[Carl Sagan (1934-96) was a renowned astronomer, author, and science communicator born in Brooklyn, Nn ew York. He received his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from the University of Chicago. As an undergraduate, he obtained a Bachelor of Arts in liberal arts (with honors) in 1954 and then a Bachelor of Science in physics in 1955. The Master of Science degree in physics was granted in 1956, and the Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics in 1960. Sagan held a distinguished position as a professor of astronomy and space science at Cornell, while also directing its Laboratory for Planetary Studies and co-founding the Planetary Society.
[A passionate advocate for
scientific understanding, he captivated audiences worldwide with the
groundbreaking 1980 Public Broadcasting Service series Cosmos, which inspired over 500 million viewers and
led to a bestselling companion book. Among his many influential works, The
Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence earned
him a Pulitzer Prize, while his contributions to planetary science were
recognized with numerous awards, including NASA medals and the Public Welfare
Medal from the National Academy of Sciences.
[Sagan was a popular public
advocate of skeptical scientific inquiry, which questions the veracity of
claims lacking scientific evidence, and the scientific method; he pioneered the
field of exobiology, the study of life beyond the earth's atmosphere, as on other planets, and promoted the search for extraterrestrial intelligence
(SETI). He even wrote a science-fiction
novel, published in 1985, called Contact,
in which a SETI scientist finds evidence of extraterrestrial life and is
chosen to make first contact. It became the basis for the 1997 film of the
same name starring Jodie Foster as the astronomer.
[Sagan played pivotal roles
in several NASA missions and remains celebrated for his ability to engage the
public with the wonders of science, leaving a lasting legacy in both the
scientific community and popular culture.
[Sagan was an early
advocate for the rights and compassionate treatment of animals, emphasizing our
shared kinship with all life and the ethical implications of animal suffering,
according to The Dragons of Eden. He argued that humanity’s refusal to
acknowledge animal sentience is a rationalization for their exploitation.]
“THE ABSTRACTIONS OF
BEASTS”
by Carl Sagan
[Below is Chapter 5 of Sagan’s
The
Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence (Random
House, 1977)]
I demand of you, and of the whole world, that you show me
a generic character . . . by which to distinguish between Man and Ape. I myself
most assuredly know of none. I wish somebody would indicate one to me. But, if
I had called man an ape, or vice versa, I would have fallen under the ban of
all the ecclesiastics. It may be that as a naturalist I ought to have done so.
—Carl Linnaeus [1707-78;
Swedish biologist and physician],
the founder of
taxonomy, 1788
“Beasts abstract not,” announced John Locke [1632-1704;
English philosopher and physician; one of the most influential of the
Enlightenment thinkers; known for An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(1689/90)], expressing mankind’s prevailing opinion throughout recorded
history. Bishop [George] Berkeley [1685-1753; Anglo-Irish philosopher, writer,
and clergyman; author of A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human
Knowledge (1710)] had, however, a sardonic rejoinder: “If the fact that
brutes abstract not be made the distinguishing property of that sort of animal,
I fear a great many of those that pass for men must be reckoned into their
number.” Abstract thought, at least in its more subtle varieties, is not an
invariable accompaniment of everyday life for the average man. Could abstract
thought be a matter not of kind but of degree? Could other animals be capable
of abstract thought but more rarely or less deeply than humans?
We have the impression that other animals are not very
intelligent. But have we examined the possibility of animal intelligence
carefully enough, or, as in Francois Truffaut’s poignant film The Wild Child,
do we simply equate the absence of our style of expression of intelligence with
the absence of intelligence? In discussing communication with the animals, the
French philosopher [Michel de] Montaigne [1533-92; one of the most significant
philosophers of the French Renaissance (ca. 1494-1610)] remarked, “The defect
that hinders communication betwixt them and us, why may it not be on our part
as well as theirs?”*
[The
Wild Child (L'Enfant sauvage; released in
the United Kingdom as The Wild Boy) is a 1970
French historical drama film co-written and directed by, and
starring François Truffaut (1932-84). It’s based on the true events
regarding Victor of Aveyron (French: Victor de l’Aveyron; c. 1788-1828) was a French feral child found
around the age of 9 in 1800; Jean-Pierre Cargol [b. 1957]), a late 18th-century
French child who spent the first eleven or twelve years of his life with little
or no human contact. (Note the discrepancy between the ages of the real Vincent
[ca. 9] and the character in the film [ca. 11-12].) Truffaut’s screenplay, along
with commentary on the making of the film, is published in The Wild Child
by François Truffaut and Jean Gruault, trans. Linda Lewin and Christine Lémery (Washington
Square Press/Pocket Books, 1973).]
