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Title: Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language by Robin Dunbar ISBN: 0-674-36336-1 Publisher: Harvard University Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.2 (10 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Language and human nature are inextricably linked
Comment: Prof. Dunbar's book is an excellent read. But don't let its title fool you. His research covers a far wider range than you might expect. He offers a thesis as to how the various parts of the large brain evoloved to meet numerous environmental and social conditions. But the most intriguing part of the book comes in his discussion of optimal group size, an issue that will prove to be of crucial importance in the decades to come. Evolutionary biology and psychology will prove to be the uniting gospels of the future, and their teachings will have their most vital applications in the areas of social ethics, group size, and scale of lifestyle. Prof. Dunbar's book is a valuable opening foray into our own self-definition as a species.
Rating: 1
Summary: Good on monkeys, smug and ignorant on people
Comment: A classic example of the contemporary smug scientist who assumes that anyone with any belief contrary to their own is a fool. Most obviously in his blithe assertion that if there weren't any theists in the world we'd live in a paradise: every ill in the world can be traced back to religion. While on his own professional ground discussing monkey behaviours, and a helpful summary of 'Theory of Mind' (how aware beings are of a) their own identity 'I believe'; and that of others b) 'I believe that you think'; and how deeply you understand their consciousness c) 'I believe that you think that I believe...- these are levels of 'intensionality') there's some interesting reading.
But once he diverts into anything outside of that: sociology, linguistics, history - he's a total crackpot theorist - of exactly the ilk of some of the 18th century smug theist scientists he'd pillory. For example, as proof that different languages developed as conscious schemes to identify with one group against another, he tells the biblical story of the shibboleth. This would be OK as an example of what he's talking about, but he invests the story with the notion, 'That's what they did back then,' type generality.
There are worse howlers, as when he says that language could never have come from gesture, as gesture is only mime and can never be used symbolically - as if deaf people don't use sign language. To such an objection he says, 'Oh, you couldn't use it at night, so it couldn't be significant.' Whether it is or it isn't, he can be so smug because he's talking about pre-history and will never have to fear disproof. He bandies around millennia as if he really knows, yet avoids rigorous rebuttal because nobody can really know.
Rating: 5
Summary: From scratching to speaking
Comment: Many theories on the origin of language have been offered in recent years. They range from divine gift to something derived from hunting gestures. With no fossil evidence available, all are speculative and defensible only by logical derivation. Dunbar has offered the most likely scenario for human language. Using persuasive evolutionary roots, tied securely to observed practices of our primate cousins, he builds a coherent picture. While the foundation rests on primate grooming practices, Dunbar shows how this activity led humans developing social interactions to become language. Because we, alone among the primates, also evolved the necessary physical equipment for speech, we are the ones who produced complex languages. Dunbar's account is presented in lively style, showing his own language skills to the full.
It may seem a twisted path from scratching in your neighbour's fur to the complexities of human speech, but Dunbar clearly shows us how evolution traversed it. Part of the story lies in our adapting an upright stance and bipedal locomotion. The enlarged human brain, already given a boost by primates having a proportionally larger brain than other animals, also contributed. Our needs drove us to greater mobility leaving less time for interactive grooming. The brain's demand for resources turned grooming into a waste of valuable food gathering time. Speech was the means of retaining contact and the grooming habit was lost. The most important food gathering wasn't the hunt for meat, but the gathering of vegetables. Meat supplied only a small portion of the nutritional bulk compared to the vegetables garnered by the community's females. From this reality, Dunbar proposes speech developed more rapidly in females than in males.
Dunbar's analysis doesn't stop at the edge of the African forest, but probes into parties, pub conversations and business meetings. No facet of human verbal communication has been overlooked in this survey of our speech habits. One element of our social structure lies in the size of our personal "communities". Research shows that primate communities share a viable group size of about 150 individuals. Whatever your living circumstances, a careful count will show you probably interact closely with no more than that many other people. Dunbar shows that even in the urban environment, this figure holds. It isn't the number of neighbours we have, but how many people we communicate with personally. This figure derives from deep primate evolutionary conditions in which 150 was the likely group size in which we could develop effective social skills. "Gossip", in Dunbar's view is simply a synonym for social communication. We talk more about people than we do about philosophy - or anthropology.
In conclusion, Dunbar views the current communication environment with some caution. He notes that the rise of electronic communication hasn't replaced the practices we developed on the African savanna. All the promises of closer ties with distant people don't seem to have brought us together. He notes that e-mail and "chat rooms" are rife with rage and hate messages. People insult one another with the impunity of distance. Our verbal communication is still limited to that 150 member-sized group. Dunbar vividly shows how old ideas of human evolution must be seriously reconsidered. We can't reconstruct the steps of evolution, but we can investigate the possible scenarios to draw the most logical conclusions. Dunbar does this with wit and fine scholarship. It's a thorough and effective analysis deserving close attention. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
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Title: The Evolutionary Emergence of Language : Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form by Chris Knight, Michael Studdert-Kennedy, James Hurford ISBN: 0521786967 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 20 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $29.00 |
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Title: The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain by Terrence Deacon ISBN: 0393317544 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 April, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Significant Others: The Ape-Human Continuum and the Quest for Human Nature by Craig Stanford ISBN: 046508172X Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: July, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: From Hand to Mouth : The Origins of Language by Michael C. Corballis ISBN: 0691116733 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 15 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: The Evolution of Culture: An Interdisciplinary View by R. I. M. Dunbar, Chris Knight, Camilla Power, Robin Dunbar ISBN: 0813527317 Publisher: Rutgers University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1999 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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