The Kingdom Of Speech, by Tom Wolfe

It may not reflect well on my charity, but I have to admit that in reading this book I took a great deal of pleasure in seeing the uselessness of the career of Noam Chomsky exposed with the breezy sense of humor that is typical of the author. Why is it that evolution has failed so spectacularly when it comes to presenting a coherent picture of how it is that people speak? Chomsky’s ideas of a speaking “program” in the brain or of certain inherent qualities like recursivity in language failed in the face of field studies that demonstrated that not all languages possess the tendencies that English and most other language have for these qualities, and so it remains that the seemingly arbitrary connection between sounds and meanings that exists in language is itself viewed by the author (who, it must be admitted, is somewhat rare in this view) as an artifact, a result of human intelligence and not a sign of evolution. In this view, the evolution of languages that is often spoken of is like the evolution of any other artifact of people, a sign of drift proceeding from intelligence and not something that seeks to explain artifacts or the intelligent mind that crafted them as being the result of just-so stories. Whether the author feels himself consciously as opposing neo-Darwinian orthodoxy or not is less clear.

This book is a short one at just over 150 pretty small pages. The book begins with a discussion of a paper that shows the surrender of prominent evolutionists in explaining the mystery of human language and in pointing out the importance of the task to an evolutionary view of the subject, which soon leads the author into discussing the difficulties of defining what in fact speech is. The second chapter of the book then explores the somewhat shady way in which Darwin achieved priority in terms of evolution in light of the thinking of Wallace, which reveals the somewhat seedy side of the British class system as it relates to matters of research. This is followed by a discussion of the dark ages of evolution as it relates to language, including the failure of Darwin’s The Descent of Man to shed any light on the subject beyond imaginative evolutionary fanfiction. The fourth chapter examines the rise of Noam Chomsky and a discussion of his immense power in the field of evolutionary linguistics, along with his political views and his cultural power. After this comes the satisfying chapter where he is brought to earth by an unexpected source, a humble linguist and former missionary working among an Amazonian people, while the following chapter describes the efforts that Chomsky and his associates took to discredit the writer who turned their theories into rubbish. This is then followed by endnotes that conclude the book.

It is no doubt appealing to this reader–someone who is openly opposed to the worldview of evolution–to see the evolutionary view of language subject to such devastating wit and withering criticism. All too often Darwinism has been supported by well-paid and well-connected thugs who have sought to bully the intellectual community, rather than seek out truth where it may be found, and this book calls them out on it, for which they will probably not be happy. Yet the author himself does not come off as being opposed to Darwinian orthodoxy out of any particular fondness for intelligent design, for example, or out of any religious beliefs (although he comments, rather accurately, that religious beliefs are viewed with suspicion by the leftist intelligentsia and by Darwinist orthodox believers in general). It seems, rather, that he has a great deal of wit and a fondness for turning that razor wit and finely developed sense of ridicule on those who see themselves as high and mighty in the scientific world but whose genuine scientific understanding on a matter of importance like language is worse than nonexistent, proceeding as it does from the wrong principles of stepwise development.