doesn't buy into the whole "Oops" thing. Early in the book Tomasello talks specifically about latching. He says in effect that someone has to be first but if no one pays attention, the first guy is just another tree falling in the forest. Archimedes laid out the foundation for the calculus more than a thousand years before Newton and Leibnitz but no one cared in his time and his work was lost. As a result even though the ancient Greek was "first" those two pillars of the enlightenment where locked in a bitter feud over which of them independently arrived at the ideas first. It may actually matter to historians but not to engineers. But look at the old "someone had to be first" argument. The issue is so what? If person X invents a widget that no one uses then it matters not at all. If X invents a widget and Y says cool and starts using it then Y is the first person to recognize the importance of X's widget and should be given credit. But if it's just X and Y using the widget then it is likely to wind up being lost. But then Z catches on and P and Q; so the most significant individual in the chain is the next person to catch on. Call him X+n. Platt wants to say that what is significant is X. I would say that what is significant is the magnitude of 'n'. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
