Reviews for Henry Hudson and His Voyages of Exploration in World History

The average rating for Henry Hudson and His Voyages of Exploration in World History based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-12-18 00:00:00 Mark Deegan HAL Has Always Been A False Friend Remember the opening scene of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey? A hairy primate handles a thigh bone, presumably of a dead animal, and suddenly discovers it is a a tool, possibly a weapon. Cut to the inter-planetary research vehicle en route to a strange signal in the far reaches of the solar system. Thus, we are meant to understand, is the beginning of technological development, and eventually extra-terrestrial exploration. Obvious. A well thought out allegory for human progress, right? Wrong. Seals and sea otters use rocks to open mollusks (so do some fish); chimpanzees use sticks to dig for termites; elephants manufacture fly-swatters from tree branches; dolphins make nose-protectors out of sponges. But none of these species have proliferated like Homo sapiens, much less indulged in space exploration. Kubrick’s allegory is flawed. There is, though, an important technology which is fundamental to human development. But it isn’t the discovery of fire, or the usefulness of old bones, or the ability to live in social groups. Far more important is the technology that we take for granted and that has dominated us as completely as HAL, the computer, dominated Kubrick’s hapless astronauts: language. Language is what enables us to be the dominant species on the planet. All the tools that we have used to subjugate the natural world and each other - spears, sailing ships, submarines and spaceships. These and almost everything else we consider part of normal human existence are embodied language. They all require not just plans, blueprints and instructions, but also a long history of thought and discussion (and therefore language) in their creation. So it is the discovery of language not the usefulness of thigh bones that Kubrick should have used in his opening. But he couldn’t because the mystery of language is so profound that there really is no cinematic or any other way to represent its origins. Language ability depends on complex anatomical, neurological, and sociological interactions. Some researchers think the right conditions for language occurred as recently as 10,000 years ago; others suggest that it might be 100,000 years or more (still an eye-blink in evolutionary much less cosmic terms). The big linguistic bang of writing only occurred 6000 years ago. No one knows if the development was rapid, like the discovery by Kubrick’s primate, or incremental over hundreds, perhaps, thousands of generations. Kenneally’s idea of ‘the first word’ is an attempt to remedy Kubrick’s misleading suggestion that technology is the engine of human progress. It isn’t. Language is the driver of our species-development. And our facility with language really hasn’t been going on long enough to justify the term ‘progress’ at all. Language, as Kubrick’s film implies, seems to have a life of its own. HAL is language which just happens to be in the form of a machine, a literal embodiment of the ‘no-thing’ that is language. It is revealed as a ‘thing’ controlling the astronauts only because it speaks to them and refuses to do what they ask. In everyday life we are unaware of HAL’s presence because language prefers to hide its existence, pretending that it is simply an obedient carrier of human intentions and an accurate expression of reality. But language is neither obedient nor accurate. It is a kind of spirit which is nowhere and everywhere. It is in us, among us and beyond us simultaneously. As the philosopher, Martin Heidegger, quipped: “Language speaks Man.” That is, language is what we are as both a species and individuals. We don’t have an option to use it but are forced into it from the moment we are born. We are socialised in and through language; then educated in the intricacies and conventions of language; and eventually learn how to survive and make careers within some industrial, professional, or academic ‘bubble’ of language in which success is measured almost entirely by criteria established in and by language. Of course language is useful. But we tend to confuse usefulness with reality. For example, Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity as a force acting instantaneously at a distance has proven very useful in, among other things, space exploration. But gravity as Newton thought of it simply doesn’t exist. There is no such force. Scientists now speak of gravity as a distortion of space-time. And, who knows, when the secrets of quantum gravity are eventually uncovered, there may well be further explanations that debunk today’s version of reality. This point is at the heart of Kenneally’s very accessible little book. The world of language is quite separate from the physical world in which it, and we, operate. And the connection between these two world is tenuous. Even the pragmatic criterion of ‘if it works, it must be true,’ is profoundly unreliable. This is demonstrated by the advance of science itself as theories once held as approximations of reality are discarded as fundamentally misguided. Not only is there no way to verify the connections between words and things, but there is also no way to know if such a verification has even taken place. Language resists any attempt to tie it down, to be tested and evaluated for its connection to what is not language. So language - in the form of concepts, words, propositions, arguments, theories - pretends to be reality. And we tend to go along with the deception because we really have no alternative. We can’t function without it. As Kenneally points out, “The creation of the net was an awesome leap in technological evolution. Yet for all that it offers, it is the merest shadow of something much larger and much older. Language is the real information highway, the first virtual world. Language is the worldwide web, and everyone is logged on.” And, one must add, we have been trapped in that web from the very first word uttered, perhaps, in a sort of shriek of triumph similar to Kubrick’s primate with his thigh bone. I suggest that it is somewhat premature, even now, to recognise that ancient shriek as one of human triumph. It could well be one of cosmic despair.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-08-14 00:00:00 Mikel Rhodent I picked this up because I wanted to see what happened to evolutionary linguistics after Pinker's "Language Instinct." The main thing I learned from this book is that not all evolutionary linguists share Steven Pinker's disdain for chimpanzee sign-language experiments. Kenneally is strongly attached to the view that human language skills are not particularly unique in the animal world. Consequently, she paints Noam Chomsky as a villain who, with his focus on complex human syntax and universal grammar (and by implication human uniqueness), has led evolutionary linguistics into fruitless controversy and blind paths. I'm willing to be persuaded about this, but the evidence she presents doesn't establish her case. Her writing lacks the charm of Pinker's. In some spots, the material was too dumbed down. In (too many) others, it seemed a dry recitation of the literature. For non-linguists, I suggest waiting for Pinker's next book, despite his biases, rather than reading this one.