Wednesday, August 21, 2019
Constants and variables 138, old and pointless edition
More unnecessary and useless research on gestures vs speech.
Look, this is EXTREMELY OLD KNOWLEDGE. For instance, the 1866 Manual of Signals written for the Army Signal Corps covers the same ground in a systematic way.
Constant: Every living thing communicates. Therefore the genes controlling communication must be the same for all living things, with added bells** and whistles in some species and added smell-sprays and radio broadcasts in others.
This "new" study doesn't even begin to work on the question it claims to ask.
Variable: Why are humans especially good at sending and receiving and remembering long sequences of musical chords, [aka speech] when no other mammal does it? Why is our peculiar talent shared with birds, who are not close to us genetically? How was this bird-like variation on the communication gene preserved through thousands of mammals who didn't use it, only to suddenly surface in humans? Horizontal gene transfer?
= = = = =
** The wordplay on whistles was intended, but bells raise a question. Nearly all of the signaling devices "invented" by humans were first invented by plants and animals. Whistles, guns, radio, flashes... but bells? I can't think of anything that naturally uses a clapper in a reson.... WHOOOPS. That's called a LARYNX. Or even more literally a UVULA. Sorry, Nature. I should know better than to doubt you even for a moment.
Time for a song!
Hey there Captain, do you see?
There is a clapper in a chamber!
No that's not what it is at all.
That's a signaller people call a LARYNX.
I see.
But it still looks like a clapper in a chamber
To me!
Labels: Constants and Variables, Grand Blueprint
¶ 7:01 AM
