Jessie and John Danz Lectures
“What this book proposes to do,” writes Derek Bickerton, “is to stand the conventional wisdom of the behavioral sciences on its head: instead of the human species growing clever enough to invent language, it will view that species as blundering into language and, as a direct result of that, becoming clever.” According to Bickerton, the behavioral sciences have failed to give an adequate account of human nature at least partly because of the conjunction and mutual reinforcement of two widespread beliefs: that language is simply a means of communication and that human intelligence is the result of the rapid growth and unusual size of human brains.
Bickerton argues that each of the properties distinguishing human intelligence and consciousness from that of other animals can be shown to derive straightforwardly from properties of language. In essence, language arose as a representational system, not a means of communication or a skill, and not a product of culture but an evolutionary adaptation.
The author stresses the necessity of viewing intelligence in evolutionary terms, seeing it not as problem solving but as a way of maintaining homeostasis—the preservation of those conditions most favorable to an organism, the optimal achievable conditions for survival and well-being. Nonhumans practice what he calls “on-line thinking” to maintain homeostasis, but only humans can employ off-line thinking: “only humans can assemble fragments of information to form a pattern that they can later act upon without having to wait on that great but unpunctual teacher, experience.”
The term protolanguage is used to describe the stringing together of symbols that prehuman hominids employed. “It did not allow them to turn today’s imagination into tomorrow’s fact. But it is just this power to transform imagination into fact that distinguishes human behavior from that of our ancestral species, and indeed from that of all other species. It is exactly what enables us to change our behavior, or invent vast ranges of new behavior, practically overnight, with no concomitant genetic changes.”
Language and Human Behavior should be of interest to anyone in the behavioral and evolutionary sciences and to all those concerned with the role of language in human behavior.
“ W. T. Edmondson has spent his career answering questions about the ecological impacts of human experiments on lakes in Washington State. In this volume, he recounts these studies and captures from his experiences a larger view of the nature of our environmental problems. . . . While the commentary is wide ranging, the foundation is a personal account of one ecologist’s lifetime experience on the dual points of research and public application of that research.”—Research and Exploration“W. T. Edmondson, a zoologist, extracts enduring lessons from his more than 50 years of experience in persuading political powers to make use of scientific knowledge when they set about drawing up laws for managing human interventions in the environment. Any scientist who follows in Edmondson’s footsteps should benefit from reading this sensitive recounting of political battles.”—Garrett Hardin, Pacific Northwest Quarterly
In the first book of its kind, experts describe how to help people with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. A summary of recent findings and recommendations is presented by the team who conducted the largest study ever done on people of all ages with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Fetal Alcohol Effects. Twenty-one experts from the fields of human services, education, and criminal justice respond by describing their solutions to this problem of a birth defect that targets the brain and has lifelong consequences.
Some of the most crippling secondary disabilities that people with FAS/FAE face include mental health problems, disrupted school experience, inappropriate sexual behavior, trouble with the law, alcohol and drug problems, difficulty caring for their children, and homelessness.
This book acknowledges the diverse and multifaceted needs of people with FAS/FAE across the lifespan. It will be valuable for parents and the many professionals working with people with FAS/FAE.
Chaos surrounds us. Seemingly random events -- the flapping of a flag, a storm-driven wave striking the shore, a pinball’s path -- often appear to have no order, no rational pattern. Explicating the theory of chaos and the consequences of its principal findings -- that actual, precise rules may govern such apparently random behavior -- has been a major part of the work of Edward N. Lorenz. In The Essence of Chaos, Lorenz presents to the general reader the features of this “new science,” with its far-reaching implications for much of modern life, from weather prediction to philosophy, and he describes its considerable impact on emerging scientific fields.
Unlike the phenomena dealt with in relativity theory and quantum mechanics, systems that are now described as “chaotic” can be observed without telescopes or microscopes. They range from the simplest happenings, such as the falling of a leaf, to the most complex processes, like the fluctuations of climate. Each process that qualifies, however, has certain quantifiable characteristics: how it unfolds depends very sensitively upon its present state, so that, even though it is not random, it seems to be. Lorenz uses examples from everyday life, and simple calculations, to show how the essential nature of chaotic systems can be understood. In order to expedite this task, he has constructed a mathematical model of a board sliding down a ski slope as his primary illustrative example. With this model as his base, he explains various chaotic phenomena, including some associated concepts such as strange attractors and bifurcations.
As a meteorologist, Lorenz initially became interested in the field of chaos because of its implications for weather forecasting. In a chapter ranging through the history of weather prediction and meteorology to a brief picture of our current understanding of climate, he introduces many of the researchers who conceived the experiments and theories, and he describes his own initial encounter with chaos.
A further discussion invites readers to make their own chaos. Still others debate the nature of randomness and its relationship to chaotic systems, and describe three related fields of scientific thought: nonlinearity, complexity, and fractality. Appendixes present the first publication of Lorenz’s seminal paper “Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wing in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?”; the mathematical equations from which the copious illustrations were derived; and a glossary.
