Educating Eve: The Language Instinct Debate – Geoffrey Sampson Koop Vandaag

Are we creatures who learn new things? Or does human mental development consist of awakening structures of thought? A view has gained ground – advocated, for example, by Steven Pinker’s book “The Language Instinct” – that language in much of its detail is “hard-wired” in our genes. Others add that this holds too for much of the specific knowledge and understanding expressed in language. When the first human evolved from apes (it is claimed), her biological inheritance comprised not just a distinctive anatom…