corollary

Listening to:

Chopin, 24 preludes.

Just read:

Terrence Deacon, The symbolic species.

This is a very thorough, and thus rather slow-going, science book about our ability to think symbolically. A consequence of this is that we use language, while no other species does. Symbolic species looks at why and how this might be from a number of different angles.

The book is divided into three parts. The first includes a discussion of what symbolic thought is, and how it can be distinguished from iconic and indexical knowledge which seem to be as much as other species ever seem to use. In this first part, the way in which children learn languages so quickly is also discussed. Noam Chomsky’s theory is that children are imbued with some sort of Universal Grammar that they can easily specialise to the actual grammar that they are exposed to as they grow up. In this way, children make just the right guesses when it comes to language acquisition. Deacon suggests that it’s more reasonable to suppose that languages, which evolve much faster than people do, have evolved to make themselves easier to learn. This was wow moment #1, and the neat thing about this book was that there were quite a few more still to come.

The first part also includes commentary on recent experiments with chimpanzees demonstrating that it is possible to get them to learn symbolic knowledge.

Part 2 was the hardest part of the book to read, because so much of it was about brain anatomy. The pages are overflowing with pre-frontal cortexes (cortices?), cerebellums (cerebella?) and ventricles. Nonetheless it too had its share of wow moments, including a neat discussion of the way in which brain development in primates can be distinguished from development in other mammals, and then how human brain development is different again. This naturally led into a discussion of the Darwinian way in which neurons compete for connections to potential targets when they grow. Because the human pre-frontal cortex is so much bigger (proportionally, and absolutely) than in other apes, it has correspondingly more fingers in all of the brain's various pies. For example, it has control over speech organs (tongue and larynx) in a way not duplicated in other animals.

Part 2 also mentions evidence that basically demolishes the idea that a Universal Grammar might be genetically encoded in our brains. Brain imaging and brain dysfunctions (such as Broca’s aphasia) reveal that language processing of semantically similar tasks (inflecting to past tense, etc) happens in different places in the brain depending on which language is being worked on. In other words, our internal processing depends on the surface syntax of the language, not some deep, universal grammar.

In part 3, there is a great bit of speculative writing about what might have prompted our ancestors to evolve in the direction they did, acquiring symbolic thinking, language and bigger brains. I can’t do the argument justice here, but I will sum it up as “We have language so that we can marry”. Definitely a wow moment. Deacon puts his case against Universal Grammar idea once again, and then finishes by making sensible comments about the “problem” of consciousness.

An excellent, thought-provoking book, though very dense and a slow read.

To read next:

Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit.

Listening to:

Bartok, string quartet no. 4, (Sz 91)

Listening to:

Blue train by John Coltrane. Classic jazz, but I can’t tell you exactly when from because the piss-poor packaging I have for the CD only has a © 1985 on it. I know it’s not that recent, and will put my reputation as music-know-it-all on the line by hazarding that it is from the late ’50s.

Listening to:

Brahms, symphony no. 4 in E minor, op. 98. There’s a moving account in Swafford’s biography of Brahms of him going to see a performance of this work just weeks before he died. When the performance finished, he stood in his box to acknowledge the applause, and with tears running down his face, shocked all and sundry with how obviously ill he was. Like his other three symphonies, this is one of my favourite works; dramatic, full of feeling and lyrical.

Now reading:

Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit. Staying firmly in the nineteenth century. In the edition I’m reading, this is a 700 page epic, and may take me a while to finish.

Listening to:

Liszt, Bagatelle sans tonalité. This is a short little piece. In fact, it’s just finished as I write. It’s part of a CD of performances by Paul Lewis (a pianist) from the BBC Music Magazine. I wouldn’t often buy such a “collection” CD, but I really enjoy this one. It features Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Liszt and Schubert.

A recent movie:

Shadow of the Vampire. I didn't really think that much of this. It was quite atmospheric, but it took itself a bit too seriously. None of the characters were particularly interesting or believable. John Malkovich was pretty good as the obsessive director, but that’s all he was, a one-dimensional obsessive director. I can’t help but think that this film was sold as a premise and never really fleshed out. (“It'll be great: a director makes a vampire film where the vampire character really is a vampire. Oh, and did I say? The director will be really obsessive, so much so that he does evil deals with the vampire just to get his film made.”)

