The Coevolution of Language, Teaching, and Civil Discourse Among Humans: Our Family Business

372 Pages·2020·3.227 MB·

by  Donald M. Morrison

The Coevolution of
Language, Teaching,
and Civil Discourse
Among Humans
Our Family Business
donald m. morrison
The Coevolution of Language, Teaching,
and Civil Discourse Among Humans
Donald M. Morrison
The Coevolution
of Language,
Teaching, and Civil
Discourse Among
Humans
Our Family Business
Donald M. Morrison
Institute for Intelligent Systems
University of Memphis
Memphis,TN, USA
ISBN 978-3-030-48542-9 ISBN 978-3-030-48543-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48543-6
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Dedicated to my father
Donald Harvard Morrison
(1914–1959)
…and all the other teachers in our human family, past, present, and future.
Preface
Teaching is our family business. Early in the last century, my paternal
grandfather,LouisFrenchMorrison(1880–1961),wasassistantsuperin-
tendentofschoolsinMorgantown,WestVirginia.Hisfirstson,myuncle
Wilbur Yale Morrison, taught shop for many years in the Morgantown
public schools. His second son, my father, Donald Harvard Morrison
(note the choice of middle names) was a professor of Government at
Dartmouth College, dean of the faculty, and the College’s first provost.
On my mother’s side, my aunt, Jane Gibson Likert, taught high school
English in Grand Rapids, Michigan. According to family lore, Gerald
Ford,38thpresidentoftheUnitedStates,washerstudent.Herhusband,
myuncleRensisLikert,helpedfoundtheInstituteforSocialResearchat
theUniversityofMichigan.Ofmysevenbrothersandsisters,five(myself
included) have been paid to teach. Two are college professors, one is
recentlyretiredfromteachingEnglishataprivateschoolinConnecticut,
andanotherservedaschairmanofthedepartmentofsurgeryatamedical
school in the Pacific Northwest.
Now, I’ll bet a cookie—a thousand!—that you have a teacher or two
in your own family. The reason for my confidence: Anyone who helps
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viii Preface
people learn is clearly a teacher, regardless of title. Take another of my
sisters, a clinical social worker who spends her days helping her clients
cope with cancer, divorce, and other such challenges. Or another sister,
a master jigsaw-puzzle maker who, among her other jobs, helps her
colleagues learn the secrets of trick puzzles, which, confusingly, have
more than one solution. Or another brother, owner of a successful auto
body shop in Vermont, who, since the 1970s, has taught dozens of
employees how to straighten frames, remove dents, and mix paint colors
tomatch.Almostcertainlyyouhaveteacherslikethatinyourownfamily.
But wait, there’s more to it.Yes, teaching is my own family’s business,
and quite likely a big part of yours. But teaching is also the business of
ourhumanfamily.Indeed,asyoureadthisbook,Imeantoconvinceyou
that we and everyone we know and don’t know—all living humans—
come from a long line of teachers, going back many thousands of gener-
ations; that our present circumstances and predicaments as a species are
the result of untold numbers of teaching episodes, stretching as far back
as some three million years; and, because teaching is so fundamental to
ourwayoflifeonEarth,thatourfateasaspecieswilldependverymuch
on our ability to continue helping members of upcoming generations
acquire the life-sustaining, civilization-sustaining knowledge, skills, and
habits of mind that have gotten us this far. Put simply, if we humans—
as parents, teachers, colleagues, and friends—don’t dedicate ourselves to
teaching, teaching well, and teaching the right things, we’ll soon be out
of business. Not much, I hope you’ll agree, is more important than to
understand how we’ve come to this. What is teaching? Why is it that
humansaloneuselanguagetoteach?Whathasteachingbroughtus,and
where might it take us in the future? These are the questions I try to
answer in this book.
But before you begin reading, I need to post some warnings. For one