([nb: Insertions marked with asterisks are original footnotes from Sagan’s
text.] *Our difficulties in understanding or effectuating communication
with other animals may arise from our reluctance to grasp unfamiliar ways of
dealing with the world. For example, dolphins and whales, who sense their
surrounding with a quite elaborate sonar echo location technique, also
communicate with each other by a rich and elaborate set of clicks, whose
interpretation has so far eluded human attempts to understand it. One very
clever recent suggestion, which is now being investigated, is that dolphin/dolphin
communication involves a re-creation of the sonar reflection characteristics of
the objects being described. In this view a dolphin does not “say” a single
word for shark, but rather transmits a set of clicks corresponding to the audio
reflection spectrum it would obtain on irradiating a shark with sound waves in
the dolphin’s sonar mode. The basic form of dolphin/dolphin communication in
this view would be a sort of aural onomatopoeia, a drawing of audio frequency
pictures—-in this case, caricatures of a shark. We could well imagine the
extension of such a language from concrete to abstract ideas, and by the use of
a kind of audio rebus [an arrangement of pictures, symbols, and/or words representing phrases or words, especially as a word puzzle]—both analogous to the development in Mesopotamia and
Egypt of human written languages. It would also be possible, then, for dolphins
to create extraordinary audio images out of their imaginations rather than
their experience.)
There is, of course, a considerable body of anecdotal
information suggesting chimpanzee intelligence. The first serious study of the
behavior of simians—including their behavior in the wild—was made in Indonesia
by Alfred Russel Wallace [1823-1913; English naturalist, explorer, geographer,
anthropologist, biologist, and illustrator], the co-discoverer of evolution by
natural selection [1858; see “On
the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type” (known
as the “Ternate essay”)]. Wallace concluded that a baby orangutan he studied
behaved “exactly like a human child in similar circumstances.” In fact,
“orangutan” is a Malay phrase meaning not ape but “man of the woods.” [Hans-Lukas]
Teuber [1916-77; German-born neuropsychologist (scientist who investigates the
mechanical, electrical, and biochemical processes of the nervous system) and
professor of psychology] recounted many stories told by his parents, pioneer
German ethologists [scientists who explore animal behavior, especially nonhuman
animals] who founded and operated the first research station devoted to
chimpanzee behavior on Tenerife in the Canary Islands early in the second
decade of this century [i.e., 1910s]. It was here that Wolfgang Kohler [1887-1967;
German psychologist and phenomenologist (psychologist who attempts to explain
experiences from the point of view of the subject via the analysis of their
written or spoken words)] performed his famous studies [1913-17] of Sultan, a
chimpanzee “genius” who was able to connect two rods in order to reach an
otherwise inaccessible banana. On Tenerife, also, two chimpanzees were observed
maltreating a chicken. One would extend some food to the fowl, encouraging it
to approach; whereupon the other would thrust at it with a piece of wire it had
concealed behind its back. The chicken would retreat but soon allow itself to
approach once again and be beaten once again. Here is a fine combination of
behavior sometimes thought to be uniquely human: cooperation, planning a future
course of action, deception and cruelty. It also reveals that chickens have a
very low capacity for avoidance learning.
Until a few years ago, the most extensive attempt to communicate
with chimpanzees went something like this: A newborn chimp was taken into a
household with a newborn baby, and both would be raised together—twin cribs,
twin bassinets, twin high chairs, twin potties, twin diaper pails, twin baby
powder cans. At the end of three years, the young chimp had, of course, far
outstripped the young human in manual dexterity, running, leaping, climbing and
other motor skills. But while the child was happily babbling away, the chimp
could say only, and with enormous difficulty, “Mama,” “Papa,” and “cup.” From
this it was widely concluded that in language, reasoning and other higher
mental functions, chimpanzees were only minimally competent: “Beasts abstract
not.”
But in thinking over these experiments, two psychologists,
Beatrice [1933-95; zoologist and ethologist] and Robert Gardner [1930-2021; comparative
psychologist (psychologist who studies the similarities and differences between
animal and human psychology)], at the University of Nevada realized that the
pharynx and larynx of the chimp are not suited for human speech. Human beings
exhibit a curious multiple use of the mouth for eating, breathing and
communicating. In insects such as crickets, which call to one another by
rubbing their legs, these three functions are performed by completely separate
organ systems. Human spoken language seems to be adventitious. The exploitation
of organ systems with other functions for communication in humans is also
indicative of the comparatively recent evolution of our linguistic abilities.
It might be, the Gardners reasoned, that chimpanzees have substantial language
abilities which could not be expressed because of the limitations of their
anatomy. Was there any symbolic language, they asked, that could employ the
strengths rather than the weaknesses of chimpanzee anatomy?