Still reading:

Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit. I’m about two thirds of the way through this. It’s a great epic, and I’m really enjoying it.

Holiday reading:

Matthew Kneale, English passengers. This was a very good Christmas present. It also recently won the Whitbread Book of the Year prize. It tells many stories simultaneously, with a cast of different narrators used to narrate various chapters. This device works well to demonstrate the characters’ differing perspectives on the same situations.

There are two principal stories in the novel. One is of an expedition to Tasmania, led by a daft vicar who is convinced that Tasmania is the site of the Garden of Eden, and the other is the story of Peevay, a young Tasmanian Aboriginal who grows up just as the British settlers there are wiping out all of his people. Needless to say, both stories eventually overlap.

In a ‘cast of thousands’, it is perhaps a little difficult to find only three sympathetic characters, heroes if you like, but the preponderance of brutality, racism and narrow-mindedness is probably an accurate reflection of the times. Moreover, the novel is really very exciting, and kept me enthralled throughout.

Listening to:

Bartok, string quartet no. 3 (Sz 85).

A recent movie:

Best in Show. I saw this on a plane from Hong Kong to Heathrow and thought it very good, even in those rather trying conditions. (Although I have to say, I think I find it a lot easier to get to sleep over the muted roar of jet engines than over the neighbours’ distant pop music when the latter is the only thing disturbing the night’s quiet.) Anyway, what about this film then? Very amusing. It’s what is apparently known as a mockumentary. This means that while taking on the outward form of a documentary, it is actually an extended satire.

This film succeeds because it verges just a little into the unrealistic to make its jokes. The characters seem as if they just might be real people. The film is based around a big dog show, and the principal characters are the various contestants that attend, hoping that their dog will win the grand prize. They are all a little weird and stereotypical, but very funny as they negotiate all sorts of quandaries.

Listening to:

Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges, Back to back. Smooth, elegant and stylish jazz.

Listening to:

Rachmaninoff, piano concerto #2 in C minor, op. 18.

Just read:

Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit.

This is a big novel, telling the story of a young man trying to find his way in life, and learning in the process about the real nature of selfishness. Supported by a typical Dickensian “cast of thousands”, this novel is entertaining and full of memorable characters and incidents. There’s Mr. Pecksniff, the archetypal self-serving hypocrite, Mrs. Gamp, an alcoholic nurse who is simultaneously revolting and hilarious, Tom Pinch, a trusting soul who is much put upon by those around him, and Mark Tapley who seeks the worst situations to be in because there’s “no credit in being jolly” if life is too easy.

The plot twists and turns as well. There’s an extended and very savage portrait of early 19th century America occasioned by the eponymous (ha!) hero’s trip there, an exciting underworld plot where thieves and brutes fall out, and over it all, the question of just how the rich and obstreporous Chuzzlewit patriarch will deal out his wealth. It really does keep you turning the pages.

It’s not perfect. Ruth Pinch, Tom's sister, will make you want to gag, portrayed as a nauseating, fluttery Victorian girlish ideal. Dickens does this sort of character much better in David Copperfield, where David’s first wife is similarly fluttery but at least revealed to be hopeless in dealing with real life. Merry Pecksniff’s eventual marriage, though very important to the plot, also seems pretty unrealistic. Finally, the trip to America seems to be in the novel mainly so that Dickens can lay into America's faults.

Seven and a half out of ten.

Now reading:

Erich Hoyt, The earth-dwellers. Narrative natural history about ants. More when I finish it next week.

Listening to:

Beethoven, sonata no. 3 in A, op 69 for piano and cello.

A recent movie:

Toy Story II. I saw this at home on DVD recently, and thought it was brilliant. It has a rather gag-inducing song in the middle about a girl growing up and abandoning her toys, but it's otherwise extremely amusing and entertaining. On DVD, we also got to see a bunch of interviews with some of the actors doing the voices, which was kinda neat.