From utilitarian tool to abstract sign: The evolutionary trajectory of the body and language

“ But I think that we are more averse to assent on false grounds than to anything else which is contrary to nature. Now of the limbs, that is to say, of the parts of the body, some appear to have been given to us by nature because of the use which, they are of to us, as, for instance, the hands, legs, and feet, and also those internal organs of the body, of which I may leave it to the physicians to explain the exceeding usefulness ”

“ Thus the hand is the tool which we make use of to lay hold of anything—so an organ; the eye is the instrument of sight—so an organ; the heart is the machine which causes the blood to circulate—so an organ; the liver fabricates the bile—it is an organ therefore; the bones are the framework which support the weight of the body—so organs; the muscles are the power which sets the bones in movement—organs also, therefore; the skin is the armor which protects them—so an organ: in fact everything within us is an organ. ”

“ Only human beings can produce even the simplest system of written symbols, by which visual stimuli become symbols of actions, objects, emotions, or ideas. Biologists—in particular the experimentalist, Page 15 Watson—find, in the capacity for language, man's most important distinction from the brute.
Language may be said, in fact, to be the most indispensable instrument of civilization. It is the means whereby the whole life of the past has been handed to us in the present. ”

“ Thought and Language.—It has often been said that thought would be impossible without words; and it is true that we can hardly conceive of human thought save as formed and embodied and expressed in language. Thought and articulate speech grew up, so to say, side by side; each implies the other; they are two sides of the same phase of mental development. The old conundrum ‘Why don’t the animals talk? Because they have nothing to say’ contains so much of sound psychology; if the animals thought, they would undoubtedly use their vocal organs for speech ”

“ Our physiological explanation of the meaning of words and the contradiction of antonyms is now complete. For if, as we have previously shown, even abstract terms acquire and keep their meaning by virtue of the reflex tendencies which they arouse, it is likewise apparent that the basis of logical opposition and contradiction is to be found by an examination of the baldest facts of the physics and physiology of the human body. ”

“ A language, like an organic body, is no mere aggregate of similar particles; it is a complex of related and mutually helpful parts. As such a body increases by the accretion of matter having a structure homogeneous with its own, as its already existing organs form the new addition, and form it for a determinate purpose—to aid the general life, to help the performance of the natural functions, of the organized being—so is it also with language: its new stores are formed from, or assimilated to, its previous substance ”

“ We have rapidly sketched this labor of organogenesis, by which language has passed from the amorphous state to the progressive constitution of specialised terms and grammatical functions: an evolution wholly comparable with that which, in living bodies, starts from the fecundated ovule, to attain by division of labor among the higher species to a fixed adjustment of organs and functions. “Languages are natural organisms, which, without being independent of human volition, are born, grow, age, and die, according to determined laws.” ”

“ That the essential identity of bodily organs and tools is no ingenious paradoxical way of putting things is evident from the fact that we speak of bodily organs at all. Organ means tool. There is nothing which reveals our most genuine opinions to us so unerringly as our habitual and unguarded expressions, and in the case under consideration so completely do we instinctively recognise the underlying identity of tools and limbs, that scientific men use the word “organ” for any part of the body that discharges a function, practically to the exclusion of any other term. ”

“ At each plunge of the spear, an arm becomes helpless and in a short time the animal, which but a few moments before had the power of a score of men, lies in the canoe, a shapeless, helpless mass.
That the octopus is good eating the writer can attest from experience, for during a visit to Yucatan some years ago this mollusk was served as a meat dish and was very palatable, the flesh being firm and tender and much resembling chicken. The portion which fell to the writer was the head, with a part of the arms attached. ”

“ The animal of Sepia is short and rounded, with a large head surrounded by a row of eight short arms and two very long tentacular arms, ending in expanded clubs armed with powerful suckers. Like the Octopus and Squid, the Cuttle-fish is capable of many changes of colors by the contraction and expansion of its pigment cells. They are found throughout the world, living near the shore, but the species found about European shores are the best known. ”

“ In such a locality it will squeeze its body into some crevice and spread out its arms until they form a sort of web, resembling in this position a huge spider waiting for its prey. And it may well be likened to a spider for from this web there is no escape if once a hapless fish has come in contact with the powerful suckers on the long arms. The poor fish is paralyzed when seized by the octopus and is drawn towards the mouth, where it is torn to pieces by the beak-like jaws, and swallowed. ”

