Building Gab
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. Instead, they maintained, language shows all the classic hallmarks of an adaptation produced by natural selection. Despite the superficial diversity of languages, they all share a basic underlying structure, which had first been identified by Noam Chomsky of MIT in the 1960s. Babies have no trouble developing this structure, which you'd expect if it was an in-born capacity rather than a cultural artefact. http://www.corante.com/loom/archives/2005/02/25/building_gab_part_one.php
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