On Thu, 8 May 1997, Thomas R Jefferys wrote:
On Thu, 8 May 1997, Thomas R Jefferys wrote:
Ah. Myself, I'm still amazed that people can look at, say, the origin
of languages, and say we got it from imitating animals, or from a need
to "socialize", or something else equally inane and unlikely.
Need to sociallize? I don't doubt that something like it happened. Why?
Because humans are both _built_ and _wired_ to speak!
True. But if we're built to speak and none of the other animals are,
that makes it doubly unlikely that something like this just "happened".
See below.
Ahhh, the Argument by Design. Sorry, not buying it. It's an old argument
and it's not valid anymore. See "The Selfish Gene" and "The Blind
Watchmaker". They basically argue and support that complex systems aren't
neccessarily designed.
That's true. But the more complex something is, the less likely design
didn't play a part in it. There are mitigating factors, but this is a
good rule of thumb. Probability, which is thought to have played the
whole role in the development of the proteins found in living things,
gives the odds as rather steep against even one of the simple amino acid
chains coming into existence by chance. I'll illustrate:
Assume 20 amino acid types are in your "proto" environment. This is
close enough for statistical purposes. Assume that they are evenly
balanced between "left handed" and "right handed" acids. These are
arbitrary designations to indicate particular configurations of atoms
for two acids which have the same constituent atoms. Now, fill all of
the oceans of the earth with *just* those acids, about 10^46 molecules
all told.
Scientists have stated that there *may* be as many as 10^22 stars in the
observable universe. Let's be generous and say 1,000 times as many:
10^25. Allowing TEN earth-like planets for each star, we have 10^26
"earths" x 10^46 amino acid molecules per earth for a total of 10^72
amino acid molecules.
Now, let's have *all* of those link together into chains 100 amino acids
long, once every second, since the beginning of the universe (let's say
10 billion years ago). That's 10^70 chains per second x 10^8 seconds
per year (not quite, but we're being generous again) x 10^10 years =
10^88 different possible combinations of amino acid chains that have
formed on all these earths since the beginning of the universe.
BUT, the chance of one of those chains being one of the simple proteins
found in life, which just happens to be 100 amino acids long, is 1 in
10^42. Why? Well, the number of different combinations of a protein
100 amino acids long, formed out of 20 different types of amino acids,
would be 20 x 20 x 20 x ... = 20^100, which is approximately equal to
10^130. With 10^88 possible combinations *formed* since the creation of
the universe, the chance of hitting this 1 in 10^130 bullseye is 10^88
divided by 10^130, which is 1 in 10^42.
I don't know about you, but I don't like those odds, especially generous
as they were. And I'm not even taking into account the three
dimensional structure of the protein, or the fact that most proteins are
closer to 500 amino acids long. Remember also that natural selection
could not have possibly made this event more probable. Natural
selection only filters what you already have.
My only comment is, evolutionists gamble on terrible odds. Yes, it
*could* have happened, but did it? "Probably" not.
[snipped section about some animals not needing language, etc.; agreed]
There's also a luck factor involved. We were the first; SOMEone has to be
first, and our history is too short for another animal to hit on the same
idea. There is no reason why we should be favored over other animals.
Other animals have languages, too. It's just that ours is much more
sophisticated, first of all, and that animals can't comprehend certain
things which we can. The supernatural is one example.
Finally, there are cases where identical twins have invented their own
unique language which are, on the outset, very sophisticated. Considering
the arbitrariness of sound and meaning, it's very likely that languages
_can_ spring up this way spontaneously, and likely did a million years ago.
There's one problem with this last. While this may be true (and I
haven't done the research to know or not), such "languages" will not be
as suited to communication as the languages extant today. Why? Lack of
terminology, and lack of flexibility. While I admit that there will
probably be *some* amount of terminology in these "autogenerating"
languages, as you say, and that there will be *some* amount of
flexibility, there won't be very much.
Those languages are a century old at most (lifetime of the twins, it's
usually much less). They're competing against already fully-developed
languages. Of COURSE they're not going to be as sophisticated or survive as
long as our present languages; they're squeezed out. However, such
languages are better than no language at all, ne? In the Land of the Deaf,
the One Eared Man is king.
