World Civilizations 2015

Book Review
Name: Suryakumar Mane
Roll No.:13110126
The Recursive Mind
By Michael Corballis
Full bibliographic citation of book (Michael Corballis, The Recursive Mind (the
Origin of Human Language, Thought, and Civilization), Princeton University Press
(2011))
1. Summary
This book talks about how language makes human beings unique amongst all
primates and other creatures. The main aim of this book is to convince the reader
that the capacity or the ability of humans to understand and process recursive
thoughts is what makes us distinguished from others. Recursion can be understood
from very famous lines of Rene Descartes, I think, therefore I am. In making this
statement, Descartes was not simply thinking, rather he was thinking about
thinking, which led him to conclude that he existed. Michael Corballis also states
that the recursive nature of our thoughts helps us conceive the notion of time
travelthe ability to insert past experience, or imagine future ones, into our
present consciousness. And also recursion enables us to understand our very own
mind and also minds of others, that we call theory of mind. This is inspired by the
fact that conversation is possible if participants share a common mind-set thus little
bit of mind reading is required. Moreover, author is trying to defeat the Noam
Chomskys theory of language, Chomsky proposes that "some random mutation
took place, maybe after some strange cosmic ray shower, and it reorganized the
brain, implanting a language organ in an otherwise primate brain." 1 While the
author suggest that the recent languages have been formed through the evolution,
right from the spilt of Homo sapiens from the great apes. He also traces how
language got adapted to recursive thinking through manual gesture, and then later
with the formation of vocal language. Through the understanding of neuroscience,
psychology, animal behavior, he has tried to show how recursive principle has led to
the complexities of human civilization.
2. Critical Reflections
Chomskys view of language talks about having universal grammar of all languages
and considers I-language (internal language as genetically encoded) as the basis of
all languages. In his view, he has divided language into two parts. First is I-language
which he refers to be language of thoughts and second is E-language (external
language) which is spoken one. According to him recursion is nothing more than
simply merging the phrases or phrase into sentences to form more complex
expressions. Chomsky argues that as I-language is assumed to be the basis of all
languages, it must have no external reference, and therefore cannot have evolved

from natural selection. Instead, it must have appeared as a single mutation

probably within the past 100,000 years. And the mutated individual he refers as
Prometheus.
Here the catch is that, in suggesting evolution of language and the importance of
the recursive nature of thought, the author has not assumed anything for that
matter to suggest his theories and views, unlike Chomsky has assumed as Ilanguage to be language of thoughts.
Following are some lines from the book that adds to the credibility of the authors
suggestions and views about language evolution.

I part from Chomsky, though, is in his view that thought itself is fundamentally
linguistic. I argue instead that the modes of thought that made language
possible were non-linguistic, but were nonetheless possessed of recursive
properties to which language adapted.
Chomsky viewed thought through the lens of language, I suggest that language
should be viewed through a lens of thought.

As archeological record gives no clear evidence of the linguistic status of early

hominins. Author offers mental time travel and theory of mind as an example of
non-linguistic domain that possessed recursion. Moreover, Corballis mentions his
point as: -Evidence indicates that nonhuman animals, even chimpanzees, are
essentially incapable of theory of mind, mental time travelor are at best capable
of these capacities only sporadically, and only in rudimentary fashion. However, I
think that in chimpanzees and apes or in monkeys, theory of mind might have been
playing an important role as in terms of female partner selection or thinking of
impressing opposite sex partner. Also, strictly speaking, that different experimental
results seem to be not coherent with one another. But, I would say that the author
has succeeded in convincing that these two non-linguistic concepts did evolve with
time in primates.
Attempts made to teach spoken language to our closely related chimps were not
that successful. However, it was found that the sign language (American Sign
Language) was easily learned to a greater extent. This tells us that, language might
have evolved from a gestural language (manual gestures) rather than just a
language modification (vocalization). That is, a primitive mode of conversation
might have been through manual gestural communication.
Gestural theory received a powerful boost on the discovery of mirror neuron in the
primate brain. Mirror neurons in monkeys are those which are triggered when an
involuntary action of hands happened, these are also those neuron responding
when one monkey observes another individual and thus are termed as the mirror
neuron. Mirror neurons are understood to be part of large neural network called
mirror system. This neuron largely coincides with the human region which is
responsible for language. This overlap has led to notion that language grew out of
the mirror system itself. In humans, mirror system responds to transitive act and
intransitive acts A unlike in case of monkeys, this incorporation of intransitive acts

would have paved the way to the understanding of acts that are more symbolic
rather than actual objects.
Following extract given by the author seems to be appropriate for the reason of
switching of language from hand to mouth:

The author has given extracts of book human, all too human by Friedrich
Nietzsche (1878). This is as follows: - as soon as men understood each other in
gestures, a symbolism of gesture could evolve. I mean, one could agree on a
language of tonal signs, in such a way that at first both tone and gesture were
produced, and later only the tone.

The author says that the early gestural language was also accompanied by facial
movements and adding of vocal tones to the expressions. Articulatory phonology (a
linguistic theory originally proposed in 1986 by Catherine Browman of Haskins
Laboratories and Louis M. Goldstein of Yale University and Haskins) tries to combine
phonetics (production of sound by humans) and phonology (patterns of sound), it
actually tells that, speech can be understood as a gesture produced by six
articulatory organs, the lips, the velum, the larynx, and the blade etc. Now in the
context of understanding speech as a gesture, it then might have become easy over
the period to incorporate vocal gestures into the mirror system, and further
evolution of language took place over the period of time.

3. Highlights
The good part of the author is that unlike Chomsky, he sees thought and other
cognitive functions of humans as the key holder to the human species and our
civilization. The book provides a broader view for understanding language in human
evolution and also evolution of itself. It also includes some repetition of the same
things, however, I think that, this repetition is useful in sense to recall and get
connected to what the author is trying to correlate. Lots of footnote made in this
book help in understanding of the details of the subject if anyone is interested in
knowing it further. I think that author has credibility in convincing his views through
his presentation, which includes the views of other linguist, and contrary theory
suggested by author which has been supported by a number of evidences or the
experimental studies by other people which are mentioned in footnotes. It really
seems that lot of research has gone into convincing his views by citing work of other
researchers which is appreciating one.
4. Contribution to Civilization
To have a common culture and civilization there is need of communication among
people, and language has played a crucial role in it. So, it remains for us to know
how the evolution of language could have happened that led to the formation of
great civilizations across the world. The author has also rightly mentioned that
evolution of language played a crucial role by enabling humans to share their
memories, plans, stories, enhancing social cohesion, understanding each other, and
bonds creating societies, culture, giving rise to civilization. And I think that ability of
our mind to experience mental time travel and theory of mind played vital role
in making civilization, and need for evolution of language too.

Again the fact that this topic is still a matter of debate and is more interesting to dig
deeper to know how the journey of language and then need for it to build a
civilization started.
Note:A. Transitive acts are those which involves actual object in action while
intransitive acts are those in which action is mimed and no actual object is
involved.
Reference:1. Chomsky 2000 p.4, obtained from Wikipedia/language.

During ancient period humans existed at very high level of consciousness

than now, it can be also noted from the ancient records that the symerians
and other civilization knew about the universe that is the planets around and
the equinox etc. and the communication happened through thoughts and
emotion like animals do.
Check book serpent of light
Hibros