[In zoology, ‘adventitious’
refers to a structure or organ that isn’t congenital (i.e., present at birth)
and/or appears in an atypical location or by chance. Sagan uses ‘adventitious’ above
to describe human speech in an evolutionary context because the structures of
the mouth were originally adapted for eating and breathing, but over
evolutionary time, they were repurposed for speech. He was referring to the
evolutionary history of the organs involved as ‘adventitious,’ not the function
(human speech), itself. While its origin was a matter of evolutionary chance,
the resulting ability became a fixed, intrinsic, and innate characteristic of humans through natural selection over time.]
The Gardners hit upon a brilliant idea: Teach a chimpanzee
American sign language, known by its acronym Ameslan, and sometimes as
“American deaf and dumb language” (the “dumb” refers, of course, to the
inability to speak and not to any failure of intelligence). It is ideally
suited to the immense manual dexterity of the chimpanzee. It also may have all
the crucial design features of verbal languages.
There is by now a vast library of described and filmed conversations,
employing Ameslan and other gestural languages, with Washoe, Lucy, Lana and
other chimpanzees studied by the Gardners and others. Not only are there
chimpanzees with working vocabularies of 100 to 200 words; they are also able
to distinguish among nontrivially different grammatical patterns and syntaxes.
What is more, they have been remarkably inventive in the construction of new
words and phrases.
On seeing for the first time a duck land quacking in a pond,
Washoe gestured “water bird,” which is the same phrase used in English and
other languages, but which Washoe invented for the occasion. Having never seen
a spherical fruit other than an apple, but knowing the signs for the principal
colors, Lana, upon spying a technician eating an orange, signed “orange apple.
After tasting a watermelon, Lucy described it as “candy drink or “drink fruit,”
which is essentially the same word form as the English “water melon.” But after
she had burned her mouth on her first radish, Lucy forever after described them
as “cry hurt food.” A small doll placed unexpectedly in Washoe’s cup elicited
the response “Baby in my drink.” When Washoe soiled, particularly clothing or
furniture, she was taught the sign “dirty,” which she then extrapolated as a
general term of abuse. A rhesus monkey that evoked her displeasure was
repeatedly signed at: “Dirty monkey, dirty monkey, dirty monkey.” Occasionally
Washoe would say things like “Dirty Jack, gimme drink” [probably one of Washoe’s
human handlers, but no one by this name is recorded in the records or published
accounts of Washoe’s life (1965-2007)]. Lana, in a moment of creative
annoyance, called her trainer “You green shit.” Chimpanzees have invented swear
words. Washoe also seems to have a sort of sense of humor; once, when riding on
her trainer’s shoulders and, perhaps inadvertently, wetting him, she signed:
“Funny, funny.”
Lucy was eventually able to distinguish clearly the meanings
of the phrases “Roger tickle Lucy” [probably primatologist Roger Fouts (b. 1943), who taught Lucy Ameslan] and “Lucy tickle Roger,” both of which activities she
enjoyed with gusto. Likewise, Lana extrapolated from “Tim groom Lana” [probably prime researcher, and prime worker with Lana, Dr. Timothy V. Gill (b. 1947)] to “Lana
groom Tim.” Washoe was observed “reading” a magazine—i.e., slowly turning the
pages, peering intently at the pictures and making, to no one in particular, an
appropriate sign, such as “cat” when viewing a photograph of a tiger, and
“drink” when examining a Vermouth advertisement. Having learned the sign “open”
with a door, Washoe extended the concept to a briefcase. She also attempted to
converse in Ameslan with the laboratory cat, who turned out to be the only
illiterate in the facility. Having acquired this marvelous method of
communication, Washoe may have been surprised that the cat was not also
competent in Ameslan. And when one day Jane [probably Jane W. Temerlin (b. 1934),
wife of psychologist Maurice K. Temerlin (1924-88), with whom she raised Lucy], Lucy’s foster mother, left the laboratory, Lucy gazed after her and
signed: “Cry me. Me cry.
Boyce Rensberger [b. 1942] is a sensitive and
gifted reporter for the New York Times whose parents could neither speak
nor hear, although he is in both respects normal. His first language, however,
was Ameslan. He had been abroad on a European assignment for the Times
for some years. On his return to the United States, one of his first domestic
duties was to look into the Gardners’ experiments with Washoe. After some
little time with the chimpanzee, Rensberger reported, “Suddenly I realized I
was conversing with a member of another species in my native tongue.” The use
of the word tongue is, of course, figurative: it is built deeply into the
structure of the language (a word that also means tongue). In fact, Rensberger
was conversing with a member of another species in his native “hand.” And it is
just this transition from tongue to hand that has permitted humans to regain
the ability—lost, according to [Flavius] Josephus [ca. 37-ca. 100 BCE; Roman-Jewish historian
and military leader; best known for writing The Jewish War (ca. 75
BCE)], since Eden—to communicate with the animals.