But remember, you said yourself that these half-developed languages are
better than nothing at all. If these are a survival trait, then they
would be developed. And regularized. How long are we assuming we've
had language? for hundreds of millions of years, right? Then the
irregularities would have long ago been smoothed out by the process of
simplification I've already mentioned. Although it *is* true that
English is still very difficult to learn, my point was that we have,
even now, very regular languages being spoken by some of the more
advanced cultures. But they're not *totally* regular. Why not, after
millions of years? Isn't simplicity of communication also a survival
trait? Not an urgent one, but the general drift *should* be towards
simplicity. English, for example, used to have gender, but lost it, if
I'm remembering correctly.
As for the less advanced cultures, how come they're so complex?
Wouldn't they be irregular, but more limited in their scope of ability
to communicate? They're not, though.
All of the languages in the
world today, and I do mean ALL of them, are equally capable of
communicating whatever thoughts and ideas you care to convey. They are
all equally "old" as well, if you will.
Languages are not equally old. The Romance languages only developed as
distinct languages within the last two thousand years. Sanskrit and Hebrew
have been around for at least four thousand years.
Then I should say, the language families are. You can trace one
particular language's history back equally as far as you can another,
even through ancestor tongues. That's what I meant.
Furthermore, there is no
measuring stick by which we can tell how old a language is from it's
features alone. We have to refer to historical record.
I know. That's what I meant.
Does that mean that all of the
approximately 100 language families in existence sprung up within a
short span of time from each other, and that it hadn't happened before,
and hasn't since? Hardly.
Nope, it's STILL happening. We're not getting completely new languages
because they're TOO new. The major languages have a monopoly, like the
robber-barons at the turn of the century. But if there was a language
vacuum, then the new languages have a fighting chance.
So what you're saying is that it would have been very likely when
language was first being developed to have it occur from several
different sources nearly simultaneously, but much less likely after that
for new languages to come into use? I agree, but doesn't this preclude
this new batch of languages we have, which is only several thousand
years old, at most?
Of course. My point was that these highly complex languages are used by
very primitive peoples, like the American Indians, the aborigines in
Australia, and the natives of Africa. Why do they need such complexity?
Answer: they don't. So why did it "evolve"? And why do the languages
of more advanced cultures *de*volve, in a sense? This doesn't make
sense. UNLESS...evolution ain't the way it happened.
*sigh* Someone who doesn't know what evolution actually means.
Evolving -=*#DOES NOT#*=- mean to increase the complexity of something.
Evolving means to *optimize* a system to fit a certain purpouse (ie, give
you the highest payoff for the least investment and maintainance).
Devolution is a myth conjured by people who don't know better.
Okay, so I'm not learned in evolution. *shrug* I know better, as you
say. ;)
In view of this, let's examine the complexity issue in the above languages.
When you get down to this, the complexity that you're talking about that
gets weeded out when contacted is _incidental_ complexity. This includes
irregular verbs, different noun formation patterns, and so on. There's no
particular reason why they're pronounced this way and not that. They're not
corrected because they're not WORTH the time and trouble to regularlize
them. Once widespread communication starts, making languages consistant
starts paying off.
That's not quite the case. As I mentioned above, English used to have
gender. It also used to possess a system of declension almost as
complex as Latin or Russian, according to an article I just dug up on
the subject. But it's lost its gender, and nearly lost its declension,
except for a few pronouns and the addition of an 's to show possession.
This isn't just incidental complexity, whole orders of complexity are
being lost.
The
Inuit language is adapted to life in the arctic, not for the modern world.
The 200+ "words" (actually, it's heavily affixed) for snow is neccessary
for survival, so it's good for talking about snow. It's not so good at
talking about automobiles, however. Conditions in a high-tech world favor
simplicity in grammar over complexity in lexicon.
It's equally capable of talking about automobiles, though. More
difficult, but certainly capable. See above.
EXACTLY! It's more difficult. Although languages are capable of expressing
every concept you can think of, some languages are more verbose than others
in communicating certain ideas.
That's what I meant about the "autogenerating" languages. They are not
capable, at that stage of development, to express very many concepts.
And they would tend to regularize faster than they would gain the
necessary complexity of expression to be equivalent to a natural
language, to explain the multitudes of irregularities present in some
(most?) of today's languages.
Just look at Chinese. It used
to be polysyllabic and had a complex grammar. Now it's monosyllabic and
with few (some might say zero) rules of grammar to speak of.
