Linguistics as a Precursor to Genetics
Friday 16th January: Institution Lecture
Dante’s Infernal Problem - Linguistics as a Precursor to Genetics
Dr Nicholas Ostler.
The premise for this talk came from a remark by Professor Steve Jones (our Christmas lecturer for 11th December 2009), in his book The Language of the Genes (1993), that in observing a genome one could almost know the owner’s speech. Dr Ostler, a Bath philologer (whose teenage fascination with Sanskrit mirrors that of Jean-François Champolion (1790-1830) for Coptic, which led to the decoding of Egyptian hieroglyphs), did us the honour of taking up the challenge to consider Linguistics as a Precursor to Genetics, and his well-attended lecture focused deeply and rewardingly on this complex question.
First referring to early curiosities in Scala Naturae by Aristotle (384-322 BC), and the dilemma of his student Theophrastus (371-287 BC) as between Constancy and Mutability, Dr Ostler then considered the thoughts of Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), who observed "Languages are Travellers on Roads". From there he introduced us to early linguists like James Parsons (1705-1770), Fr Gaston-Laurent Coeurdoux (1691-1779), who suggested an historic link between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, and the child prodigy, Sir William Jones (1746-1794), who observed of the many languages he studied, that “no philologer could examine all these without imagining that they spring from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists”.
Their work led later philologists to wonder if there’s a Language Ancestry, and how languages have changed – not perhaps by God’s hand, but perhaps through some dynamic reason? German linguists Franz Bopp (1791-1867) and Rasmus Rask (1787-1832) developed a Sound Law, later perfected by the grammarian Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) as Grimm’s Law (a circuitous triangular pattern of consonant drift), which helped to explain the Invisible Dynamic System. This had earlier fascinated Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), and later was to inspire the early study of Genetics by Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (1744-1829), Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), and Charles Darwin (1809-1882).
Charts and illustrations galore, Dr Ostler’s lecture, and a lively exchange of questions and answers, provided, after Professor Brian Charlesworth’s Christmas Lecture, a fitting second curtain-raiser to our Darwin Series.
Martin Sturge
Dante’s Infernal Problem -
Dr Nicholas Ostler.
The premise for this talk came from a remark by Professor Steve Jones (our Christmas lecturer for 11th December 2009), in his book The Language of the Genes (1993), that in observing a genome one could almost know the owner’s speech. Dr Ostler, a Bath philologer (whose teenage fascination with Sanskrit mirrors that of Jean-
First referring to early curiosities in Scala Naturae by Aristotle (384-
Their work led later philologists to wonder if there’s a Language Ancestry, and how languages have changed – not perhaps by God’s hand, but perhaps through some dynamic reason? German linguists Franz Bopp (1791-
Charts and illustrations galore, Dr Ostler’s lecture, and a lively exchange of questions and answers, provided, after Professor Brian Charlesworth’s Christmas Lecture, a fitting second curtain-
© Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution 2008 • Contact Us
LECTURE REPORT - DANTE’S INFERNAL PROBLEM
Dr Nicholas Ostler (left) with BRLSI Darwin and Beyond Programme Manager Martin Sturge.
