Dinesh's photos with the keyword: Steven Pinker

And phonesthesia gives rise to a lovely puzzle for comparative linguistics: why languages seldom share a root for their word for butterfly. In Western Europe for example, we fine ‘schmetterling’ in German, ‘vlinder’ in Dutch, ‘somerfugl; in Danish ‘papillion’ in French, ‘mariposa’ in Spanish, ‘farfalla’ in Italian, and ‘borboleta’ in Portuguese. The puzzle is that with just about every other kind of word, these languages share roots promiscuously. The words for cat, for example are ‘Katze,’ ‘Kat,’ ‘kat,’ ‘chat,’ ‘gato,’ ‘gatto,’ and ‘gato’. A clue may be found in the fact that while the exact word for butterfly in may languages is proprietary, it often has a reduplicated sound, most often b, p, l, or f, as in Hebrew ‘parpar,’ Italian ‘farfalla,’ and Papuan fefe-fefe’. It’s as if the words are supposed to act out the fluttering of the wings! Not all the names are phonesthetic; we also find allusions to the butterfly’s properties, real or mythical. In English it’s a fly with the color of butter, or that consumes butter, or whose droppings look like butter (the folk etymology that identified butterfly as a spoonerism for ‘flutter-by’ is appealing but untrue. Why the reluctance to share these metaphors and allusions? No one knows, but I am fond of the speculation by the linguist Haj Ross: ‘The concept/image of butterfly is uniquely powerful one in the group minds of the world’s cultures, with its somewhat unpromising start as a caterpillar followed by its dazzling finish of visual symmetry, coupled with the motional unforgettability of the butterfly’s flipzagging path through our consciousness. Butterflies are such perfect symbols of transformation that almost no culture is content to accept another’s poetry for this mythic creature. Each language finds its own verbal beauty to celebrate the stunning salience of the butterfly’s being.” ~ Page 303 (“The Stuff of Thought” ~ Steven Pinker)

The pursuit of happiness is an inalienable right, says the Declaration of Independence in its list of self-evident truths. The greatest happiness of the greatest number wrote Jeremy Bentham, is the foundation of morality. To say that everyone wants to be happy sounds trite, almost circular, but it raises a profound question about our makeup. What is this thing that people strive for? At first happiness might seem like just desserts for biological fitness (more accurately, the states that would have led to fitness in the environment in which we evolved). We are happier when we are healthy, well-fed, comfortable, safe, prosperous, knowledgeable, respected, non-celibate, and loved. Compared to their opposites, these objects of striving are conducive to reproduction. The function of happiness would be to mobilize the mind to seek the keys to Darwinian fitness. When we are unhappy, we work for the things that make us happy, when we are happy, we keep the status quo. ............. How do we know what can reasonably be attained? A good source of information is that other people have attained. If they can get it, perhaps so can you. Through the ages, observers of the human condition have pointed out the tragedy; People are happy when they feel better off than their neighbors, unhappy when they feel worse off. But, O! how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes! - William Shakespeare (As You Like it,) Happiness, n. An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of others. Ambrose Bierce It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail. - Gore Vidal When does A hunchback rejoice? When he sees one with a larger hump _ Yiddish saying

Why aren’t babies born talking? We know that part of the answer that babies have to listen to themselves to learn how to work their articulators, and have to listen to their elders to learn communal phonemes, words, and phase orders. …. Before birth, virtually all the neurons are formed, and they migrate into their proper locations in the brain. But head size, brain weight, and thickness of the cerebral cortex (gray matter) where the synapses (junctions) subserving mental computation are found, continue to increase rapidly in the year after birth. Long distance connections (white matter) are not complete until nine months, and they continue to grow their speed-inducing myelin insulation throughout childhood. Synapses continue to develop, peaking in number between nine months and two years (depending on the brain region), at which point the child has fifty percent more synapses than the adult! Metabolic activity in the brain reaches adult levels by nine to ten months, and soon exceeds it, peaking around the age of four. The brain is sculpted not only by adding neural material but by chipping it away. Massive numbers of neurons die in utero, and the dying continues during the first two years before leveling off at age seven. Synapses wither from the age of two through the rest of childhood and into adolescence, when the brain’s metabolic rate falls back to adult levels. Language development, the, could be on a maturational timetable, like teeth. Perhaps linguistic accomplishments like babbling, first words, and grammar require minimum levels of brain size, long-distance connections, and extra synapses, particularly in the language centers of the brain. So language seems to develop about as quickly as the growing brain can handle it. what’s the rush. Why is language installed so quickly, while the rest of the child’s mental development seems to proceed at a more leisurely pace? In a book on evolutionary theory often considered to be one of the most important since Darwin’s the biologist George Willims speculates: “We might imagine that Hans and Fritz Faustkell are told on Monday, “Don’t go near the water,” and that both go wading and are spanked for it. on Tuesday they are told, “Don’t play near the fire.” And again they disobey and are spanked. On Wednesday they are told “Don’t tease the saber-tooth.” This time Hans understands the message, and he bears firmly in mind the consequences of disobedience. He prudently avoids the saber-tooth and escapes the spanking. Poor Fritz escapes spanking, too, but for a very different reason.” Even today, accidental death is an important cause of mortality in early life, and parents who consistently spare the rod in other matters may be moved to violence when a child plays with electric wires or chases a ball into the street. Many of the accidental deaths of small children would probably have been avoided if the victims had understood and remembered verbal instructions and had been capable of effectively substituting verbal symbols for real experience. This might well have been true also under primitive conditions.” Perhaps it is no coincidence that the vocabulary spurt and beginnings of grammer follow closely on the heels of the baby, quite literally – the ability to walk unaccompanied appears around fifteen months. ~ Page289/290

ambumoustrous ~ Adj. Capable of operating the mouse with either hand.