Ohhhhh, no. Chinese has LOTS of rules for grammar, and is FAR from
monosyllabic. Both of your assertions are myths. I've seen Chinese grammars
and they are comparable to English grammars. As for the accusation of
"monosyllabic", the monosyllables are RARELY spoken alone. A fairly simple
concept like "meat" is rendered: "shiyong roulei", "shizhi", and "yaodian".
A single, monosyllabic word in Chinese is a rare thing. The discrete
Chinese characters disguise the language's true complexity.
Those discrete characters used to be represented by polysyllabic sounds.
As for the grammar, I'd have to check my sources again.
So did Phonician script, the direct ancestor to Roman script. Aleph, the
first letter of the Phonician alphabet, meant ox, and the symbol looked
like an ox. (turn a picture of an "A" upside-down). Do you imagine what our
lives would be like if we had a letter for _every_ _singe_ _WORD_?!
AAAAAARRRRRGHHHHHH!!!
Japanese used to be this way. They've simplified a bit, and allowed
words to be constructed from two or more characters. Maybe eventually
they'll start using their alphabets rather than their kanji. ;)
Chinese script used to represent ideas as well as sounds. They used to have
_50000_ characters in the Chinese dictionary. @_@ If I remember correctly
(i'm separated from the book this is in by a thousand miles), to be called
"literate", you had to be able to recognize about 10000 of them. By dumping
the meaning and polysyllabry, that number was reduced to less than 3000.
KISS; it's a step forward.
The change occured because the Chinese changed pens and started to become
lazy. The ancient characters had graceful lines and many strokes. However,
slowly the original characters were simplified (less is more). Then the
pens were changed to brushes (cheaper), and they could no longer draw curvy
lines. The characters became squared off, and then further simplified. All
during this time, the script usage was changed from polysyllabic to
monosyllabic. The words themselves, however, didn't change in that way.
*nod* You're describing *a* process of simplification, which is what I
had claimed to begin with, even if I wasn't very accurate in describing
what, exactly, it was.
Chinese has rules. You can't put words in any order you please and expect
to get a meaningful sentance, right? It's got very specific rules for
counting things, for example. You use a different suffix to count long,
thin things, like pencils, than to count large, flat things, like paper.
The suffix provides meaning that the number otherwise wouldn't have.
Yes, Japanese is that way too. They're losing complexity on that count,
though, because in class the teacher told me that -gurai is expanding to
fill also the meaning of -goro. -goro is a suffix which forms a
compound with a time expression, indicating an approximate point in
time, NOT a duration. -gurai, originally, meant an approximate
duration.
That's just one example.
Noun formation may be simpler, but as I said there are more types than
needed for only a primitive culture.
You don't know that. Are you an Eskimo? Do you speak Inuit? Do you live in
an igloo? Have you at least studied their culture? No? Then shut up.
(sorry about that.)
Unless you're in the know, you've got no right to assume that their
complications are "not needed."
I wasn't talking about the kinds of distinctions you make a good point
about below. I'm talking about unnecessary complexity, like gender and
noun types. These concepts can adequately be expressed without gender
and with simple particles instead.
Here's a short discourse on Australian, as spoken by the aborigines:
"Our Australian verb...rivals and excels the Greek and the
Sanskrit, for it thus has four futures, and, for time past, it has three
forms, marking the past time as instant, proximate, and remote.
Corrsponding to these tenses, there are nine participles, each of which
may be used as a finite verb. Besides an Imperative mood and a
Subjunctive mood, there are reflexive and reciprocal forms, forms of
negation, forms to express continuance, iteration, imminence, and
contemporary circumstances.... And, in Australian, this copiousness of
diction is not confined to the verbs: it shows itself also in the
building up of other words" (An Australian Language, edited by John
Fraser, p. xlvii).
How did they acquire such a complicated language?
I don't know, but it must've had some purpouse or it would've been
simplified by now, ne? We know that there is a purpouse, the trouble is
finding it.
As I said, primitive cultures' languages don't change very rapidly. How
did they become so complex? See the above as an example.
