WONDER OF THE MOMENT

Much of what I’m going to write about today and in my next post was inspired by Dean Falk’s wonderful book, Finding Our Tongues: Mothers, Infants, and the Origins of Language.

         When I left off (July 27), we were talking about human mothers having to carry their babies in their arms.  This was because in order to develop a big brain, yet still fit through the human birth canal, a human baby must be born very immature.  Too immature to hang on to its mother while she gathers food.

         However, studies of primates, including humans, show that primate infants need virtually constant body contact with their mothers in order to survive in healthy shape.  And these primate infants make sure they get the contact if at all possible by complaining and crying whenever their mothers put them down.

         So before the invention of baby slings, early human mothers has a big problem.  They needed both hands for gathering food.  To free both hands, they had to put their babies down.  But when they did so, the babies would complain and cry noisily, attracting predators. 

         In order to minimize the risk, Falk (along with a number of other researchers) surmises that mothers made noises to soothe their infants, noises similar to the ones other primate mothers make to their babies.

         Each time a human baby would cry out, its mother would respond.  This “taking turns” making noises would be a kind of conversation.  As the conversation of soft sounds became a habitual way to keep the baby safely quiet instead of dangerously noisy, mother-infant talk would include facial expressions and gestures.

         A female baby raised in this way, would learn to do the same with her younger siblings when she helped look after them.  All females would grow up to do this with their own babies.

         Of course this isn’t full blown language, but it certainly makes a good start.  And there’s much more to tell in my next post about this growing prehistoric spiritual bond between early human mothers and their babies. 

If we can never know for sure how language came about, we are free to invent any hypotheses we want.  But I only get a charge out of plausible hypotheses. 

         For instance, I never went for the notion of language appearing in one fell swoop, fashionable in philosophy about twenty years ago.  It just didn’t make sense in terms of what I know about evolution.  François Jacob had it exactly right when he spoke of evolution as a tinkerer:  Evolution takes what is already present and tinkers with it, turning it into something different that might be useful. 

         This has been true about simple cellular respiration and photosynthesis that became complex, about gills that have become jaws and jaws turned into hearing apparatus, of fins becoming limbs, and on and on.  It must also be true about the development of language.

         The story of human mothers and babies and language starts with the evolution of a big brain for humans.  It’s easy to see that a big brain with greater intelligence must have been useful as soon as it evolved.  It’s hard to say what exactly were the first uses that made such a brain a plus in terms of natural selection.  Was it good for tool making which brought more food, for maintaining group efforts which brought more safety?  We can think of plenty of uses.

         But extra intelligence must have been very, very useful, because a big, intelligent brain did not come without a price.  And the price was that in order to develop a big brain, the human infant had to get born at a very immature stage.  The reason for this is that if we were born as mature as even chimpanzee babies, we humans couldn’t fit through our mothers’ birth canals. 

         In order for us to be born immature enough pass through the human birth canal, the timing of human development had to change.  We had to grow into all the rest of our developmental stages in pretty immature bodies.  So we wound up with almost no body hair even in adulthood.  And even if we had had the body hair, unlike chimp babies, our immature babies weren’t strong enough to hang onto the hair while we walked around gathering food and building shelters.

         In other words, until the invention of slings, human mothers had to carry their babies around in their arms no matter what else they were doing.  This had big implications that may have resulted in language!  Stay tuned!



What an unexpected question!  It’s one of those questions, like how did we come to walk on two legs (See my posts for October 14 & 16, 2009.) or how did some animals come to have legs instead of fins (See my posts for October 20, 21, 23, 2009.) that we will probably never be able to answer definitely. 

         But a couple of years ago I was reading Robert Godwin’s One Cosmos Under God (a fascinating read about spirit and science), and came across the intriguing notion that the roots of language first developed between human mothers and their babies.

         In fact, Godwin emphasizes how essential babies have been and are to the development of human life as we know it today.  In particular he points out that babies seem to be hardwired for learning the basics of human life in their first few years.

