Adam's Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans,   ISBN:9780809022816

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Academe and politics both are zero-sum games, whether the greasy pole is tenure or re-election. The number of places at the trough is fixed and finite. Academe may have more polish in its struggle, and definitely encourages more creative intellect. This is a book about that creative part, where points are made by dissing fellow academics and conjuring up supporting arguments that seem reasonable regardless of their underlying circularity. Whatever the merits of the author's analysis he covers in this book, while disparaging various colleagues, the fact is that all of this happened a very long time ago, and any attempt to `explain' any of it today can only be based on personal faith on a secular dogma. So much for Science with a capital S; this is about personalities in the struggle for existence in the closed world of academe.

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In a work that sometimes zoomed over my head, I enjoyed Mr. Bickerton's smart-ass wit, his wicked jibes at certain lines of thinking, and his ability to tell a good story.

In order to tell the language story, Mr. Bickerton packed a lot of heady stuff into this book: animal communication systems, niche construction theory, biology v. culture/environment, human-centric biases, punctuated evolution, recursion, Merge, the debunking of a "ladder of progression" in evolution, and a host of other concepts. Very chewy reading here.

I think he made a pretty good case for his theses regarding the evolution of language. Maybe too good. Because a lot of the information was over my head, I felt a bit at his mercy; I had to take some things on faith from the "expert." And he's a darn good story-teller. This means I felt ill-equipped to say, "wait a minute, what about ..."? But I'm hard-pressed to fault Mr. Bickerton on this. I could choose to sit down and really study the book more closely, do some checking around, do some thinking, and then come up with some "what abouts" if I chose to get off my mental butt and do so.

My sense was that he spoke not just to mass audiences (i.e., me), but to his more in-the-loop colleagues, and I'm fine with that. I'd rather an author try to explain the complexities of something, and only partially succeed, than to dumb it down too simplistically.

The dilemma for me, I think, is that the intelligent design folks also tell a compelling story. Their stories are also replete with "science" and conclusions that sound so ... right ... and so obvious to so many intelligent people.

Whose responsibility is it to do the grunt work regarding conclusions - the story-teller or the reader?

I particularly appreciated the reminder that scientists are really no less vulnerable to human frailty (ego, in-politics, biases) than anyone else. A passage from the intro that especially pleased me: ".. to suggest that the discontinuity [in evolution] between language and non-language was only part of a much greater discontinuity fell somewhere in the scale of political correctness, between Holocaust denial and rejecting global warming." Or: "... soon the two views were in full-on combat mode. And in war, if the truth is the first casualty, objectivity goes out in the very next body bag."

Upon completing the book, I am still chewing on a number of Mr. Bickerton's thoughts. At the end of the day, who can ask for more in a book?

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Bickerton does a nice job skewering many of his colleagues, but I am not convinced by his own theory, and certainly it is something of a letdown after the buildup. Still, if you enjoy reading about evolution, I can recommend "Adam's Tongue".

Bickerton proposes that in the evolution of homo sapiens, they developed a new way of living, by "power scavenging". This meant chasing off the other scavengers, which in Bickerton's theory they could only accomplish by weight of numbers, since their weaponry consisted only of stones, some sharpened. Since humans needed to move in small bands to locate food, this meant they needed to "recruit" other bands when a large dead animal was spotted. Language grew up as a recruitment tool, although once developed, it found many other uses. Bickerton believes language must precede more complex thought, rather than the other way around, although no real evidence is given. In particular, he emphasizes displacement, which means referring to things which are not present, and makes a big distinction between humans and other primates in this regard. Kind of strange, since it is known that chimpanzees will on occasion go on raids against neighboring chimps to cite one example of displacement type thinking. Bickerton also believes ACS(animal communication systems) are genetic rather than learned, but no evidence is given, and since even Bickerton acknowledges that there is such a thing as animal culture, evidence is surely needed. In fact, monkeys are not naturally afraid of snakes, it is learned behavior, so why would the particular scream reserved for snakes not also be learned [...]

Bickerton makes a big point of the great divide between ACS and language, with one not naturally evolving into the other - yet that is exactly what he describes toward the end of the book (p.218), to the reader's great surprise.

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A previous reviewer described this as a Just-so story, but a Just-so story is likely all we can ever hope to have to explain language. Personally I think this one makes any others I have met read like so-so stories. It is wonderfully written and readable and Bickerton's implacable piling up of evidence (often taken from unexpected sources) and logical conclusions reminds me of Darwin's "Origin of Species". I thoroughly enjoyed it.

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I hate to be the one to drop the average rating on this book, but I don't want to be just another 4/5 star reviewer. The problem for me, which isn't Bickerton's fault, is that the evidence for evolution of language is not tangible but almost entirely theoretical. Bickerton gives "just so" stories of how language could have happened, or how the need for it could have began. It was an interesting thought experiment, but that's all it really was. He argues strongly for niche-construction theory and how it played an important role in the evolution of language, but I lean towards Dawkins' "selfish gene" position. I don't doubt niche-construction plays a role in evolution, just not nearly to the extent Bickerton does. He acts as if it's as revolutionary as the theory of natural selection. Regardless, I was impressed with his knowledge and use of biology and anthropology to explain his hypothesis.

Bickerton seems a bit eccentric to me, which made for some interesting and often funny reading, but it also caused him to frequently criticize the ideas of others. He seems to be too sure of himself, though he did admit to changing his mind on various ideas over the years.

Overall it was a decent book, and I'm glad I read it. I learned a bit about language, animal communication systems (ACS), niche-construction theory, etc, and how language MIGHT have evolved. I don't know as if it was worth the $20 though. Save your money and request it at your local library.