What's in a word?
Christine Kenneally describes how linguists Nicholas Evans and Stephen Levinson have challenged Noam Chomsky’s theory of a universal grammar in language (29 May, p 32). To support their argument, they point out that in some languages there are “some aspects that are not mastered until later in life”, citing as an example the triangular kin terms of the Indigenous Australian language, Bininj Gun-wok, which speakers only begin to acquire in their twenties.
Regardless of the merits of the Evans-Levinson approach, surely these terms are simply examples of specialist vocabulary used within a particular community. European scientists also only begin to acquire the specialist vocabulary of their communities in early adulthood. In both cases, each community starts to acquire specialist terms only after developing a solid command of the core, non-specialist language. Indigenous Australians may not have had much use for quarks and leptons, but their cultures traditionally paid far closer attention to complex kin relationships, with the consequent need for specialist terminology of equal or even greater sophistication.
From Bob Ladd, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh
The paper by Evans and Levinson discussed in this article is best understood in the broader context of linguistics research. For a few centuries, research has alternated between focusing on language’s unity and uniqueness, and focusing on its diversity. In fact, we need to do both.
Chomsky’s notion of universal grammar has never really been a coherent set of theoretical claims, but rather an ad hoc name for whatever it is that the human infant brings to the task of language acquisition. Non-Chomskyan linguists around the world document linguistic diversity, and anti-Chomskyan psycholinguists continue to investigate empirically what actually happens during language acquisition.
While Chomskyan theorising has undoubtedly produced a lot of sterile work, non-Chomskyan researchers will eventually want answers to questions underlying the idea of universal grammar: why does it make sense to think of so many diverse behaviours in terms of one unique human attribute 鈥� language 鈥� and how did that attribute arise in our evolutionary history?
Edinburgh, UK
From Thomas Verberne
Kenneally states that English lacks ideophones. Perhaps it used to, but this is no longer the case since the publication of Douglas Adams and John Lloyd’s book The Meaning of Liff. Here are just two of the many examples contained therein: “Luffness (n.) Hearty feeling that comes from walking on the moors with gumboots and cold ears” and “Luffenham (n.) Feeling you get when the pubs aren’t going to open for another 45 minutes and the luffness is beginning to wear a bit thin”.
Rosanna, Victoria, Australia
Quantum dogma
Michael Brooks provided an exciting overview of some of the more counter-intuitive implications of quantum mechanics, but did not delve into perhaps the greatest weirdness of QM: the behaviour of physicists themselves (8 May, p 36).
The closing discussion of the meaning of QM left the unsatisfactory impression that there are only two games in town: the Copenhagen interpretation or some form of many-worlds interpretation. The most bizarre aspect of both interpretations is the dogmatic certainty of the adherents of each school of thought despite the glaring deficiencies pointed out by disciples of the other.
The shortcomings of the Copenhagen interpretation are well known, in particular an undefined distinction between experiments and observers, along with an unexplained mechanism of instantaneous wave collapse.
However, the various many-worlds interpretations have at least as many problems, such as the lack of a physical mechanism for splitting different measurement possibilities into different parallel universes. Strangely, despite the inability to address these gaps, many advocates of many-worlds interpretations feel quite comfortable in asserting that they understand quantum mechanics.
Despite the quoted insistence of Lev Vaidman at Tel Aviv University, Israel, that “if you don’t admit many-worlds, there is no way to have a coherent picture”, a growing number of physicists are reviving interest in a third interpretation: the de Broglie-Bohm pilot-wave theory. This is a perfectly ordinary physical theory in which particles and waves both exist and have definite physical attributes and trajectories, with none of the metaphysical baggage of systems having indeterminate states between measurements, instantaneous wave collapses or splitting universes.
And yet, the most counter-intuitive predictions of conventional QM, such as the Aharonov-Bohm effect 鈥� where an electromagnetic field from which a quantum particle is excluded still affects the particle 鈥� arise completely naturally.
