1 “‘Romantic love songs are a sham that perpetuate a lie on unsuspecting young kids …’”
The first part of this quote is from a telephone interview I conducted with Frank in 1980; the second part is from his biography: Zappa, F., and P. Occhiogrosso. (1999). The Real Frank Zappa Book. New York: Touchstone, p. 89.
2 “‘I have had some experiences with love, or think I have …’”
Vonnegut, K. (1976). Slapstick: Or Lonesome No More! New York: Delta Books, pp. 2–3.
3 “… love can make you do things you might not otherwise do …”
As Gabriel García Márquez writes in Love in the Time of Cholera: “Fermina Daza, his wife … was an irrational idolator of tropical flowers and domestic animals, and early in her marriage she had taken advantage of the novelty of love to keep many more of them in the house than good sense would allow.” García Márquez, G. (1989). Love
in the Time of Cholera, translated by E. Grossman. London: Penguin, p. 21. (Original work published 1985.)
4 “Because romantic love is what gets written about, talked about, filmed and sung about so much, we can temporarily forget that love comes in many different forms …”
The ancient Greeks had already classified these different forms of love, and in fact, distinguished ten forms of love, and the psychologist John Alan Lee reduced these to six; see: Lee, J. A. (1976). The Colours of Love. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Either formulation confounds the way people act (playful, generous) with the way they feel (jealous, passionate) and the underlying, unifying principles (attachment, longing, lust). In her book Why We Love, Helen Fisher claims that these can be reduced to three: romantic love, attachment, and lust: Fisher, H. (2004). Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love. New York: Henry Holt.
I think including lust as its own form of love is odd, as opposed to including it as an element in certain forms of attachment love. I find Robert Sternberg’s triangular theory of love more compelling, that the various forms of love are all combinations of three basic elements: passion, intimacy, and commitment: Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A triangular theory of love. Psychological Review 93(2): 119–135.
Sternberg, R. J. (1988). The Triangle of Love: Intimacy, Passion, Commitment. New York: Basic Books.
But Sternberg’s system doesn’t easily account for love of an ideal (like justice), or love of country—both of which he would probably describe as “commitment and passion,” but that, to me, fails to capture the different phenomenology, the different feeling, we have of love for our hometown than we do of love for our romantic partner. More importantly, I think they all miss the fundamental common point that love is caring.
5 “‘Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, already lost in the mists of death …’”
García Márquez, G. (1989). Love in the Time of Cholera, translated by E. Grossman. London: Penguin, p. 14 (Original work published 1985.)
6 “… foodstuffs are redistributed equitably among neighboring tribes, eliminating what could be deadly food-jealousy wars.”
Ford, R. I. (1971). An ecological perspective of the eastern pueblos. In New Perspectives on the Eastern Pueblos, edited by A. Ortiz Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.
7 “… rather than building into genes and brains information that is ubiquitous and readily available in the environment, brains are configured such that they can incorporate regularities …”
Deacon, T. W. (1997). What makes the human brain different? Annual Review of Anthropology 26: 337–357.
8 “… males don’t pair-bond with the mothers of their offspring and they don’t provide paternal care.”
Diamond, J. (1997). Why Is Sex Fun? New York: Basic Books. Exceptions include male zebras and gorillas (who are polygynous), male gibbons (who form single pair-bonds with females), and saddleback tamarin monkeys (in which a female keeps two males).
9 “Even in the most social mammals … there is no evidence that males even recognize their own offspring.”
Diamond, J. (1997). Why Is Sex Fun? New York: Basic Books.
10 “In humans … the dominant mode of relationships is of monogamy …”
Diamond, J. (1997). Why Is Sex Fun? New York: Basic Books.
11 “The human cochlea is so sensitive that it can detect vibration as small as the diameter of an atom (0.3 nm) and it can resolve time intervals down to 10μ s …”
Hudspeth, A. J. (1997). How hearing happens. Neuron 19: 947–950.
