Wolfe Misses in 2016 Language Rumination

From Wikimedia Commons, White House Photo by Susan Sterner.March 22 2004. American writer Tom Wolfe. I'm in general, a fan.

Tom Wolfe is an entertaining spinner of stories, although I tire, sometimes, of his typographic trickery and long, rambling sentences. Nonetheless, in a series of nonfiction works and novels stretching back to the 1960s, he’s an enchanting, worthwhile American writer, a unique, acerbic jester of words.

Late last December, the weather was not all that good and we were looking for something indoors to do with a grandson, so we took him to the main Cedar Rapid Library. I am a slow reader in a house full of books, so I have been a very infrequent library visitor—my card was so old I had to get a new one in order to use it.

But there I saw Wolfe’s 2016 book, “The Kingdom of Speech,” and obtained a new library card so that I could check it out. I think I've read most of his books and liked most of them, so why not?

And I was disappointed. Wolfe attempts to discredit the Theory of Evolution, on his way to arguing that human language is not connected to our biological history, but instead a unique human creation, a tool.

In a sense, he’s right when he culminates by declaring language to be an artifact, like a Buick, and thus not something that comes from our evolution. He’s correct, as far as I can tell, in pointing out that language is artificial, constructed, invented, not something we’re born with.

As for Evolution, Wolfe seem to distrust that as a tale no less fanciful than any other creation story. He's deeply wrong about that. And the fact that language is artificial doesn’t meant that it’s not connected to our evolution as a species.

His attack on Evolution let me disenchanted. It seemed to be that the one who is mistaken here isn't Darwin, but Wolfe.

“There are five standard tests for a scientific hypothesis,” Wofle writes. They are, he states:

1. Has anyone else observed and recorded the phenomenon?
2. Could other scientists replicate it?
3. Could any come up with facts that contradict the theory?
4. Can scientists make predictions based on it?
5. Does it illuminate hitherto unknown or baffling areas?

“In the case of Evolution … well … no … no … no … no … and no,” Wolfe declared.

And that was where I stumble. I’m not a scientist, so my understanding here is based on casual reading, yet in four of five points, I think he’s wrong.

Has anyone observed and recorded the phenomenon? Well, sure. There’s an extensive fossil record of many species, including ours, changing over time. Our fossil record isn’t complete—converting bone to rock is rare—but in the two centuries that Evolution has been an idea, the ancient bones seem to bear it out. And we even see it occurring in real time—the quick shifts in the virus that caused our recent pandemic, for instance. I think part of the issue here is that, even when it’s acting quickly, Evolution in complex species occurs at a time scale a human mind struggles to grasp. We as a species haven’t reached a million years yet, but even hundreds of thousands of years of modern humans walking the Earth is far beyond a single lifetime. We struggle to fully understand that time frame. And yet our modern knowledge of genetics confirms it—we not only know Evolution is real, we can track it; for example, we know the percent of the Neanderthal genome that is left in modern humans. So his first “no” is fully bogus. Lots of scientists have seen and continue to see the phenomenon.

Can other scientists replicate it? That’s a question asked when a testable hypothesis is being experimentally proved or disproved. Evolution is more of a framework incorporating lots of disparate evidence—but yes, serious biologists and paleontologists have all “replicated” this large hypothesis by replicating many of the small pieces that add up to the big idea. Wolfe’s "no" is a bit of sleight of hand, Evolution is not a hypothesis testable by a single experiment, but despite that, it’s been “replicated” repeatedly and reliably.

Can anyone come up with facts to discredit the theory? Although Wofle recounts several creation myths and seems to put them on equal footing with Evolution, he answers this one “no,” which seems like a win for Evolution, the one positive he concedes to the idea he’s attacking. You can come up with lots of alternative stories of how the world came to be, but none other that has the history of scientific observations that Evolution has.