         Godwin notes that human infants must bond with their parents in order to develop normally.  Part of that bonding entails eye contact and murmuring back and forth between the adult caregiver and the baby.  He cites theorists who see in this bonding the beginnings of language.

         I find this a captivating notion.  All of a sudden it makes perfect sense where no other hypotheses ever have.  I want to go into more detail about this idea in my next few posts.

The Mylar balloon I wrote about in my last two posts (July 13 & 15) descended to earth because it no longer was full of helium.  All balloons have microscopic holes and imperfectly sealed entryways.

         The atoms or molecules that make up a gas are constantly zipping this way and that, changing direction whenever they collide with one another or with the sides of a container, like scattering pool balls. And helium atoms are the second tiniest of all atoms, right after hydrogen.  So it’s highly probable that in a matter of days, the majority of the helium atoms in a balloon will hit a hole, easily slip through it, and escape.         

         Meanwhile, air molecules, mostly nitrogen and oxygen, are bouncing against the balloon from the outside.  Many of these may make their way into the balloon.  In this way, air replaces some of the helium, though the overall pressure inside lessens.

         But the result of this dynamic is that eventually all the helium, from all the helium balloons, escapes and disperses into the high levels of earth’s atmosphere.  Meaning helium is not a renewable resource.  So we have to keep finding more helium somewhere. 

         Right now, there’s plenty of helium on earth.  But it’s expensive to isolate from air or from natural gas deposits.  There is also helium on the moon that we might eventually exploit.  (What a concept!  And what an expensive concept!)

         The place with the most helium in our solar system is the sun itself.  All that solar radiation results from fusion, a nuclear reaction in which hydrogen nuclei fuse to form helium and give off a lot of energy in the process.  This is the energy Einstein was talking about in his famous equation: E = mc².

         Our sun is one of the billions of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy.  And there are billions of galaxies.  So helium is abundant in the universe.  From floating balloons to the myriad stars in the night sky: helium is part of the magic of the cosmos.  Don't you agree?



The Mylar balloon I wrote about in my last post (July 13) reminded me of the rare helium balloons in my childhood.  I grew up in Cleveland, and once each summer, my family went to an amusement park called Euclid Beach.  It was the absolute most magical of all possible family jaunts.

         To a young child, the rides seemed hatched directly out of imagination.  Holding on for dear life in shallow, shiny chrome cars, we jerked up and down and side to side in wild, unpredictable zigzags.  Or we rose higher and higher in stately silver rocket ships, sailing in serene circles far above the ground.  Or, bathed in celestially bright light, we rode merry-go-round horses up and down and round and round to a hurdy-gurdy that took complete possession of our senses.

         All nourishment rules were suspended.  We chewed on Euclid Beach taffy, ten times more delicious than the saltwater stuff relatives sent from the East Coast.  We consumed cotton candy, popcorn balls, and ice cream.  Last of all, before we left, came a helium balloon for each child.

         As we drove back home, we were still full of the excitement we had experienced all day long.  But back in our workaday, ordinary house, the one bit of magic that remained, to prove it hadn’t all been a dream, was that balloon up on the ceiling, defying gravity.

         Maybe it was my child’s eye view, but I seem to recall those helium balloons staying up for days.  Or maybe the helium was purer, and they really did stay up longer.

         As an adult, I love the way helium balloons illustrate that we live at the bottom of an ocean of air.  Just as a beach ball floats on water because the air it’s full of is less dense than water, so a helium balloon floats on air because the helium it’s full of is less dense than air.  The reason is that helium atoms weigh much less than the nitrogen and oxygen molecules that make up most of our atmosphere.        

         Reflecting on this, I was startled when I realized that if we filled a balloon with helium on the moon, it would just drop to the ground!  No atmosphere on the moon for a helium balloon to float on.

         But that tendency of helium to rise to the top of the atmosphere here on earth means that once it gets loose, helium is always leaving.  Eventually, we may run out of helium, a disappointing thought.  More on this next time.