The Kingdom of Speech

Posted on 19 February 2017 by Tom Wolfe

The maestro storyteller and reporter provocatively argues that what we think we know about speech and human evolution is wrong.Tom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, takes us on an eye opening journey that is sure to arouse widespread debate The Kingdom of Speech is a captivating, paradigm shifting argument that speech not evolution is responsible for humanity s complex societies and achievements.From Alfred Russel Wallace, the Englishman who beat Darwin to the theory of natural selection but later renounced it, and through the controversial work of modern day anthropologist Daniel Everett, who defies the current wisdom that language is hard wired in humans, Wolfe examines the solemn, long faced, laugh out loud zig zags of Darwinism, old and Neo, and finds it irrelevant here in the Kingdom of Speech. New Read [ The Kingdom of Speech ] by [ Tom Wolfe ] – kino-fada.fr Not having read any Tom Wolfe before, I was riveted by the prose style of this book, with its ellipses, colloquial asides, and multiple exclamation marks I am sure it is possible to write a great book with this technique and perhaps Tom Wolfe has already done it, but this one is unfortunately a complete mess.I say unfortunately because as a matter of...If you ever wanted to read a book about a scientific field or two in Wolfe s trademark flamboyant prose that was utterly innocent of any understanding of science, here s your chance This vapid piece of preening ignorance will stand as a pointless landmark or better yet, sink like a witless stone to sturm und drang self regard As an erstwhile colleague of mine put it in his review of the book in the Washington Post here , the book is unsullied by research You don t have to be an evolutio If you ever wanted to read a book about a scientific field or two in Wolfe s trademark flamboyant prose that was utterly innocent of any understanding of science, here s your chance This vapid piece of preening ignorance will stand as a pointless landmark or better yet, sink like a witless stone to sturm und drang self regard As an erstwhile colleague of mine put it in his review of the book in the Washington Post here , the book is unsullied by research You don t have to be an evolutionary biologist or a linguist to find this book a piece of mean spirited ad hominem drivel The book is filled with incorrect assertions to take just one, formal Chomskyan linguists don t just sit around in air conditioned rooms making theories many have spent their careers doing fieldwork and documenting the intricac...A great entertaining read Wolfe gets off some magnificent and irreverent lines, aimed at the neo Darwinian hand wavers Moreover, he is largely invulnerable to any counter attack from them because the one place he does his own hand waving is a place where none of them ...I normally enjoy Tom Wolfe, but this takedown of modern linguistics is simply a rant His new journalism style was completely unsuited to persuading me of the validity of some of his rather specious scientific arguments De...Tom Wolfe one day stumbled across a 2014 essay by eight heavyweight Evolutionists, the famed linguist Noam Chomsky being notability among them, and was startled by their conclusion that, after 150 years of scientific research and academic speculation, what we know about speech and language remains as mysterious as ever A poverty of evidence, they wrote, leaves us with no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved Wolfe looked askance at this concl Tom Wolfe one day stumbled across a 2014 essay by eight heavyweight Evolutionists, the famed linguist Noam Chomsky being notability among them, and was startled by their c...Maybe Tom Wolfe should be commended for diving headfirst into a complicated, even esoteric, debate raging inside linguistics and exposing it to a far larger audience than ever before But praise for this book should really end there As someone with some formal training in linguistics andextensive exploration of the field as a hobby, I read Wolfe s prose in the voice of a supremely confident, almost entirely uninformed brat In dealing with the fraught, hotly debated question of the origin Maybe Tom Wolfe should be commended for diving headfirst into a complicated, even esoteric, debate raging inside linguistics and exposing it to a far larger audience than ever before But praise for this book should really end there As someone with some formal training in linguistics andextensive exploration of the field as a hobby, I read Wolfe s prose in the voice of a supremely confident, almost entirely uninformed brat In dealing with the fraught, hotly debated question of the origin of language, Wolfe cannot resist engaging in gross simplifications and exaggerations, which turned me off entirely and really limited his credibility as a narrator As an e...When getting my Master s degree in English, I discovered the fascinating world of linguistics With my emphasis in English as a Second Language, I took classes in Psycholinguistics which is the physical and neurological aspects of language acquisition I was especially intrigued by how language functions similarly to the genetic code, and I loved Modern Grammar which can be used with any language using the principles of Universal Grammar Universal Grammar, postulates Noam Chomsky the founde When getting my Master s degree in English, I discovered the fascinating world of linguistics With my emphasis in English as a Second Language, I took classes in Psycholinguistics which is the physical and neurological aspects of language acquisition I was especially intrigued by how language functions similarly to the genetic code, and I loved Modern Grammar which can be used with any language using the principles of Universal Grammar Universal Grammar, postulates Noam Chomsky the founder and king of modern linguistic theory , is innate in all human beings over all languages are similarly constructed of verbs, adjectives, and nouns What I didn t realize, until I read Tom Wolfe s super...Tom Wolfe tries to take down Charles Darwin and Noam Chomsky with baffling and terrible results Alternate title The Wrong Stuff.I generally enjoy Tom Wolfe, but this is an exception.This is a diatribe, a rant.He goes after two, I feel, very, unrelated individuals Charles Darwin and Noam Chomsky.Wolfe s main theme is language the premise being that this distinguishes us humans from all others on the planet I have no argument with this.He blasts Darwin for not acknowledging this But Darwin was a naturalist He was not a speech linguistic researcher Was Wolfe trying to discredit evolution This seems a tall order.Th I generally enjoy Tom Wolfe, but this is an exception.This is a diatribe, a rant.He goes after two, I feel, very, unrelated individuals Charles Darwin and Noam Chomsky.Wolfe s main theme is language the premise being that this distinguishes us humans from all others on the planet I have no argument with this.He blasts Darwin for not acknowledging this But Darwin was a naturalist He was not a speech linguistic researcher Was Wolfe trying to discredit evolution This seems a tall order.Then he train...This book forms a loose trilogy with The Painted Word, Wolfe s dissection of art and art criticism, and From Bauhaus to Our House, his similar evisceration of architectural theory This book is different in that Wolfe has ventured into scientific theory or actually, holy writ, i.e Darwinian evolutionary theory Those two books also dealt with a smaller topic the conflict between American independent thought and the tendency of American intellectuals to follow European isms, one of Wol This book forms a loose trilogy with The Painted Word, Wolfe s dissection of art and art criticism, and From Bauhaus to Our House, his similar evisceration of architectural theory This book is different in that Wolfe has ventured into scientific theory or actually, holy writ, i.e Darwinian evolutionary theory Those two books also dealt with a smaller topic the conflict between American independent thought and the tendency of American intellectuals to follow European isms, one of Wolfe s particular bugaboos But even though this book deals with science, you see the same themes as Wolfe s earlier works the importance of cultural and class distinctions in how thoughts gain social currency the need for human beings to group themselves off into hostile tribes, even within civilization the c...

19 February 2017

Tom Wolfe