12 “… some animals employ systems that are exotic compared to ours.”
Hughes, H. C. (1999). Sensory Exotica: A World Beyond Human Experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
13 “Sharks have an electrical sense …”
While snorkeling in the Caribbean last spring, I actually heard the electrical discharges of tropical fish for myself, which sounded like a high-pitched, rapid clicking sound. With human ears, I could hear but not localize the source; the sharks’ sense would be distinct from hearing and permit them to locate their prey.
14 “The basic function and structure of genes is also common to all animals …”
See: Colamarino, S., and M. Tessier-Lavigne. (1995). The role of the floorplate in axon guidance. Annual Review of Neuroscience 18: 497–529. Deacon, T. W. (1997). What makes the human brain different? Annual Review of Anthropology 26: 337–357.
Friedman, G., and D. D. O’Leary. (1996). Retroviral misexpression of engrailed genes in the chick optic tectum perturbs the topographic targeting of retinal axons. Journal of Neuroscience 16(17): 5498–5509. Kennedy, T. E., T. Serafini, J. R. de la Torre, and M. Tessier-Lavigne. (1994). Netrins are diffusible chemotropic factors for commissural axons in the embryonic spinal chord. Cell 78: 425–435.
15 “… Balaban removed the auditory cortices from Japanese quail embryos and surgically implanted them into the brains of embryonic chickens …”
Balaban, E., M. A. Teillet, and N. Le Douarin. (1988). Application of the quail-chick chimera system to the study of brain development and behavior. Science 241(4871): 1339–1342.
16 “During a typical day, chimpanzees … associate in temporary parties that vary in size and membership, much as humans do.”
Ujhelyi, M. (1996). Is there any intermediate stage between animal communication and language? Journal of Theoretical Biology 180(1): 71–76.
17 “… biologists have found an inverse relationship between brain size and digestive tract size …”
Allman, J. M. (1999). Evolving Brains. New York: Scientific American Library/W.H. Freeman.
18 “The total amount of energy available to an organism is limited, forcing an evolutionary trade-off between brain size and digestive tract size.”
Aiello, L, and P. Wheeler. (1995). The expensive tissue hypothesis: The brain and the digestive system in human and primate evolution. Current Anthropology 36: 199–221.
19 “Geneticists found that humans have lost an ability … to create vitamin C internally …”
Ha, M.N., F. L. Graham, C. K. D’Souza, W. J. Muller, S. A. Igdoura, and H. E. Schellhorn. (2004). Functional rescue of vitamin C synthesis deficiency in human cells using adenoviral-based expression of murine l-gulono-gamma-lactone oxidase. Genomics 83(3): 482–492. Stone, I. (1979). Homo sapiens ascorbicus, a biochemically corrected robust human mutant. Medical Hypotheses 5(6): 711–721.
20 “… big brains carry with them a high biological price tag …”
This passage borrows liberally from: Allman, J. M. (1999). Evolving Brains. New York: Scientific American Library/W.H. Freeman, p. 160.
21 “Well-connected female baboons have more babies who receive better care …”
Zimmer, C. (March 4, 2008). Sociable, and smart. The New York Times, pp. D1, D4.
22 “‘Spotted hyenas live in a society just as large and complex as a baboons.’”
Zimmer, C. (March 4, 2008). Sociable, and smart. The New York Times, p. D1.
23 “… similar evolutionary forces worked independently to arrive at a similar adaptive solution …”
Holekamp, K. (2006). Spotted hyenas. Current Biology 16: R944–R945.
24 “… tool making as opposed to mere tool use … represented a major cognitive leap …”
Tattersall, I. (January 2000). Once we were not alone. Scientific American 282(1): 57–62.
25 “Stone tools are thus the first evidence we have of the birth of symbolic thought …”
Tattersall, I. (January 2000). Once we were not alone. Scientific American 282(1): 57–62.
26 “… humans must have brought musical instruments with them when they left Africa for Europe.”
