3 ms·

The Kekulé Problem

• meristohm 3y ago
  "But all indications are that language has appeared only once and in one species only. Among whom it then spread with considerable speed." Charles Darwin said something like "If we differ from other animals it is by degree rather than by kind." I recently watched Nature on PBS in which chimpanzees are communicating with each other through gestures and sounds, consistently enough so that researchers have been able to confidently puzzle out some meanings- an example of language among chimps. When I first read this McCarthy essay years ago I reacted strongly to the hubris of what I quoted. How is he so sure that we alone have language? His lack of imagination and seeming unwillingness to allow for some mystery really turned me of reading anything else he's written (Blood Meridian being the last- to his credit, I still think about themes from that story). I've mellowed a bit on that front, but still- if we don't know for certain that cetaceans, elephants, canids, birds, other primates (etc) don't have language, why say they don't?