Darwinの言語に対する評


以前の投稿で, 言語の本能性について学んだ.
今回はその中でも, 言語と思考の関係性についてまとめている部分を検討する. (時代性が異なり, 現代にふさわしくない表現も含まれているが, Darwinの内容を読むということが目的のため, 原文のまま引用する)

Several writers, more especially Prof. Max Muller (62. Lectures on ‘Mr. Darwin’s Philosophy of Language,’ 1873.), have lately insisted that the use of language implies the power of forming general concepts; and that as no animals are supposed to possess this power, an impassable barrier is formed between them and man. (63. The judgment of a distinguished philologist, such as Prof. Whitney, will have far more weight on this point than anything that I can say. He remarks (‘Oriental and Linguistic Studies,’ 1873, p. 297), in speaking of Bleek’s views: “Because on the grand scale language is the necessary auxiliary of thought, indispensable to the development of the power of thinking, to the distinctness and variety and complexity of cognitions to the full mastery of consciousness; therefore he would fain make thought absolutely impossible without speech, identifying the faculty with its instrument. He might just as reasonably assert that the human hand cannot act without a tool. With such a doctrine to start from, he cannot stop short of Max Muller’s worst paradoxes, that an infant (in fans, not speaking) is not a human being, and that deaf-mutes do not become possessed of reason until they learn to twist their fingers into imitation of spoken words.” Max Muller gives in italics (‘Lectures on Mr. Darwin’s Philosophy of Language,’ 1873, third lecture) this aphorism: “There is no thought without words, as little as there are words without thought.” What a strange definition must here be given to the word thought!)

Darwin (1871)

様々な学者の引用や主張を重ねているパートではあるが, 重要なことはすでにこの段階でも言語と思考の関係性についての議論が行われているということである.
これは現代でもなお議論中の内容であるが, それについてDarwinが言を残しているのは非常に興味深い.

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