Cross, I. (2006). The origins of music: Some stipulations on theory. Music Perception 24(1): 79–82.
27 “… workmanship [their stone tools] that displayed … ‘an exquisite sensitivity to the properties’ of these materials.”
Tattersall, I. (January 2000). Once we were not alone. Scientific American 282(1): 61.
28 “‘Clearly … these people were us.’”
Tattersall, I. (January 2000). Once we were not alone. Scientific American 282(1): 61.
29 “… (my dog Shadow distinguishes several different toys by name including his ‘fuzzy man’ from his ‘Cat in the Hat’) …”
My dog Isabella before him could pick out ten different items by name, including newspaper, ball, Frisbee, bed, and bone. See also: Kaminski, J., J. Call, and J. Fisher. (2004). Word-learning in a domestic dog: Evidence for fast mapping. Science 304: 1682–1683.
30 “… but this only demonstrates their [animals’] ability to link a visual or acoustic stimulus with an object.”
As a well-known example, Ivan Pavlov showed that dogs can learn to associate the sound of a bell with the pre sen ta tion of food. My dog associates the word cookie with the treats I keep in the pantry. But there are important differences between associations and a formal concept of naming, the awareness that the name and the object it refers to are two separate things. I can talk about cookies without you expecting to get one; I cannot do that with my dog, as clever as he is. That’s one of the differences between a “name” and an “association.”
31 “… every day humans produce or hear utterances that have never before been spoken, and yet we understand them.”
I’m glossing over many important details associated with the expandable property of language. These are dealt with in Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct and in the article by Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch (see below for full references).
One important concept in the discussion is the capacity for recursion, a cognitive operation believed by many to be unique to humans and central to language. Briefly, recursion describes the formal way in which expressions can be expanded indefinitely. It can be thought of as a set of instructions that can loop around back to the beginning, or in computer science jargon, a “routine that can call itself.” Take for example the following instructions for how to wash a dirty soup pot:
Routine for Washing a Dirty Soup Pot
- Rinse with water.
- Add soap.
- Scrub with brush, sponge, or scouring pad until it appears to be clean.
- Rinse.
- Check to see if it is clean. If yes, go to step 6. If not, execute the instructions “Routine for Washing a Dirty Soup Pot.”
- Dry.
- Stop (you’re done).
The “branching loop” in step 5 is what makes this recursive. It is a routine that can expand indefinitely. Human languages have sentences that can do the same thing of course, as illustrated in the main text.
The notion that recursion is central to human language has been challenged by Daniel Everett. The very fact that there is a debate between the Chomskians and Everett serves to support my point that there is not a single unique element that humans possess that gives us language; rather, animal and human communications form a continuum and many elemental operations show up along the continuum. The fact that at least one human group lacks this operation (recursion) makes the claim untenable that it is both unique to humans and necessary for human language.
For the standard view on what constitutes language, see for example: Pinker, S. (1994). The Language Instinct. New York: Morrow. Or see: Hauser, M. D., N. Chomsky, and W. T. Fitch. (2002). The faculty of language: What is it, who has it and how did it evolve? Science 298: 1569–1579.
For a dissenting view, see: Everett, D. L. (2005). Cultural constraints on grammar and cognition in Pirahã. Current Anthropology 46(4): 621–646.
32 “‘Animals of many kinds are social …’”
Darwin, C. (1981). The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 161–163. (Original work published 1871.)
33 “‘In order that primeval men, or the apelike progenitors of man, should become social …’”
Darwin, C. (1981). The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 161–163. (Original work published 1871.)
34 “In one experiment, she [Haselton] asked people to think about how much they love their partner and then try to suppress thoughts of other people they find sexually attractive.”
This description taken from Zimmer, C. (January 17, 2008). Romance is an illusion [Electronic version]. Time. Retrieved March 10, 2008, from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1704665,00.html.
35 “… European starlings can learn syntactic recursion.”
