This is a swell narrative. But science? Wolfe points out that Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould remarked that these and other stories throughout Darwin’s work “required a feat of fiction writing” and aren’t scientifically rigorous. Wolfe longs for a more complex explanation of the origins of language than Darwin offers, and he finds it in the work of linguist Daniel L. Everett, who based his field work on studying obscure human languages and concluded that evolution can’t perfectly explain the origin of language.
Explore more quotes:
About the author
This page was created by our editorial team. Each page is manually curated, researched, collected, and issued by our staff writers. Quotes contained on this page have been double checked for their citations, their accuracy and the impact it will have on our readers.
Kelly Peacock is an accomplished poet and social media expert based in Brooklyn, New York. Kelly has a Bachelor's degree in creative writing from Farieligh Dickinson University and has contributed to many literary and cultural publications. Kelly assists on a wide variety of quote inputting and social media functions for Quote Catalog. Visit her personal website here.
Kendra Syrdal is a writer, editor, partner, and senior publisher for The Thought & Expression Company. Over the last few years she has been personally responsible for writing, editing, and producing over 30+ million pageviews on Thought Catalog.