The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain

Three reasons to read "The Symbolic Species". 1) Deacon describes how neuroscience is finally producing results that deal with the issue of how brains make human language possible. 2) Deacon presents a theory of brain/language co-evolution that stresses the importance of behavioral innovations that alter the human environment leading to subsequent genetic adaptation. 3) Deacon explores ways by which Philosophy of Language can be refined by incorporation of results from the scientific study of human language.This three-fold enterprise depends on the neuroscience results discussed in Part Two of "The Symbolic Species". For example, Figure 7.8 draws our attention to the idea that prefrontal cortex is disproportionately large in the human brain. Deacon suggests that changes in the relative sizes of brain regions during human evolution is a mechanism for adaptations that allow humans to better perform language tasks. Figure 8.3 pictorially illustrates an evolutionary trend in anatomical connections towards more direct cerebral cortex control over the motor neurons that are involved in vocalizations. These examples illustrate the fact that Deacon's theory of brain/language co-evolution is heavily dependent on comparative studies of brain anatomy. Deacon tries to convince us that the major anatomical changes during human brain evolution are the precise types of changes in an ape brain that would facilitate human language behavior. According to Deacon's theory, early humans started using language as a social innovation and then the human brain changed so as to make it easier to use human language. The fact that human social interactions are a huge part of the human environment guarantees that there has to be some truth in Deacon's theory, but is it just part of a larger story?A specific issue that Deacon touches on is the fact that non-human apes are able to learn the basics of human language simply by being exposed to a social environment where human language is being used. Why do non-human apes learn the basics of language rapidly and then stop developing more sophisticated language behavior just at the developmental stage where human children are taking off with a huge vocabulary and increasingly complex syntax? The best that Deacon's theory can suggest is that humans, unlike chimps, have had 2 million years of language use and subsequent brain evolution in response to selective pressure for larger brain regions that aid in symbolic thought. I agree that it would be astounding if certain brain regions such as the adult human prefrontal cortex is not more useful for human language tasks than is the chimp prefrontal cortex, but is this really the most important thing we need to know about the relationship between brains and language? Is there another way of looking at the difference between human and chimp brains? One that might better inform us about the functional differences between human and chimp brains that g

Reading only one or two pages into this book already makes it clear that this is a work by an exceptionally well informed and disciplined writer; and reading to the end does not disappoint at any time. This is a tightly argued serious scientific thesis by a professor of biological anthropology with an encyclopedic knowledge of linguistics, neurophysiology, neuroanatomy and human evolution. It is an original work in which Deacon sets out his arguments and marshals the evidence for a comprehensive theory in a methodical and structured way. It is not for the faint hearted, and reading it demands careful attention to the tightly written dense structured prose; it is not repetitive and the logical structure of the arguments is architectural, so that careful reading and a good memory are essential. Useful diagrammatic illustrations help to make some of the concepts easier to grasp. The effort is worth every moment. Deacon's conclusions have consequences for philosophy and theory of mind no less than for the central area of linguistics and the evolution of human intelligence. This book has done more to shape and to consolidate my knowledge of who we as a "symbolic species" are than any other I have read in this decade. Strongly recommended.

This is probably the best book for general readers on the evolution of the mind currently available. Contrary to Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct," you won't find any talk of "mentalese" or innate grammar here- as Deacon points out, saying that grammar is innate doesn't solve any problems, it just sort of pushes the problems to the side. Deacon focuses on the learning strategies (specifically, the ability to learn symbolic reference), as the basis for the evolution of language and the human brain. Deacon does not believe that language emerges from a human-only increase in "general intelligence," which is sort of the folk psychology idea for the emergence of language- our bigger brains just made us "smarter," in some ill-defined way. The idea that intelligence and langauge are separate entities is made clear by Williams' syndrome, a clinical condition where the patient has a normal use of grammar and a superior vocabulary, but is severely retarded on most intelligence tests. Anyone who takes Linguistics 101 (or tries to learn a second language) in college is amazed by the complexity of language. It amazes a lot of people that children are able to learn something so complicated so easily, but adults (who are more intelligent, also in an ill-defined sense) find it very hard to pick up a second language. Even animals and computer algorithms, who are better than children at learning complicated sequences of actions in order to gain a reward, cannot pick up language. Deacon explains this remarkable fact by presenting his ideas for how one learns symbolic reference, a kind of learning strategy different from any other in evolution, a learning strategy that sets humans apart. To tell you anymore then that would ruin the book, you'll have to pick it up for yourself. Deacon's greatest gift is explaining brain evolution from the bottom level (changes in genes) and from the top level (environmental changes) with equal clarity. In doing so, he bucks both evolutionary psychologists who downplay environmental factors, as well as standard social scientists and laymen who do not understand the Darwinian evolution of the brain. The result is a natural explanation of the evolution of language.As many others have pointed out, this book is a first step. A more technical book devoted to understanding the ability to learn symbolic references based on Deacon/Peirce's ideas would be really great. Maybe I'll sit down and write it myself. Keep 'em coming, Terry!

