arndt@lymph.DEC (04/26/85)
Reading Jeff Sonntag's reply on point #12 about language development, I have trouble believeing that Jeff is *really* as dense "as he is pretending to be". Jeff says, "Whether languages evolved, . . . has NOTHING to do with the theory of evolution, which is a mechanism to explain the origion of *species*, not languages." First, evolution is not a 'mechanism' but a theory ABOUT the mechanism, whatever it really is, that has resulted in man, et al. Second, the THEORY of evolution has, as has been pointed out so many times and so well here on the net by so many, become an over-arching 'religious' article of faith on the part of many that has indeed come to cover just about anything you please that can be broadly described in terms of simple to complex. All types of animal and human behavior is spoken of in terms of it 'evolving', INCLUDING LANGUAGE, - remember my humble postings of quotes by 'scientists' about the flight of birds in a 'V' formation as something that 'evolved' as a survival mechanism and the rabbit's tuft and the pale palms of human hands?? I dare say you could pick up any number of books on language development and find there the idea and jargon of the theory, or should I say 'faith' of evolution as being responsible for the first monkey who moved from masturbation a la Mel Brooks HISTORY OF THE WORLD, to swearing about it. Development of the organs of speech is one of THE major steps of survival for man. Jeff must not be reading his Time-Life books or watching his 'Science' TV shows not to know this. If Paul, as Jeff claims is 'dense' then Jeff is 'simple' and perhaps simple comes before dense in which case Paul is more evolved in his thinking than Jeff!? Little children, now according to law in most states, take in 'evolution' as a working model for life with their mothers's milk! Civilization has 'evolved', man's many behaviors, from using animals to gathering 'nuts', etc, and is THE model used in thinking about man. Heaven knows where we will all 'evolve' to, eh? Something just lovely, I'm sure. The perfect self-fouling killing machine perhaps? The Christian 'dogma' about man, vs the current and soon passing 'scientific' dogma, is that man has devolved from what he once was! A 'perfect' creation of God. So the cave men, rather than being my long lost relatives lurching toward my current street address and the use of my VCR, are a kind of 'slum' dweller in need of Federal money and a natural Democratic voter. We have them with us today! At 3:30pm every afternoon from Monday to Friday they amble forth, sometimes upon all fours, sometimes upright, from our public school systems across the land. But I'm starting to amble myself, eh? Regards, Ken Arndt