Of Language Knowledge, Apes, and Brains

Abstract

Every aspect of an organism’s behavior bears the indelible imprint of the biological operating principles of its own species. Whatever a cat does, it does in a feline fashion; whatever man does, he does in a human fashion. This may be taken as an axiom (or truism, for that matter, for how could it be otherwise?). An animal cannot change its constitution between behaviors; every movement, every sensation, every insight, every motive is mediated, coordinated, regulated, transformed, integrated, etc., by one and the same nervous system, the same skeleton, the same irritable tissues. Despite the infinite variability in individual acts or skills (many of them dependent upon environmental circumstances), there remain limits to the behavioral variations, and there are physiological constants that are common to literally everything a given animal does. I would like to propose, as a general guidline for research in animal behavior, that one can gain important insights into the biological nature of a species by attempting to discover the physiological constants—by searching for the common denominators underlying the different sorts of behavior in an animal’s repertoire.

This paper has resulted from research carried out under Grant No. 2279 from the Wenner-Gren Foundation.