“ Had I been looking for a blow downward it would have been all over with me, but I parried his thrust with my knife, and cut him deeply in the forearm.
“Dog! swine!” he shrieked, dropping his knife in rage and pain.
“Don’t talk; fight,” I said, raising my arm, and then my knife was in his heart up to the hilt. I instantly drew it out. The stroke was so true that a little stream of red blood spurted out on me. My foe swung backward and forward, groaned, and fell to the earth dead.
A wrathful howl burst from the Indians, but only the chief moved ”

“ But man not only maintains his machine, he succeeds in using it as he pleases. Doubtless he owes this to the superiority of his brain, which enables him to build an unlimited number of motor mechanisms, to oppose new habits to the old ones unceasingly, and, by dividing automatism against [Pg 265] itself, to rule it. He owes it to his language, which furnishes consciousness with an immaterial body in which to incarnate itself and thus exempts it from dwelling exclusively on material bodies, whose flux would soon drag it along and finally swallow it up. ”

“ For, little as we have attended to them before save as the commonplaces of our knowledge, we now see that they are paths of least resistance objectively embodied—protoplasmic tools with which, in the silence of the unconscious world the organic system is slowly but surely reaching its ends. And as we ponder it becomes clear to us that the same system is at work in the making of tools and the fashioning of organs—that, though the one process is conscious, the other unconscious, they are deep down in the heart of them the expressions of but a single method. ”

“ When we come to the effects of use and disuse, we reach a much debated ground, and one complicated by the injection of a great deal of biological theorizing, as well as the presence of the usual large amount of faulty observation and inference.
It will be admitted by every one that a part of the body which is much used tends to increase in size, or strength, and similarly that a part which is not used tends to atrophy. ”

“ The means for creating tools and other artifacts fostered other languages, such as the language of drawing, on which early engineering also relied. Here, an important point should be made. No tool is merely used. In using it, the user adapts to the tool, becoming to some extent, the used, the tool of the tool. The same is true of language, writing, and literacy. They were developed by humans seeking to optimize their activity. But humans have adapted themselves to the constraints of their own inventions. ”

“ Or, if language in one of its illiterate embodiments cannot keep pace with the exponential growth of information, will it undergo a restructuring in order to become a parallel process? Or will we generate more inclusive symbols, or some form of preprocessing, before information is delivered to human beings? All these questions relate to work, as the experience from which human identities result together with the products bearing their mark.
The active condition of any sign system is quite similar to the condition of tools. The hand that throws a stone is a hand influenced by the stone. ”

“ After the strictly vital needs of the body are provided for, unless the whole store of force is exhausted in satisfying them, there remains a surplus, especially in the unused organs, which impels to activity not directed toward useful ends. The pressure of this exuberant energy for expression is probably the primitive impulse toward the decorative, representative, and imitative arts. ”

“ Tylor says, “the array of evidence in favour of the existence of tribes whose language is incomplete without the help of gesture-signs, even for things of ordinary import, is very remarkable.” [C] A fact which, as he very properly adds, “constitutes a telling argument in favour of the theory that the gesture-language is the original utterance of mankind [as it is ontogenetically in the individual man] , out of which speech has developed itself more or less fully among different tribes.” ”

“ IT is to be feared that any present attempt on the part of the physiognomist to analyze trade expressions must be somewhat unsatisfactory to the lovers of exact science. Our proved knowledge concerning the laws which govern facial expression is very slight: we are still stumbling among the elements of feature language, and it may seem presumptuous to attempt to criticise the text when the very alphabet is still doubtful. ”

“ Nor does this inability arise from want of organs: for we observe that magpies and parrots can utter words like ourselves, and are yet unable to speak as we do, that is, so as to show that they understand what they say; in place of which men born deaf and dumb, and thus not less, but rather more than the brutes, destitute of the organs which others use in speaking, are in the habit of spontaneously inventing certain signs by which they discover their thoughts to those who, being usually in their company, have leisure to learn their language. ”

“ Our language is so rich in abstract terms, derived from a small number of concrete words, that we are not aware how often we use the old material words to express purely mental states or conditions; for instance we speak of taking things to heart, or learning verses by heart, without thinking of the heart that beats within our breasts. ”

“ If we look closely into language, we may see how strewn it is with worn-out and forgotten metaphors. “They are,” as Carlyle has said, “its muscles and tissues and living integuments,” the aids whereby language can communicate something more than the things which we see and feel. Even among ourselves, there are few who can afford to dispense with the assistance of concrete illustration and metaphor when dealing with abstract subjects. ”