In addition to Ameslan, chimpanzees and other nonhuman
primates are being taught a variety of other gestural languages. At the Yerkes
Regional Primate Research Center [now the Emory National Primate Research
Center] in Atlanta, Georgia, they are learning a specific computer language
called (by the humans, not the chimps) “Yerkish.” The computer records all of
its subjects’ conversations, even during the night when no humans are in
attendance; and from its ministrations we have learned that chimpanzees prefer
jazz to rock and movies about chimpanzees to movies about human beings. Lana
had, by January 1976, viewed The Developmental Anatomy of the Chimpanzee
245 times. She would undoubtedly appreciate a larger film library.
[I tried to identify the film Lana
liked so much which Sagan names above, but there’s no record of The
Developmental Anatomy of the Chimpanzee on the Internet (except in
reference to this passage in “The Abstraction of Beasts”). (I haven’t had time
to do old-school research in a library, though I may do so in the near future.)
[The most plausible
explanation I can come up with is that “The Developmental Anatomy of the
Chimpanzee” wasn’t a video for public consumption as a documentary film or television
broadcast, but a research video of an experiment or observation, possibly at
Yerkes, itself, or one of the other labs doing work with chimpanzees and
primates, and therefore the title isn’t listed in any film database. If it’s a lab
video, the “title” may, in fact, just be a descriptive label.]
In the illustration on page 114 [“Lana
at her computer”], Lana is shown requesting, in proper Yerkish, a piece of
banana from the computer. The syntax required to request from the computer
water, juice, chocolate candy, music, movies, an open window and companionship
are also displayed. (The machine provides for many of Lana’s needs, but not
all. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, she forlornly types out: “Please,
machine, tickle Lana.”) More elaborate requests and commentaries, each
requiring a creative use of a set grammatical form, have been developed subsequently.
Lana monitors her sentences on a computer display, and
erases those with grammatical errors. Once, in the midst of Lana’s construction
of an elaborate sentence, her trainer mischievously and repeatedly interposed,
from his separate computer console, a word that made nonsense of Lana’s
sentence. She gazed at her computer display, spied her trainer at his console,
and composed a new sentence: “Please, Tim, leave room.” Just as
Washoe and Lucy can be said to speak, Lana can be said to write.
At an early stage in the development of Washoe’s verbal
abilities, Jacob Bronowski [1908-74; Polish-British mathematician, science
historian, and philosopher] and a colleague [Ursula Bellugi (1931-2022;
American cognitive neuroscientist [scientist who studies the biological
processes that underlie cognition])] wrote a scientific paper [“Washoe the
chimpanzee,” Science (American Association for the Advancement of
Science, Washington, D.C; 169.3943 [24 July 1970])] denying the significance of
Washoe’s use of gestural language because, in the limited data available to
Bronowski, Washoe neither inquired nor negated. But later observations showed
that Washoe and other chimpanzees were perfectly able both to ask questions and
to deny assertions put to them. And it is difficult to see any significant
difference in quality between chimpanzee use of gestural language and the use
of ordinary speech by children in a manner that we unhesitatingly attribute to
intelligence. In reading Bronowski’s paper I cannot help but feel that a little
pinch of human chauvinism has crept in, an echo of Locke’s “Beasts abstract
not.” In 1949, the American anthropologist Leslie White [1900-75] stated
unequivocally: “Human behavior is symbolic behavior; symbolic behavior is human
behavior.” What would White have made of Washoe, Lucy and Lana?
[Indeed, if using gestural language
to communicate is a sign of a lack of intellect, what would White have made of
deaf or mute people, who use Ameslan as their “native tongue,” as Boyce
Rensberger put it?]
--------------------------------------------------
These findings on chimpanzee language and intelligence have
an intriguing bearing on “Rubicon” arguments—the
contention that the total brain mass, or at least the ratio of brain to body
mass, is a useful index of intelligence. Against this point of view it was once
argued that the lower range of the brain masses of microcephalic humans
overlaps the upper range of brain masses of adult chimpanzees and gorillas; and
yet, it was said, microcephalies have some, although severely impaired, use of
language—while the apes have none. But in only relatively few cases are
microcephalies capable of human speech. One of the best behavioral descriptions
of microcephalies was written by a Russian physician, S. [Sergei] Korsakov [1854-1900;
Russian neuropsychiatrist (a medical doctor specializing in disorders affecting a person’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors [psychiatry] based on how the brain functions [neurology]) known for his studies on alcoholic psychosis], who in
1893 observed a female microcephalic named “Masha.” She could understand a very
few questions and commands and could occasionally reminisce on her childhood.
