EPISTEMOLOGY II

ORAL PRESENTATION BY: ADRIANA ESPERANZA NIO SANCHEZ CODE: 1010821017 GROUP:

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TEACHER: MARY ELLEN NIO

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HOW LANGUAGE TRANSFORMED HUMANITY

BY MARK PAGEL
Haga Mark Pagel shares an intriguing theory Biologistclic para modificar el estilo de subttulo about del patrn why humans evolved our complex system of language. He suggests that language is a piece of "social technology" that allowed early human tribes to access a powerful new tool: cooperation.

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Why we should listen to him:

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Mark Pagel builds statistical models to examine

the evolutionary processes imprinted in human behavior, from genomics to the emergence of complex systems -- to culture.
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He says: "just as we have highly conserved

genes, we have highly conserved words. language shows a truly remarkable fidelity."
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What the new studies accomplish is a far more

sophisticated analysis of the regularity of language change that earlier scholars noted or
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theorized,"

ABOUT THE LECTURER

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Mark Pagel is an evolutionary theorist

with interests in mathematical and Haga clic en icono para agregar una imagen statistical modeling of evolutionary el processes. His current interests include language and cultural evolution.
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His co-authored 1991 monograph on

comparative statistical methods in evolutionary biology is standard reading for the field and he is the author of several other statistical methods for identifying and analyzing evolutionary trends and for inferring phylogenetic 4/15/12 trees.

ABOUT THE LECTURE

He define language as the most powerful, dangerous, and subversive trait that natural selection has ever devised because it allows you to implant a thought from your mind directly into someone else's mind, and they can attempt to do the same to you, without either of you having to perform surgery.

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Instead, when you speak,

you're actually using a form of telemetry not so different from the remote control device for your television. It's just that, whereas that device relies on pulses of infrared light, your language relies on pulses, discrete pulses, of sound.
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Languages are genes

talking, getting things that they want. And just imagine the sense of wonder in a baby when it first discovers that, merely by uttering a sound, it
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get objects to

LANGUAGE'S SUBVERSIVE POWER

Has been recognized throughout the ages in censorship.

The tower of Babel story in the bible is a fable and warning about the power of language.

And this leads to the wonderful irony that our languages exist to prevent us from

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communicating.

We though chimpanzees

were intelligent. but if they really were intelligent, why would they use a stick to extract termites from the ground rather than a shovel? Because it is what we do.
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Now the reason, because

Chimpanzees don't do that is that they lack what psychologists and

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anthropologists call social

They seem to lack the

ability to learn from others by copying or imitating or simply watching.

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As a result, they can't

improve on others' ideas or learn from others' mistakes -- benefit from others' wisdom. And so
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they just do the same

WHY DO WE HAVE A LANGUAGE?

Language really is the voice of our genes. Now having evolved language though, we did something peculiar, even bizarre. as we spread out around the world, we developed thousands of different languages. Currently, there are about seven or 8,000 different languages spoken on Earth.

We use our language, not just to cooperate, but to draw rings around our cooperative groups and to establish identities, and perhaps to protect our

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OTHER LECTURERS RELATED

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Steven Pinker: Linguist, questions the very nature of

our thoughts -- the way we use words, how we learn, and how we relate to others. In his best-selling books, he has brought sophisticated language analysis to bear on topics of wide general interest.
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Steven asserts that not only are human minds

predisposed to certain kinds of learning, such as language, but that from birth our minds -- the patterns in which our brain cells fire -- predispose us each to think and behave differently.
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Patricia Ryan: Language teacher

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English is big business and

languages are dying as never before. Is there a connection? Is this another manifestation of McDonaldisation the undesirable face of globalization? Do we want to lose the variety of languages and all the rich culture that comes with them?"

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