thing,theaccountI’mabouttogiveabouthowwecametobesodepen-
dentonteachingisnotbyanymeansstraightforwardand,Imustadmit,
is likely to be partly wrong. If we really want to understand, at a deep
level,whathumanteachingisandhowitevolvedinourspecies,weneed
tograpplewithalargenumberofsucharcane,controversialtopicsasthe
natureofmonkeyhuntingamongchimpanzees;therelationshipbetween
Preface ix
ourdiet,technology,andcranialcapacity;howhumansmanagedtocolo-
nize Australia some 65,000 years ago; and, most problematic of all, the
mysterious forces, both biological and cultural, that led to the origin of
humanlanguageandtheevolutionofourspecies.Althoughscientistsina
broad range of relevant disciplines—including primatology, archaeology,
anthropology, linguistics, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience—are
beginning to converge on at least partial answers to some of the most
vexing questions about human origins, the story of human evolution,
and the evolution of teaching and learning through language, remains
largelyamatterofspeculation.Ihopeyouwillbecontentwithaplausible
account, knowing that a definitive one is still out of reach.
Finally, while I’ve tried to keep the technical jargon to a minimum, I
askyoutobearwithmeasIexplain,andthenapply,technicaltermssuch
as coevolution, adaptive suite, symbolic reference, disambiguated pointing,
niche construction, and—my favorite—Mitteilungsbedürfnis (German for
“helpful chattiness”). I hope you’ll find, as I have, that these strange,
initially off-putting words can become indispensable symbols for the
important concepts they represent. Before you begin reading, you might
like to have a look through the glossary, which begins on page 337.
Memphis, USA Donald M. Morrison
Acknowledgments
Icouldnotpossiblyhavewrittenthisbookwithoutthehelpandencour-
agement of numerous friends and family members, conversations with
colleagues, and the published work of researchers in a broad range of
disciplines.
Of the latter, I have benefitted particularly from books and papers
by Francisco Aboitiz, Leslie Aiello, Michael Arbib, Derek Bickerton,
Barry Bogin, Adam Boyette, Alison Brooks, Jerome Bruner, Tim Caro,
DorothyCheney,FrederickCoolidge,GergelyCsibra,RichardDawkins,
Terrence Deacon, Dan Dediu, Jared Diamond, Merlin Donald, Robin
Dunbar, Tecumseh Fitch, Peter Gärdenfors, György Gergely, Marc
Hauser, Suzana Herculano-Houzel, Barry Hewlett, Kim Hill, Anders
Högberg, Magdalena Hurtado, François Jacob, Sverker Johansson,
Hillard Kaplan, Chris Knight, Deanna Kuhn, Kevin Laland, Stephen
Levinson, John Locke, Owen Lovejoy, Katharine MacDonald, Brian
MacWhinney, Tetsuro Matsuzawa, Ashley Maynard, Sally McBrearty,
PaulMellars,JohnMitani,ThomasMorgan,JohnOdling-Smee,Stephen
Pinker, David Premack, Robert Quinlan, Robert Seyfarth, Chris Sinha,
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xii Acknowledgments
Dan Sperber, Kim Sterelny, Sid Strauss, Michael Tomasello, Lev
Vygotsky, DavidWatts,ThomasWynn, and GuyWoodruff.
Bill Griffin, Barry Hewlett, Molly Hunter, Brig Klyce, Brian
MacWhinney, Chris Sinha, Gail Sansbury, Sid Straus, and Joe Walters
gave helpful comments and encouragement on earlier versions of the
manuscript. I am particularly indebted to my closest readers: Alan
Collins, Trevor Peard, and, especially, Stan Franklin. In addition to
reading the entire book and correcting numerous errors, Stan continues
tosendmenearlydailylinkstorelevantresearchpapersinabroadrange
of disciplines.
Finally, I am grateful to the dozens of teachers who helped shape the
contentsofmyownbrainfromanearlyage,including,asarepresentative
sample: my mother, who taught me to tie my shoes, twice; my father, to
whomthebookisdedicated,whodiedwhenIwaseleven,butnotbefore
teaching me chess, to be kind to strangers, and how to make a kind of
firecrackerwithanold-fashionedbarrelkey,anail,alengthofstring,and
some wooden match tips; BenjaminTsou, who first kindled my interest
in language and culture; and Catherine Snow, who fanned the flames.