Can scientists make predictions based on it? Sure. We get a new flu shot every year in response to a virus that is constantly evolving. The Theory of Evolution alone doesn’t help us concoct next year’s shot, but I think pretty much 100 percent of the scientists who are working on the 2024 flu shot are making projections based on genetic shift, on natural selection—Darwin’s machinery at work. It’s not exactly a “yes,” because, again, the phenomenon is not one observed in short-term human terms, but Evolution very much shapes what biologists conjecture about what comes next. The word “prediction” is a bit tricky here, since Evolution is messy and random, but sure, we expect constant change due to Natural Selection, and we correctly act on that understanding.

The final “no” is, to me, one of the weirdest. It seems to be that this big theory clearly illuminates a mystery. Evolution didn’t spring into Charles Darwin’s (or Alfred Wallace’s) brains from nothing, but were part of the burgeoning 19th century exploration of the world. The idea of inherited traits was barely being understood. The variety of plants and animals found that matched their sites yet were similar to related species nearby—the increasing catalog of life was providing hints. The question was, where did life come from? Darwin’s conception and understanding of Evolution is not the same as ours—scientists today understand DNA and genes and fossils much more than they did in his day—but he fundamentally was right. We can see at a molecular level that species did come from other species, we can trace how related different plants and animals are to each other based on their molecular fingerprints, we know so much more today about an origin story that was being explored but not understood in Darwin’s time. So, yes, Evolution illuminates. Why does Wolfe say "no" here? I do not understand.

I don’t mind Wolfe’s mocking of British social classes, nor even his attacks on modern academics. And I’ll concede that, like a Buick, language is something we create. But I think he’s missing an important point. Our capacity to create language (or Buicks) is not coincidental to understanding us.

A Buick is possible because we have among the largest and most complex brains in our mammal clan, combined with deft, opposable thumbs. Over the ages, we have used those evolving features of our biology to create and change the world. And Wolfe is not only correct that language is a created artifact, he’s on target that we use language as our most valuable human attribute, as the main artifact that gives us the world dominating (and world threatening) position we occupy today.

And yet, remember that the Buick has evolved. The Buick of 2024 isn’t the one of 1954. Before Buicks, there were wagons and chariots and the wheel. The Buick is an artifact, and thus did not biologically evolve, but artifacts are selected by us and I think there is a parallel in the changes in the stuff we make and in the critters we observe in that, over time, change seems unavoidable. Change is driven by selection, natural or human, and is a constantly seen reality.

Language? We made it. But when? Were the first speakers humans of our species or somewhere along that hominid path that diverged from the apes millions of years ago? Did Neanderthals sing and tell stories and chant prayers at funerals? Probably. Homo Erectus? Probably not. But when was the change? We don't know, but that doesn't mean our language ability didn't evolve.

Our faces, our jaws, our lips, our vocal chords—they give us an incredible ability to mimic a wide range of sounds, to hum and whistle and sing. And speak. One reason we’re unique is not just that we have a big brain that helps us to to craft the artifacts of Buicks and of language, we also have the vocal apparatus for vowels and constants and clicks and whistles. Chimpanzees, our closest relatives (see genetics, and no, we didn’t descend from them, their body rebuild since the time of our common ancestor has been more radical than ours—it’s accurate to say, from a chimp’s point of view, that they descended from humans) have an impressive variety of vocalizations.

They, too, can plan and coordinate actions. They make wars in groups. They even craft tools and use primitive spears for hunting (so much for Wolfe’s false assertion that only humans make artifacts). But their lack of language stunts their capacity to build a Buick—partly because their throats and sinus cavities and vocal chords can’t do the kind of subtle sound trickery as Home Sapiens can. To speak, we gave up, over eons, a large jaw and impressive canines—but we gained our ability to make and share words and shout and whisper in words our more complicated plans, to record our knowledge, to have a weird and marvelous bipedal body built, by natural selection to create our special brands of sound.

Our bodies’ aren’t revolutionary, they are similar to our cousins who went extinct, and to our ancestors. It is worth asking: When did we start talking? And were we even Homo Sapiens yet when our chimp-like wide variety of vocalizations began to grow so complex, thanks to our changing mouths and heads, that they became something we would call a language?