Pilot-wave theory was disregarded early in the history of quantum mechanics, apparently mostly for reasons of personality and politics, but is now receiving renewed attention. Soon it may even be possible to distinguish predictions based on it from those of standard QM.
Wood in space
The Royal Society made an inspired choice, rather than an odd one, in deciding to celebrate its 350th anniversary by sending a piece of wood into space on the shuttle Atlantis (15 May, p 4).
Not only did the piece of wood come from the apple tree that inspired Isaac Newton to develop his theory of gravity, but wood is also useful in space. White oak tiles performed admirably . The tiles developed a layer of insulating char which impeded heat flow into the vehicle while it was entering Earth’s atmosphere. Balsa wood was used as a to protect delicate components such as transmitters when spacecraft were deliberately crash-landed on the moon. Who knows what uses might be found for apple wood?
Life on Io
I was interested in Stephen Battersby’s speculation that there could be subsurface liquid water present on some of the solar system’s moons, and whether or not life forms could exist in these environments (27 March, p 32).
It made me wonder about other possibilities. Take Jupiter’s moon Io. As some of its surface features are made of solid sulphur dioxide, could the moon’s internal heat cause there to be liquid SO2 below the surface? It is liquid between -73 and -10 掳C 鈥� at a pressure of 1 atmosphere, at least 鈥� and is a highly polar solvent, just as water is. It also dissolves organic molecules and some inorganic salts. So could SO2 have the same role as solvent as water does on Earth? Could microorganisms with an alien biochemistry involving liquid SO2 exist beneath the frozen surface of Io?
The eyes have it
Despite the tone of your editorial, evolutionary biologists cannot use the argument of a lack of design in regard to mammal eye structure to support evolution any more than creationists can use the argument to the contrary (8 May, p 3). It is certainly the case that scientists can speciously quote studies to support their claims as readily as creationists are wont to do.
In the accompanying article (p 12) you quote biologist Kenneth Miller as saying that there are “shortcomings of [the retina’s] inside-out wiring”. Yet visual science has already determined that the inverted retina allows for countless physiological processes. Indeed, as your article notes, the evidence suggests that we are helped to see by the vertebrate structure. The blind spot, which is functionally inconsequential, is a small price to pay for the type of perception we enjoy.
When will biologists give up the idea that the vertebrate eye has a flawed layout?
Like falling off a bike
Harry Collins’s article on tacit knowledge includes a prohibitively complex formula for riding a bike (29 May, p 30).
I have a friend who decided to teach himself to ride a bike in his forties after hearing that it was supposed to be impossible to do so after the age of 21. He was successful, but has confided to me that riding a bike seems to require a lot more concentration on his part than for those who had learned as children.
He had developed a formula of his own when learning to ride: simply steer the bike in the direction that keeps the bike underneath you.
Diverse and stable
The warm temperature of the tropics undoubtedly contributes to the high biological diversity seen there, as stated in Emma Young’s article (24 April, p 32). But surely the dominant factor is the length of time the tropics have been stable.
Northern climes have been swept clean by continental glaciers on many occasions, the last of which retreated only11,000 years ago, a blink of the eye in evolutionary terms. Even the areas south of the glaciers’ maximum extent would have experienced a dramatic change in climate.
In the tropics, every new organism that evolves creates new niches for even more organisms, and this diversity is preserved by the stable environment. Run a glacier over the tropics and watch how long it takes to get back to the present level of complexity.
For the record
鈥� The DOI was wrong in our article on shape-shifting islands (5 June, p 10). The correct reference is .
鈥� We did not get to the root of the matter when we talked about failure “to route out disease agents” (5 June, p 6).
鈥� We should have been more explicit: atomic clocks rely on the frequency of the electromagnetic radiation that is absorbed or emitted as electrons make transitions between different energy states, not how frequently these transitions occur (5 June, p 8).
鈥� The fish eggs mentioned by Andy Bebington would not have belonged to guppies, as they give birth to live young (5 June, p 25), although they may have belonged to egg-bearing fish from the same family, Poeciliidae.