She sometimes chattered away, but there was little coherence to what she
uttered. Korsakov characterized her speech as having “an extreme poverty of
logical associations.” As an example of her poorly adapted and automaton-like
intelligence, Korsakov described her eating habits. When food was present on
the table, Masha [likely Maria Babak] would eat. But if the food was abruptly
removed in the midst of a meal, she would behave as if the meal had ended,
thanking those in charge and piously blessing herself. If the food were
returned, she would eat again. The pattern apparently was subject to indefinite
repetition. My own impression is that Lucy or Washoe would be a far more
interesting dinner companion than Masha, and that the comparison of
microcephalic humans with normal apes is not inconsistent with some sort of
Rubicon of intelligence. Of course, both the quality and the quantity of neural
connections are probably vital for the sorts of intelligence that we can easily
recognize.
[The allusion to “‘Rubicon’
arguments” above is to the Rubicon River in northeastern Italy. In ancient
times, it was the boundary between Rome and its Germanic provinces. The
‘arguments’ referred to here are those assuming a definitive boundary between
different kinds of intelligence.
[Microcephaly is a
neurological disorder in which the person affected has an abnormally small head
due to a failure of brain growth. The causes are several and various; microcephaly
may be congenital or acquired, genetic or caused by disease, injury, or the ingestion
of certain substances, among other potential causes. People with this disorder (microcephalics)
often have an intellectual disability, poor motor function, poor speech,
abnormal facial features, seizures, and dwarfism.
[Identifying “Masha” as Maria Babak, is speculative. ‘Masha’ is the standard nickname for ‘Maria,’ Russian for ‘Mary,’ but her actual identity is unrecorded. Nothing is known of the patient “Masha,” which may not even be he actual name, but a pseudonym selected by Korsakov for his records. (One thing is certain: “Masha” is not Maria Babak, Russian-born and -educated assistant professor of chemistry at the City University of Hong Kong, who’s called Masha.)]
Recent experiments performed by James Dewson [1934-99; speech
pathologist and audiologist (therapist who treats disorders of speech,
language, swallowing, or voice; healthcare professional who diagnoses, treats
and/or manages hearing and balance disorders)] of the Stanford University
School of Medicine and his colleagues give some physiological support to the
idea of language centers in the simian neocortex [a portion of the mammalian brain
involved in higher-order brain functions such as sensory perception, cognition,
generation of motor commands, spatial reasoning, and language]—in particular,
like humans, in the left hemisphere. Monkeys were trained to press a green
light when they heard a hiss and a red light when they heard a tone. Some
seconds after a sound was heard, the red or the green light would appear at
some unpredictable position—different each time on the control panel. The
monkey pressed the appropriate light and, in the case of a correct guess, was
rewarded with a pellet of food. Then the time interval between hearing the
sound and seeing the light was increased up to twenty seconds. In order to be
rewarded, the monkeys now had to remember for twenty seconds which noise they
had heard. Dewson’s team then surgically excised part of the so-called auditory
association cortex from the left hemisphere of the neocortex in the temporal
lobe. When retested, the monkeys had very poor recall of which sound they were
then hearing. After less than a second they could not recall whether it was a
hiss or a tone. The removal of a comparable part of the temporal lobe from the
right hemisphere produced no effect whatever on this task. “It looks,” Dewson
was reported to say, “as if we removed the structure in the monkeys’ brains
that may be analogous to human language centers. Similar studies on rhesus
monkeys, but using visual rather than auditory stimuli, seem to show no
evidence of a difference between the hemispheres of the neocortex.
Because adult chimpanzees are generally thought (at least by
zookeepers) to be too dangerous to retain in a home or home environment, Washoe
and other verbally accomplished chimpanzees have been involuntarily “retired”
soon after reaching puberty. Thus we do not yet have experience with the adult
language abilities of monkeys and apes. One of the most intriguing questions is
whether a verbally accomplished chimpanzee mother will be able to communicate
language to her offspring. It seems very likely that this should be possible
and that a community of chimps initially competent in gestural language could
pass down the language to subsequent generations.
[Sagan’s claim that we lack
experience with adult primate language is no longer entirely true, thanks to
decades of further research. Studies since 1977 have shown that great apes can
develop significant language-like abilities in laboratory settings. Contemporary
research, however, has largely shifted from trying to teach human language to
apes to studying their natural communication systems. This includes observing
gestures, facial expressions, and calls in wild and captive populations to
understand the extent of their natural communicative prowess.
[While Sagan was correct in
1977 that we lacked extensive data on the adult language use of apes, later
research has changed our understanding. The more nuanced conclusion that human
language is fundamentally different from animal communication—a key point of
Sagan's original work—is still strongly supported by scientific findings.]