This review was published in Bostonia, Spring 1998, Number 1, 72-73, Imagine a mutant being, genetically gifted to paint like Vermeer, born into a culture where no one else can even doodle with a stick. That is the classic Chomskyan view of the origin of language: by genetic accident, astounding special language abilities were inserted into the human brain. In The Symbolic Species, Terrence Deacon, professor of anthropology at Boston University, offers an alternative picture. Language, he argues, is not an instinct and there is no genetically installed linguistic black box in our brains. Language arose slowly through cognitive and cultural inventiveness. Two million years ago, australopithecines, equipped with nonlinguistic ape-like mental abilities, struggled to assemble, by fits and starts, an extremely crude symbolic system - fragile, difficult to learn, inefficient, slow, inflexible, and tied to ritual representation of social contracts like marriage. We would not have recognized it as language. Language then improved by two means. First, invented linguistic forms were subjected to a long process of selection. Generation after generation, the newborn brain deflected linguistic inventions it found uncongenial. The guessing abilities and intricate nonlinguistic biases of the newborn brain acted as filters on the products of linguistic invention. Today's languages are systems of linguistic forms that have survived. The child's mind does not embody innate language structures. Rather, language has come to embody the predispositions of the child's mind. This view reminds me of something Paul Valéry said in The Art of Poetry: "Poetry can be recognized by its ability to get us to reproduce it in its own form: it stimulates us to reconstruct it identically." Poetry so thoroughly harmonizes with the p! redispositions of the human brain that it flows into the! brain and occupies it, sowing there the seed of its own replication. In Deacon's view, language has evolved to become poetry for the newborn brain. The second, subordinate means by which language improved, in Deacon's view, had to do with changes in the brain. Crude and difficult language imposed the persistent cognitive burden of erecting and maintaining a relational network of symbols. In that demanding environment, genetic variations that rendered brains more adept at language were favored. Language began as a cognitive adaptation. Genetic assimilation then eased some of the burden. Cognitive effort and genetic assimilation interacted as language and brain co-evolved. The notion that a magical genetic black box for language was inserted into brains otherwise essentially like our own has become the mainstream view, but it was originally an afterthought on the part of Chomskyan grammarians who were primarily interested in analyzing t! he formal structures of language as we know it. Chomsky acknowledges the tenuousness of the evidence for speculating about the origin of language. "You can," he sa

I edited THE SYMBOLIC SPECIES when I was employed atW. W. Norton, and no book I worked on in my fourteen years at Nortonever received so many enthusiastic comments and reviews from leading scholars in related fields. Prospective readers may like to know that cutting edge thinkers and researchers such as Merlin Donald, author of ORIGINS OF THE MODERN MIND, consider Terry Deacon's revolutionary exploration of human origins and consciousness to be "the best book yet written on the evolution of language" and "theoretical dynamamite planted deep under the walls of the neo-Chomskian fortress." Edward Manier, professor of philosophy at University of Notre Dame, says the book "should transform the foundations of the human sciences" and calls Deacon the "best neurophilosopher on the planet." Here are these and other leading scholars' advance reviews of THE SYMBOLIC SPECIES, along with excerpts from Booklist and the starred review in Library Journal. "An extremely sophisticated analysis of the relationship between language and the brain. Deacon provides a compelling picture of how language evolved to fit the ape brain. He also explains why and how different languages may utilize different parts of the brain to carry out the same linguistic function." -- Patricia Greenfield, professor of psychology, UCLA "A masterpiece. This superb and innovative look at the evolution of language could only have been written by the one person with the range, depth, and sheer competence to incorporate linguistics, ethology, developmental biology, paleontology, and evolutionary biology: Terry Deacon. An extraordinary achievement!" -- David Pilbeam, professor of anthropology, Harvard University "This is an accessible yet erudite volume, witty and uncompromising. In my opinion it is the best book yet written on the evolution of language. Deacon has mounted a serious challenge to the neo-Chomskians. He has constructed a credible theory of language evolution that places grammar in a secondary role. The evolutionary action, says Deacon, is in the lexicon, and in the social nature of symbolic invention, rather than in grammar. Grammars emerge from the demands of the linguistic environment itself. Children learn grammar easily and fast, not because it is programmed into their genes, but because the language environment has its own built-in heuristic. This is theoretical dynamite, planted deep under the walls of the neo-Chomskian fortress. "Deacon also has a great deal to say about how the human brain has adapted itself to deal with the challenge of symbolic reference, and especially on the complex relationships between brain growth, cognitive development, and social evolution. This is essential reading for anyone interested in what makes us human." -- Merlin Donald, professor of psychology, Queens University (Ontario and author of Origins of the Modern Mind "If you have only one book to read on the evolution and function of the human brain, this is the one I