It’s a question hard for us answer. Spoken words leave no fossils. So linguists struggle and don't have an answer, now. But, (Taylor Swift, via Anne Reburn) what is Wolfe being when he dismisses the whole field of linguistics? "You, with your words like knives ..."

We known that we write and other species don’t, but it took us most of our existence on this planet before we mastered that trick of converting what we say into what we can read--before our created languages “evolved” to the point where setting them down in stone and clay and later, paper, occurred to us. Was it just a cultural shift or maybe a subtle evolution in our brains and hands? Both, maybe?

I’m not in Tom Wolfe’s league as a wordsmith. But I am a reader and a writer. And I can see that language is so embedded in the nature of us that it seems impossible it’s not embedded in our biology—a product of Natural Selection. Just as a Buick is (indirectly, because, again, we are evolved so that we can make Buicks, which no other species can. Yes, raccoons have opposable thumbs, but they don’t have poetry or owner’s manuals, and that makes all the difference).

“The Kingdom of Speech” was an interesting book—almost any Tom Wolfe book is interesting. To me, however, it is also deeply misleading. In the end, it is not fragile, unhealthy, selfish, and jealous Darwin who seems discredited, but a modern human master of language who seems to think that the notion we came from the same muck as worms and birds and lizards is icky.

It is not. “We were from the sewer, but so was everyone else” (lyric from “Your Light” by The Big Moon). Evolution is just how and who we are, thumbs, limbs, brains, verbs, nouns, verb tenses—all of us, arising slowly over thousands and millions and billions of years of change—with our evolving languages that do give us mastery of the planet, but aren’t separate from the evolutionary history that makes us, well, human. We may feel that way sometimes (again, Big Moon) but our words are not foreign objects in our mouths--they belong there, they are naturally there.

So OK, Tom. You’re right. There seems to be no “natural” language, at least not as far as we know now The history of language has a lot yet to be discovered and who knows what me might still find despite years of dead ends?.

But you’re deeply wrong, Tom, too. We have the language organ, or multiple language organs, and we ought not be offended by the fact that we evolved that way.

The Mouse that Roared Belongs to Us All

 

Well, it finally happened.

Teaching about copyright law in communication classes is always interesting. The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to protect intellectual property, with an unspecified reasonable time limit, which has led, over the years, to a tangle of patent and trademark and copyright law.

But throughout much of the late 20th century into the first two decades of the 21st, there was a reliable rule—the length of copyright would be extended whenever the mouse was endangered. When Steamboat Willy approached public domain, the residents of what Nicki Haley calls "the most privileged nursing home in the country" would shake themselves into action. (Nikki and I don’t agree on much, but she has a point--the quote was specifically about the Senate and it applies well there).

Nikki Haley campaigns in 2024 in Council Bluffs Iowa. Image from Wikimedia Commons, by Matt Johnson of Omaha, Nebraska, I am assuming an actual human photographer.

Anyway, I don’t think the failure to extend copyrights is a sign of our historically do-nothing, rabble-rousing bunch of political extremists in the current Congress, even if Disney is a favorite punching bag of the far right these days. It's just that more that almost 100 years on, Disney doesn’t need Steamboat anymore.

Of course, the other creative works that feature later interactions of Mickey Mouse are still very much protected. “What is going into the public domain is this particular appearance in this particular film,” said Kembrew McLeod, a communications professor at the University of Iowa, quoted in a new story by NPR.

And Mickey Mouse is still protected by a Trademark—Trademarks don’t expire, they last as long as a company can protect the name of its good or service (it’s a fuzzy area of law, eventually a term can enter public domain if courts rule people treat it as a common term—thus “aspirin” is no longer “Aspirin” because it has entered the common tongue).

This whole area of law can sometime be very Mikey Mouse. There, Disney, come after me—a common language use of a Trademark term, but not one, I hope, that the powers that be in corporate America will care about.