Where such communication is essential for survival, there is
already some evidence that apes transmit extragenetic or cultural information. Jane
Goodall observed baby chimps in the wild emulating the behavior of their
mothers and learning the reasonably complex task of finding an appropriate twig
and using it to prod into a termite’s nest so as to acquire some of these tasty
delicacies.
[‘Extragenetic’ refers to
traits or information that can still be passed from one generation to the next,
but they do so through non-DNA-based mechanisms. Examples are, among other processes,
the transmission of changes caused by mechanisms like DNA modification, where
chemical tags are placed on genes to turn them on or off; or the transmission
of learned behaviors or preferences from one generation to the next, such as parental
diet influencing an offspring’s food preferences through behavioral cues.]
Differences in group behavior—something that it is very
tempting to call cultural differences—have been reported among chimpanzees,
baboons, macaques and many other primates. For example, one group of monkeys
may know how to eat bird’s eggs, while an adjacent band of precisely the same
species may not. Such primates have a few dozen sounds or cries, which are used
for intra-group communication, with such meanings as “Flee; here is a
predator.” But the sound of the cries differs somewhat from group to group:
there are regional accents.
An even more striking experiment was performed accidentally
by Japanese primatologists attempting to relieve an overpopulation and hunger
problem in a community of macaques [a category of monkey common to Asia, North
Africa, and southern Europe] on an island in south Japan [Koshima Island]. The
anthropologists threw grains of wheat on a sandy beach. Now it is very
difficult to separate wheat grains one by one from sand grains; such an effort
might even expend more energy than eating the collected wheat would provide.
But one brilliant macaque, Imo, perhaps by accident or out of pique, threw
handfuls of the mixture into the water. Wheat floats; sand sinks, a fact that
Imo clearly noted. Through the sifting process she was able to eat well (on a
diet of soggy wheat, to be sure). While older macaques, set in their ways,
ignored her, the younger monkeys appeared to grasp the importance of her
discovery, and imitated it. In the next generation, the practice was more
widespread; today all macaques on the island are competent at water sifting, an
example of a cultural tradition among the monkeys.
Earlier studies on Takasakiyama, a mountain in northeast
Kyushu inhabited by macaques, show a similar pattern in cultural evolution.
Visitors to Takasakiyama threw caramels wrapped in paper to the monkeys—a
common practice in Japanese zoos, but one the Takasakiyama macaques had never
before encountered. In the course of play, some young monkeys discovered how to
unwrap the caramels and eat them. The habit was passed on successively to their
playmates, their mothers, the dominant males (who among the macaques act as
babysitters for the very young) and finally to the subadult males, who were at
the furthest social remove from the monkey children. The process of
acculturation took more than three years. In natural primate communities, the
existing nonverbal communications are so rich that there is little pressure for
the development of a more elaborate gestural language. But if gestural language
were necessary for chimpanzee survival, there can be little doubt that it would
be transmitted culturally down through the generations.
I would expect a significant development and elaboration of
language in only a few generations if all the chimps unable to communicate were
to die or fail to reproduce. Basic English corresponds to about 1,000 words.
Chimpanzees are already accomplished in vocabularies exceeding 10 percent of
that number. Although a few years ago it would have seemed the most implausible
science fiction, it does not appear to me out of the question that, after a few
generations in such a verbal chimpanzee community, there might emerge the
memoirs of the natural history and mental life of a chimpanzee, published in
English or Japanese (with perhaps an “as told to” after the by-line).
[It’s interesting to note that the film Planet of the Apes, the first in that franchise (and a loose adaptation of a 1963 French novel, La Planète des singes by Pierre Boulle [1912-94]), in which Earth astronauts discover a society dominated by articulate apes, was released in 1968, nine years before Sagan’s The Dragons of Eden was published. The simian society, in which humans are intellectually diminished, experimented on, and enslaved, is revealed to be Earth 20 centuries (approximately 80 generations) in the future—though, of course, we don’t actually know how soon after the collapse of the human society the rise of the simians began.]
If chimpanzees have consciousness, if they are capable of
abstractions, do they not have what until now has been described as “human
rights”? How smart does a chimpanzee have to be before killing him constitutes
murder? What further properties must he show before religious missionaries must
consider him worthy of attempts at conversion?