Gentner, T. Q., K. M. Fenn, D. Margoliash, and H. C. Nusbaum. (2006). Recursive syntactic pattern learning by songbirds. Nature 440: 1204–1207.
36 “… white-crowned sparrows can assemble an entire song in proper sequence when exposed to only fragments of that song …”
Rose, G. J., F. Goller, H. J. Gritton, S. L. Plamondon, A. T. Baugh, and B. G. Cooper. (2004). Species-typical songs in white-crowned sparrows tutored with only phrase pairs. Nature 432: 753–758.
37 “It is important, when considering animal music, to distinguish between musical expression and musical experience.”
Jerison, H. (1999). Paleoneurology and the biology of music. In The Origins of Music, edited by N. L. Wallin, B. Merker, and S. Brown. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 177–196.
38 “Evolution endowed the musical brain with a perception-production link that most mammals lack … We hear music, then sing it.”
Merker, B. (2006). The uneven interface between culture and biology in human music. Music Perception 24(1): 95–98.
39 “… most [mammals] do not have the capacity to imitate a sound they’ve heard …”
Merker, B. (2006). The uneven interface between culture and biology in human music. Music Perception 24(1): 95–98.
40 “This vocal learning ability is believed to have come from an evolutionary modification to the basal ganglia …”
Patel, A. D. (2006). Musical rhythm, linguistic rhythm, and human evolution. Music Perception 24(1): 99–104.
41 “… Brodmann area 44 …”
Iacoboni, M., I. Molnar-Szakacs, V. Gallese, G. Buccino, J. C. Mazziotta, and G. Rizzolatti. (2005). Grasping the intentions of others with one’s own mirror neuron system. Public Library of Science Biology 3(1): e79.
“… FOXP2 gene …”
Wade, N. (October 18, 2007). Neanderthals may have had gene for speech [Electronic version]. The New York Times. Retrieved March 10, 2008, from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/science/19speech.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss.
42 “… a genetic variant in microcephalin …”
Gazzaniga, M. S. (2007). Are Human Brains Unique? From John Brockmans’ Edge, April 10, 2007. www.edge.org.
43 “… there are no immaterial, vitalistic, or supernatural processes involved in creating the experience we call consciousness …”
Bunge, M. (1980). The Mind-Body Problem: A Psychological Approach. New York: Pergamon.
44 “… spontaneous intelligence.”
Johnson, S. (2001). Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software. New York: Scribner.
45 “As essayist Adam Gopnik says …”
Gopnik, A. (2006). Death of a Fish. From Through the Children’s Gate. New York: Knopf, p. 258.
46 “… human music functions as an honest signal …”
There exists controversy on this point. Cognitive psychologist Jamshed Bharucha points out that a skilled performer can effectively evoke an emotion that he doesn’t feel. When a performer plays a sad piece, it’s not necessarily because he wishes to communicate his sadness. The piece may simply be on the program for that night, and the performer knows how to perform it to elicit sadness. David Byrne corroborated this in an interview with me—he doesn’t always feel sad when he’s singing a sad song, but he’s learned what are essentially a set of tricks or devices to evoke sadness or other emotions required for the emotional delivery of the song.
Bharucha asks us to consider an evolutionary context: A man courting a woman by expressing his love to her. He can deceive her using language, i.e., convince her that he loves her even if he doesn’t, just so he can get sex. The same would be true of music. He could appear to pour his heart out to her if he is a skillful musician—even if he doesn’t feel undying love—and thereby gain access to sex. Are language and music different here? Is music an honest signal?
Music may have started out as an honest signal—something difficult to fake. But a sort of arms race may have developed. Some humans would have learned how to fake the emotions in music. Through intensive training, for example, they might learn to appear sad or in love or happy even when they are not. Actors do the same thing with language, of course. Actors essentially lie for a living. To be successful, they have to make you think that they are someone whom they are not, and that the words they are speaking are being uttered spontaneously and on their own, even when (most of the time) those words were written by someone else ahead of time.
