Punctuated Equilibrium

I was involved in a discussion about the evolution of language on Metafilter. Someone disputed something I wrote concerning that possibly language was an unintended byproduct of undirected human evolution. Perhaps a kink in our larynx that enabled greater vocal ability for mating rituals…It seems an unlikely coincidence that the relevant physical and mental structures for language would evolve and then not be used for several generations.

Here’s my response which touches on something deep I’ve been thinking about for a while:

That’s because you are linking the two, and that linkage may not be as firm as you feel it should be. Evolutionary theory shows us that many mutations recur within populations, only to die out, or benign mutations with no immediate effect spread through a population. Sometimes these mutations express only when the environment changes, or some precipitating event forces the population to a new equilibrium, or the population density reaches some critical threshold. The sometimes unpredictable lag time between mutation and population-wide expression leads to the impression of a “punctuated equilibrium”.

Consider feathers: an adaptive development in dinosaurs to provide insulation, plumage, and mating signals. Only after many millions of years did a secondary use – flight – establish itself.

It is my position that homo sapiens is a product of both genetics and culture. A synthesis. With only one singly you don’t get a very recognizably “human” person. Culture is not generated ex cathedra by genetic imperatives – it has been evolving itself through many thousands of generations to shape us.

I also like thinking about current human faculty for language making compared to an earlier hominid adaptation for flint blade making. Earlier hominids possessed physical adaptations that enabled them to create flint blades, but nobody could have expected a simple physical dexterity or genetic imperative to compel them to produce the quite consistent, staggering quantity of blades extant from many eras. Many of these blades appear to never have been used, indicating that they must have been made, then discarded immediately.

So it seems there was a culture of flint blade production that reproduced the urge to produce in addition to a genetic component that reproduced the ability to produce.

I note today that most books produced by humans will be published once, perhaps read, then never republished. A similar fate seems to await most jokes and especially puns.

Here is one of my favourite M Foucault quotes:

The body is also directly invested in a political field; power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs. the body becomes a useful force only if it is both a productive body and a subjected body.

Dear dead Michel was saying something incredibly profound here and in his supporting argument that I have been spending the last decade or so trying to figure out…