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Re: Early Hominids Language
Jacques Guy (jbm@newsserver.trl.oz.au)
13 May 1995 17:18:29 +1000
rhetth@ksu.ksu.edu (Rhett Andrew Hartman) writes:
>When people are restricted from talking, (i.e.--mutes, the stock market,
>etc.), do they not regress to sign-language?
"Regress"? We do not know that they regress. They substitute, period.
They might also use pen and paper. So they "regress" to writing, perhaps?
Yes, writing must have preceded speech, then. I must have this my
momentous discovery published in Discover...
>Everything is speculation,
>till proven. It is *speculation* that the sun will rise tomorrow, but I
>believe in it.
A most unfortunate analogy. I, for one, have observe the sun rise tomorrow
roughly 180,000 times in a row. According to Laplace's theorem, the
probability of the sun rising tomorrow again is 180,000 in 180,001. Not
bad. If I hypothesize that the sun has also risen tomorrow for my
ancestors, right back to the slime in the primeval pool, that makes it...
not a bad bet, eh?
As for communicating by smell, many animals do so.
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