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Current group: sci.archaeology.
Re: genes and language (Homer, Richard Dawkins)
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| | From: | Franz Gnaedinger | | Subject: | Re: genes and language (Homer, Richard Dawkins) | | Date: | 18 Jan 2005 23:47:41 -0800 |
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 | Years ago we were living in a farmhouse in a village
on top of a hill; a commune of hippies, students and
working people. Our Marian spent half a year in India.
She returned one morning in spring. I was working by
the stable and saw her climbing the hill, clad in a
red Afghan dress, accompanied by a flash zigzagging
through the tall grass ... The flash turned out to be
a young dog. Marian had been invited to a marriage,
the feast lasted three days, and when she left she was
presented with a dog she could not refuse. Well, Nera
was the best dog I ever met in my life, independent,
clever, loved by the village. You could hear people
calling her: hetera, jello, tikae (hetera means come,
tikae good or fine, while I forgot what jello means).
Nera left our farmhouse every morning at six o'clock.
Marian wondered where she went, followed her one
morning, and found her in the block, where one of our
neighbors, a bank manager, sat on the stair and sliced
a sausage for Nera. He confessed to do so every day;
meeting Nera made his morning ... Nera was black, she
had expressive white eyebrows, and she was just tall
enough to lay her head on the table when we were eating.
And then she played her eyebrows, as if saying: You are
feeding me well, I can't complain, moreover you found
out that several people in the village are spoiling me
with delicacies - and yet, the very best food there is
in the world must be what you are eating on your table,
from which you are always exluding me. If only once I
could share your meal ... If she got no language then
certainly eyebrowage ;-) On December 6 we held our Santa
Claus meal of peanuts, mandarines, gingerbread and punch.
Nera was begging and begging, so I gave her some peanut
shells. She gulped them at once, much to our surprise.
I gave her more. She swallowed the whole heap, molto
con gusto, and told us in her way: Thank you very much,
that was my best meal ever, and you know why? because
you let me share your meal and thus really took me up
into your tribe ...
-
Regards Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch
> Peter T. Daniels got me wrong many times over the past
> weeks. In his latest reply to me he even placed me in
> the same boat as a Canadian psychologist and Princeton
> professor who wrote that the builders of the early
> civilizations such as ancient Egypt were not conscious
> in the human sense. Omigod. By Nut, Isis and Nephtys.
> I am struggling against such prejudices since I was
> a boy. Will I have to go on for ever? for the rest of
> my life? Well then, I am ready, and got arguments for
> a long time to come, but I shall argue in a way that
> I and hopefully some of my readers will enjoy.
>
> Animals got no language? I shall tell you about Nera,
> a dog from India, who understood human language very
> well and could speak with her white eyebrows in her
> black face, and how she gave an open-air concert,
> playing orchestra and conductor in personal union.
> Hereupon I shall tell you how I observed a cat
> reasoning, pondering a question of daily survival
> and making her decision, much as a human does.
> >From there I shall draw a line to human reasoning
> and human language.
>
> I'll teach you by means of telling examples, as did
> the ancient Egyptians, who knew that the mind loves
> to learn by drawing its own conclusions. They were
> more conscious in the human sense than many of our
> teachers and professors who stuff the mind of their
> pupils with theorems and choke them with abstract
> propositions, depriving them of a chance to learn
> in a natural and pleasing way.
> -
> Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch
>
>
>
>
> > Genes and language, part 9 (the end, or rather
> > a new begin ...)
> >
> > Let me go on drawing parallels between Homer's gods
> > and the genes as understood by Richard Dawkins.
> >
> > Homer's deities have to cooperate, no matter how sly
> > and greedy for power they are, and so have the genes,
> > no matter how selfish they are.
> >
> > Darwin saw life as a permanent struggle, while we owe
> > Lynn Margulis and others the insight that life is also
> > based on symbiosis and cooperation. Language (in the
> > wider sense of my framework of a general theory) comes
> > from cooperation based on mutual dependence. Now, as
> > the genes are obliged to cooperate, we may look out
> > for a possible communication among the genes themselves.
> >
> > A recent article inScience (as I recall) proposed to
> > see DNA as a language following its own rules. A brief
> > outline of that article given in sci.lang electrified
> > me: as genes depend of each other we can well expect
> > some form of communication among them, a language that
> > materialized first in RNA, then in DNA ...
> >
> > I see a Golden Age of linguistics dawning. Linguistics
> > may become a key discipline of the Information Age,
> > in high demand not only in the humanities, but also in
> > informatics, biology, genetics, medicine, agriculture
> > and terra forming. Imagine new therapies provided by
> > an understanding of the communication among cells, among
> > bacteria, and among genes, body and mind (as explained
> > here in my series of 9 messages), or of soil improvement
> > and transforming Mars into a habitat, which also require
> > the understanding of communication among bacteria.
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