If we accept the honest signal hypothesis, it doesn’t have to mean that music is still a foolproof honest signal, only that it once was (and perhaps still is) a more honest signal than language. We can speculate about why music might be better at this: Because of music’s structure and internal complexity, music typically packs much more information into a phrase than language does. This might make it more difficult to fake honesty because so many more dimensions of expression would need to be manipulated than simply the words and linguistic prosody.
It’s worth noting that once expert singers learned to fool ordinary listeners, there would be increased evolutionary pressure for listeners to become more discriminating, which would lead to pressure for the singers to become more skilled. If music started out as an honest signal, with connections to all the right emotional and motivation centers in the human brain, these more (evolutionarily) recent developments may not have yet effected commensurate changes in neural wiring, or the changes may be still under way. This could account for why skillful musicians can move us to laughter and to tears: Our cognitive appraisal system knows that we are being “lied to,” and yet all the emotional buttons are still being pushed. The result is a deeply emotional reaction that is bound up with an aesthetic and cognitive appreciation for what is going on.
47 “… love is like jumping off a cliff.”
Tennant, A. (director), J. Lassiter, W. Smith, T. Zee (Producers), and
K. Bisch (writer). (2005). Hitch [Motion picture]. United States: Columbia Pictures.
p. 274 “… the Romeo-and-Juliet love (I’d kill myself for this person) …”
Blue Öyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper” is perhaps the first teenage suicide pact song in rock music.
Roeser, D. (1976). (Don’t fear) the reaper [Recorded by Blue Öyster Cult]. On Agents of Fortune [45rpm record]. Columbia Records.
48 “… I’ve intentionally avoided becoming distracted by questions such as ‘What are the greatest/most popular songs of all time?’ or … ‘What are the most influential songs of all time?’”
The RIAA, a recording industry lobbying group, along with the National Endowment for the Arts, sponsored a Greatest Songs of the Twentieth Century project in 2001, and voted “Over the Rainbow” as the top song, followed by “White Christmas.” Such lists are not just subjective, but can yield bizarre results. Is “Fight for Your Right (To Party)” by the Beastie Boys (#191) four songs better than Cole Porter’s “Night and Day” (#195)? What kind of list puts “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” (#8) above “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” (#9). And how did “Achy Breaky Heart” (#258) beat out “All Along the Watch-tower” (#365) and “How High the Moon” (#317)?
Arlen, H., and Harburg. E. Y. (1939). Over the rainbow [Recorded by Judy Garland]. On Over the Rainbow [LP]. Pickwick Records. Berlin, I. (1940). White Christmas [Recorded by Bing Crosby and Marjorie Reynolds]. On Holiday Inn [LP]. (1942).
Beastie Boys. (1986). (You gotta) Fight for your right (to party!). On Licensed to Ill [CD]. Def Jam Records.
Dylan, B. (1967). All along the watchtower. On John Wesley Harding [LP]. Nashville, TN: Columbia Records.
Hamilton, N., and Lewis. M. and (1940). How high the moon [Recorded by Benny Goodman and His Orchestra]. On How High the Moon [45rpm record]. Columbia Records.
Porter, C. (1932). Night and day [Recorded by Fred Astaire]. On Night and Day: Fred Astaire: Complete recordings Vol. 2 1931–1933 [CD]. Naxos Nostalgia. (2001).
Norworth, J. (1908). Take me out to the ball game [Recorded by Harry MacDonough]. On Take Me Out to the Ball Game [Wax cylinder]. Victor Records.
Spector, P., B. Mann, and C. Weil. (1965). You’ve lost that lovin’ feelin’ [Recorded by the Righteous Brothers]. On You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ [45rpm record]. Philles Records.
Von Tress, D. (1992). Achy breaky heart [Recorded by Billy Ray Cyrus]. On Some Gave All [CD]. Mercury Records.