I recently was escorted through a large primate research
laboratory by its director. We approached a long corridor lined, to the
vanishing point as in a perspective drawing, with caged chimpanzees. They were
one, two or three to a cage, and I am sure the accommodations were exemplary as
far as such institutions (or for that matter traditional zoos) go. As we
approached the nearest cage, its two inmates bared their teeth and with
incredible accuracy let fly great sweeping arcs of spittle, fairly drenching the
lightweight suit of the facility’s director. They then uttered a staccato of
short shrieks, which echoed down the corridor to be repeated and amplified by
other caged chimps, who had certainly not seen us, until the corridor fairly
shook with the screeching and banging and rattling of bars. The director
informed me that not only spit is apt to fly in such a situation; and at his
urging we retreated.
I was powerfully reminded of those American motion pictures
of the 1930s and 40s, set in some vast and dehumanized state or federal
penitentiary, in which the prisoners banged their eating utensils against the
bars at the appearance of the tyrannical warden. These chimps are healthy and
well-fed. If they are only animals, if they are beasts which abstract not, then
my comparison is a piece of sentimental foolishness. But chimpanzees can
abstract. Like other mammals, they are capable of strong emotions. They have
certainly committed no crimes. I do not claim to have the answer, but I think
it is certainly worthwhile to raise the question: Why, exactly, all over the
civilized world, in virtually every major city, are apes in prison?
For all we know, occasional viable crosses between humans
and chimpanzees are possible.* The natural experiment must have been tried very
infrequently, at least recently. If such off-spring are ever produced, what
will their legal status be? The cognitive abilities of chimpanzees force us, I
think, to raise searching questions about the boundaries of the community of
beings to which special ethical considerations are due, and can, I hope, help
to extend our ethical perspectives downward through the taxa [plural of ‘taxon,’
a scientific term for any group of organisms that are classified together based
on shared characteristics; the science, technique, or process of making classifications
is ‘taxonomy’] on Earth and upwards to extraterrestrial organisms, if they
exist.
(*Until fairly recently it was
thought that humans had forty-eight chromosomes in an ordinary somatic cell. We
now know that the correct number is forty-six. Chimps apparently really do have
forty-eight chromosomes, and in this case a viable cross of a chimpanzee and a
human would in any event be rare. [The error was determined in 1955 and
published in 1956 by researchers in Sweden. A viable hybrid of a human and a
chimpanzee is widely considered impossible for several reasons rooted in
genetics and evolutionary divergence.])
--------------------------------------------------
It is hard to imagine the emotional significance for
chimpanzees of learning language. Perhaps the closest analogy is the discovery
of language by intelligent human beings with severe sensory organ impairment.
While the depth of understanding, intelligence and sensitivity of Helen Keller
[1880-1968; author, disability rights advocate, political activist, and
lecturer; lost her sight and her hearing when she was 19 months old], who could
neither see, hear nor speak, greatly exceeds that of any chimpanzee, her
account of her discovery of language carries some of the feeling tone that this
remarkable development in primate languages may convey to the chimpanzee,
particularly in a context where language enhances survival or is strongly
reinforced.
One day Miss Keller’s teacher prepared to take her for a walk:
She brought me my hat, and I knew
I was going out into the warm sunshine. This thought, if a wordless sensation
may be called a thought, made me hop and skip with pleasure.
We walked down the path to the
well-house, attracted by the still, fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it
was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the
spout. As the cool stream gushed over my hand she spelled into the other the
word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood my whole attention fixed upon
the motion of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of
something forgotten—a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of
language was revealed to me. I knew then that W-A-T-E-R meant the wonderful
cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my
soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is
true, but barriers that in time could be swept away.
I left the well-house eager to
learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we
returned into the house, every object which I touched seemed to quiver with
life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had
come to me.
[Helen
Keller, The Story of My Life (1903)]
Perhaps the most striking aspect of these three exquisite
paragraphs is Helen Keller’s own sense that her brain had a latent capability
for language, needing only to be introduced to it. This essentially Platonic
idea is also, as we have seen, consistent with what is known, from brain
lesions, of the physiology of the neocortex; and also with the theoretical
conclusions drawn by Noam Chomsky [b. 1928; professor and public intellectual
known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism] of
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from comparative linguistics and
laboratory experiments on learning. In recent years it has become clear that
the brains of nonhuman primates are similarly prepared, although probably not
quite to the same degree, for the introduction of language.
The long-term significance of teaching language to the other
primates is difficult to overestimate. There is an arresting passage in Charles
Darwin’s [1809-82; English naturalist, geologist, and biologist; known for his
contributions to evolutionary biology] Descent of Man [1871]: “The
difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is,
certainly is one of degree and not of kind. . . . If it could be proved that
certain high mental powers, such as the formation of general concepts,
self-consciousness, et cetera, were absolutely peculiar to man, which seems
extremely doubtful, it is not improbable that these qualities are merely the
incidental results of other highly-advanced intellectual faculties; and these
again mainly the results of the continued use of a perfect language.”