“ Since language represents the physical conditions that have been subjected to the maximum transformation in the interests of social life—physical things which have lost their original quality in becoming social tools—it is appropriate that language should play a large part compared with other appliances. ”

“ The powers of abstraction and generalization, memory and reason, the tendencies which occasion the inflexions and combinations of words, are all necessary to the formation and use of language. Are not these parts of the same scheme of which the bodily faculties by which we are able to speak are another part? Has man his mental powers independently of the creator of his bodily frame? To what purpose then, or by what cause was the curious and complex machinery of the tongue, the glottis, the larynx produced? ”

“ Among the mediating elements mentioned so far, language performs its role in a particular way. Tools (such as pulleys, levers, gears, etc.) extend the arms or the legs, that is, the human body; language extends the coordinating capability of humans. Words, no matter how well articulated, will not turn the stone or lift the trunk of the fallen tree. They can be used to describe the problem, to enlist help, to discuss how the task can be accomplished, to render intelligible the sequence of accomplishing it. ”

“ If every language is a body of conventional signs kept in use and life by tradition, taught by those who have learned it already to the new members who by birth or otherwise are added from time to time to their community, then it is, as a matter of course, accessible to such altering influences alone as proceed from its users. As its use lies wholly within the domain of voluntary human action, its modification can lie in no other domain. That is to say, language is changed by the action of men’s wills, and by nothing else. ”

“ In short, our recognition of language as an institution, as an instrumentality, as no integral system of natural and necessary representatives of thought, inseparable from thought or spontaneously generated by the mind, but, on the contrary, a body of conventional signs, deriving their value from the mutual understanding of one man with another ”

“ On the contrary, we see clearly that machinery is, in every part and parcel, ultimately the work of human hands, which can do wondrous things without it, if still more wondrous with it. Language, like manner, is the instrument of thought, the machinery with which the mind works; an instrument by which its capacity to achieve valuable results is indefinitely increased, but which, far from being identical with it, is one of its own products ”

“ It is plain what a different sense language will bear in this system of intellectual notions from what it has when it is the representative of things: and such a use of it is not only the very foundation of all science, but may be, and is, carried out in literature and in the ordinary intercourse of man with man. And then it comes to pass that individual propositions about the concrete almost cease to be, and are diluted or starved into abstract notions. ”

“ If language is a symptom of the brain and vocal organs, it can hardly be described as an independent organism. In so far as phonology is concerned,—that part of language, namely, which depends on the vocal organs,—the physiological laws which determine it can be ascertained in the same way and with the same certainty as the other laws of physiology; but mere phonetic sounds do not become language until they embody a signification ”

“ The body would be neither comfortable nor comely, if not clad; cotton and wool would be of little use, but for machinery making quick and cheap their conversion into cloth; and, in a truly analogous way, thought would be awkward, feeble, and indistinct, without the dress, the apparatus, which is afforded it in language. Our denial of the identity of thought with its expression does not compel us to abate one jot or tittle of the exceeding value of speech to thought ”

“ The immediate causes of the improvement of a language through forcible admixture with another, are: that it is obliged to drop all unneccessary accessory elements in a proposition; that the relations of ideas must be expressed by conventional and not significant syllables; and that the limitations of thought imposed [16] by the genius of the language are violently broken down, and the mind is thus given wider play for its faculties. ”

“ The skeleton of language is formed by those phonetic utterances into which significancy must be breathed before they can become living speech. They are the outward vestment of the thought that lies within, the material in which the mind of man finds its expression. Thought, it is true, may be conveyed through gesture and picture-writing as well as through phonetic utterance, but in phonetic utterance alone does it find a vehicle sufficient and worthy of itself. Like the marble in the hands of the sculptor, however, sound not only embodies meaning ”

“ Organ and individual pass into each other without any fixed limit. That, he says, is only a repetition of the relation of the plant to the animal. We cannot establish any fixed limitations between them. What we set up as such are only man’s abstractions. In nature itself we never find these subjective abstract ideas of limitation “incorporated purely, but always fading away in gradual transitions; here, again, the scale of organisation rises gradually from the simplest to the most complex, in a continuous development.” ”

“ We experience a process of replacing the rigid logical framework of literate condition with many logical frameworks, adapted to diversity.
In conclusion, one more aspect should be approached. Is it enough to say that language expresses the biological and the social identity of the human being? To deal with language, and more specifically with the embodiment of language in literacy, means to deal with everything that makes the human being the bio-socio-politico- cultural entity that defines our species. ”