Anyway, Steamboat Willy, the first cartoon of Mickey, is free for you to embellish and use as you wish. And I have to update my copyright lectures. Again. And copyright is very tangled--just listen to Tessa Violet, a singer-songwriter, in a video seven years ago trying to explain music copyright:

Copyright is an interesting area of media law that is often shaped and reshaped by technology. The original idea is that a creator should benefit from their creation because that fosters more creativity—gives painters and writers and musicians an economic incentive to toil away in the hopes that something will become popular and enrich them.

And it sometimes happens, although the history of intellectual property is rife with examples of how corporations get inexperienced creators to sign away the rights to their creations.

The computer age has long complicated a creator’s power to control their creations, too. As a professor of mine once noted (it was in graduate school over 30 years ago, and sorry, I don’t have the notes to accurately track down who said it), to a computer, information is a “liquid.” It flows easily from place to place, it tends to be hard to contains, it seeps out a leaks everywhere.

In ye olden days, a creator crafted an artifact. A musician, if she were lucky, had a “record.” The manuscript of the Great American Novel was on typed pages (we’re in the modern era, in the 19th century, hand-written pages) stored in files. A photograph was a “print” from a “negative,” and not that easy to filch or move from place to place. Films were recorded on celluloid.

The computer dispenses with the artifact. My words here are digital blips, easy to copy perfectly, easy to download and move from file to file (don’t you dare!).

Add to that the Steamboat Willy complexity of corporate America lobbying over time to extend the limits of their copyrights, and you have an active, difficult and contentious area of law.

But the heart of the idea is still important. Creators are important. Some person thought of this and crafted it, even if “it,” these days, are a series of bytes rather than an analog thing.

Until, of course, now.

It would have rocked the copyright world a few years ago if Steamboat Willy churned into public domain, but it feels like more of an asterisk, an afterthought, a tiny curiosity now.

The real energy is: Who owns AI creations? And what can artificial intelligence use as it reprocesses huge amounts of data into new computer files? These days, creators don’t need to get their hands dirty, and they may not have hands at all. For example, late last year, a pretty bird appeared on social media to herald the holiday season, but as Snopes points out, it's not a bird at all, just the AI idea of a bird:

"Ho ho ho, humans! The joke's on you. This chicken-headed monster is not a cardinal at all. There's no bird, no tree, no limb, no snow. It's all in my mind. Insincerely, AI." (image from Snopes article debunking the image).

The New York Times has acted to protect its works, suing Microsoft and other corporations over their AI systems synthesizing Times stories. The Times is a slightly ironic champion of human creativity, having had over the years some interesting legal entanglements over how it has treated freelance creators, but I applaud old media here.

You go, grey lady. Stand up for us who stand up as me move through our lives, those of us hairless apes with opposable thumbs who try to make new stuff.

We don’t have AI’s ability to crunch mountains of data. But AI doesn’t have our thoughts, emotions, feelings or need to be protected so that it’s creativity can be rewarded.

An ongoing, long-term theme (especially in the music realm) has been the struggle of creators to benefit from what they have created. That benefit, legitimately, has always had to be balanced against the larger needs of the community, which is why copyright works do lapse into the public domain eventually.

Hundreds of years after Shakespeare’s death, it’s OK for Taylor Swift to sing about Romeo and Juliet, even if she gets the story completely wrong, because copyright does not and should not apply to those long-dead and never alive fictional lovers.

On the other hand, we’re already being flooded with words and images that don’t represent human creativity, but rather a synthesized, synthetic reality based on the massive database of creativity.

It creates numerous challenges. I do think AI is here to stay and that it has numerous benefits for us, but I also think it needs careful development and guardrails to protect the humans who originally sent that mouse down the river in a weird 1920s cartoon.

It’s not time for us to give up on our own creativity in frustration over AI’s mechanical perfection.

Or, so I hope. Steamboat Willy, you seem rather quaint now. But my hope is that what we humans create now doesn’t too quickly seem the same. The old order of copyright law has passed down the river, but the ideal of a creator benefiting form creation shouldn’t sail off with it.