[The term ‘perfect language’ generally refers to a language that is precise, unambiguous, and perfectly capable of representing all knowledge or reality. This ideal has been explored by philosophers, linguists, and logicians for centuries, with different fields defining ‘perfect’ in various ways.
[For philosophers, the pursuit of a perfect or ‘ideal’ language, which would eliminate the vagueness, multiple meanings, and imprecise structure found in natural languages, dates back to the 17th century. From a linguistic standpoint, however, the concept of a perfect language is generally regarded as a myth because natural human languages have not developed with absolute perfection.]
This same opinion on the remarkable powers of language and
human intercommunication can be found in quite a different place, the Genesis
account of the Tower of Babel. God, in a strangely defensive attitude for an
omnipotent being, is worried that men intend to build a tower that will reach
to heaven. (His attitude is similar to the concern he expresses after Adam eats
the apple.) To prevent Mankind from reaching heaven, at least metaphorically,
God does not destroy the tower, as, for example, Sodom is destroyed. Instead,
he says, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this
is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do
will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and there confuse their
language, that they may not understand one another’s speech” (Genesis 11:6-7).
The continued use of a “perfect” language . . . What sort of
culture, what kind of oral tradition would chimpanzees establish after a few
hundred or a few thousand years of communal use of a complex gestural language?
And if there were such an isolated continuous chimpanzee community, how would
they begin to view the origin of language? Would the Gardners and the workers
at the Yerkes Primate Center be remembered dimly as legendary folk heroes or
gods of another species? Would there be myths, like those of Prometheus, Thoth,
or Oannes, about divine beings who had given the gift of language to the apes?
In fact, the instruction of chimpanzees in gestural language distinctly has
some of the same emotion tone and religious sense of the (truly fictional)
episode in the movie and novel 2001: A Space Odyssey [1968] in which a
representative of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization somehow instructs
our hominid ancestors.
[In Greek mythology,
Prometheus was a Titan, one of the deities that preceded Zeus and the
Olympians. In some versions of his myth, Prometheus is credited with creating
mankind from clay. He then defied the Olympian gods by taking fire from them
and giving it to his creation in the form of technology, knowledge, and
civilization. He is also generally seen as the author of the human arts and
sciences.
[Thoth is an ancient Egyptian
god credited with inventing hieroglyphic writing, creating languages, and
serving as the scribe for the gods. His mastery of language was tied to his
other roles as the god of wisdom, knowledge, and magic.
[Oannes is an ancient
Mesopotamian (specifically Sumerian and Babylonian) mythological culture hero. He
was one of the Apkallu, or mythical sages; half-man, half-fish, he emerged from
the Persian Gulf to teach humanity the knowledge needed for civilization. Among
other things, Oannes taught humans written language, the sciences, and the
arts.]
Perhaps the most striking aspect of this entire subject is
that there are nonhuman primates so close to the edge of language, so willing
to learn, so entirely competent in its use and inventive in its application
once the language is taught. But this raises a curious question: Why are
they all on the edge? Why are there no nonhuman primates with an existing
complex gestural language? One possible answer, it seems to me, is that humans
have systematically exterminated those other primates who displayed signs of
intelligence. (This may have been particularly true of the nonhuman primates
who lived in the savannahs; the forests must have offered some protection to
chimpanzees and gorillas from the depredations of man.) We may have been the
agent of natural selection in suppressing the intellectual competition. I think
we may have pushed back the frontiers of intelligence and language ability
among the nonhuman primates until their intelligence became just indiscernible.
In teaching gestural language to the chimpanzees, we are beginning a belated attempt
to make amends.
[I was first introduced to
this essay, as I noted in my afterword to my post earlier this week on Jane Goodall,
when I taught expository writing to college undergraduates. Our reading assignments came from The Norton Reader (1984 edition). At the time, I didn’t realize that Norton
truncated the chapter of Sagan’s book; I later discovered that the final nine
paragraphs, including the Helen Keller passage (but not counting my insertions),
were deleted. I haven’t repeated that
choice on Rick On Theater.
[Readers will note that Sagan
published Dragons of Eden in
1977. Though the animal rights movement can trace its origins back to Victorian England, the contemporary movement started
in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s.
In the United States, there were demonstrations and protests against the
inhumane treatment of animals on the 1960s and ’70s, but as a movement, animal
rights were considered a fringe cause.
In the ’80s and ’90s, however, mainstream academics and professionals joined
the cause.
[PETA (People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals) was formed in 1980, three years after Sagan’s book
came out, though its tactics were considered by many to be extreme. Some of what Sagan proposes in “The Abstraction
of Beasts” must have seemed almost outrageous as well when the book first came
out. It doesn’t seem nearly so radical
now.]