Either order of words indicates their function, or specific particles
do. Yes, I know. But instead of a complicated system of declension,
like Greek has, English is relatively simple. "I travel", "you travel",
"he travels", "they travel", "we travel". And so on. The verb hardly
changes depending on the person and number of the noun. Although
English isn't very regular (yet!), it's better than Greek. The Romance
languages are midway between the two.
Don't be deceived. We have a major complication in that selfsame example.
Namely, that obligatory subject. In Germanic languages like ours, that "I",
"you", "he/she/it", "we", "they" is required. Guess what! Some languages do
perfectly fine without them. Heck, they do perfectly fine without changing
the verb. Now, where did it come from?
Very simple then, isn't it? Japanese is like that. And Japanese is
spoken by a relatively advanced culture, as I said.
English used to be declined just like Greek. When we lost the complicated
verb endings, we had to keep the pronouns, and make them obligatory, to
preserve the full meaning.
Simpler that way. :)
The Tower of Babel was
the way it happened, folks.
Nah, this stuff predates the Babel Tower. Language evolved before
agriculture. You need agriculture to produce enough food to stay in one
place long enough to build towers.
The languages were unified before then.
How do you know this?
You have made a claim, and you are the one who has to back it up.
I looked it up in my "history text". See below. ;) Some stuff, you
can only really *know* if it's revealed. OTOH, I'm looking for
historical information on languages predating the flood and the Tower of
Babel anyway.
The Bible runs into trouble with history and physical reality because it's
a religious book, not a historical chronicle or physics article.
It's a historical chronicle too. Why do you think two of the books are
called I and II "Chronicles"?
Then how come it can't get some simple measurements right, like solomon's
Copyist's error. You did ask.
Take hell. Now, either hell is A) not hot, or B) there's no
physicists in hell.
Depends on whether you're going with "orthodox" Christian dogma, or the
facts.
What facts? They seem equally valid to me.
Depends. Go to the bible and read what it says on the subject, then
decide.
The valley of Hinnom, Gehenna, was given as a type of hell fire.
The fires there were never put out, never quenched. The maggots always
had garbage and the flesh of criminals to feed on. But in "hell", you
die. You are burned up and destroyed. NOT tortured forever. That's a
false, "orthodox" Christian dogma.
I was talking about Physics, pure and simple. IF my discription of hell was
indeed correct (and you seem to be asserting that it isn't, but this is
hypothetical), then it's not hot or there are no physicsists in hell.
It isn't correct. The physical description of Gehenna fire (hell fire;
the lake of fire) is as the valley of Hinnom was.
Besides, my argument can still work if I know one thing: Are those
multiple, discreet fires, or one big honkin' bonfire?
I dunno. Prolly the former, though, considering.
Hell is described as having "pools of brimstone".
In what text are you looking?
Apparently, in the book that you think is the incorrect one. Gomen.
I don't know. If it's a book that talks about what the bible says, try
looking in the bible instead.
And my point is, these same people will look at a miracle of healing,
and call it magic. *sigh*
...and other people will ask those two groups, "What miracle/magic?"
There is a difference between thinking and believing. I've learned the
difference. I don't THINK that miracles occur, but I do BELIEVE that
amazing things can happen. ;)
There's no explanation for it other than God. ;)
Spontaneous remission. Ulcers and tumors have disappeared with no
provocation and without praying. It happens.
Examples? I've never heard of this happening. Neither has my doctor.
Taking Zantac, however, increases the cure rate of healing by statistically
significant amounts.
And just to show that hamburgers are food and not proof: I've eaten two
hamburgers in one sitting with an ulcer and nothing happened to me, either.
The ulcer was still there the next day. :)=
Oh? That's odd. I *have* read that grease does nasty things to an
ulcer in the pamphlet the campus clinic nurse gave me on ulcers, when I
first had one during winter break three years ago.
Until clinically prove in a double-blind test that praying increases your
healing rate (kinda hard to do, tho. What the heck is a placebo pray?), or
that something like a supporting limb regenerating with the help of faith,
you don't have a leg to stand on. ^_-
Something like that isn't going to happen in a clinic. *shrug*
Uh, one more question. EXACTLY what religion are you?
Christian. "Church of God" is about the closest you can come to
describing my denomination, tho. I keep the Sabbath and the Holy Days,
don't eat unclean meats, etc., whereas most other Christians don't.
Damon Casale, damoo@carmelnet.com
Spam, spam! WONDERFUL spam! ^_^