A Burning Fire
The Reith Lectures
BBC
4.2 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 1976
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Neurobiologist and lecturer of Physiology at the University of Cambridge Colin Blakemore explores speech as the vehicle of our language in the fifth Reith lecture from his series entitled 'Mechanics of the Mind'. He investigates how we evolved to speak and questions whether human brains are mentally better equipped to interpret the syntax of language.
In this lecture entitled 'A Burning Fire', Professor Blakemore moves between scientific experiments with chimpanzees using sign language to the legendary tales of children growing up without a language. Through these examples he tries to explain why humans have advanced their communications into the complicated language we have today.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures. |
| 0:04.3 | This lecture in the series Mechanics of the Mind, given by Colin Blakemore, was originally broadcast in 1976. |
| 0:12.0 | A few years ago, in the small town of Norman, Oklahoma, a reporter from the New York Times had a brief conversation with a little girl called Lucy. |
| 0:22.9 | He held up a key and asked, what's this? |
| 0:27.4 | Key, Lucy replied. |
| 0:30.1 | Then he picked up a comb. |
| 0:31.9 | What's this? |
| 0:33.8 | Combe, answered Lucy, as she took it from his hands and proceeded to comb his hair. |
| 0:39.2 | "'She stopped. Combe me,' she pleaded. |
| 0:42.8 | "'Okay,' he said, and combed her. |
| 0:45.6 | "'Lucy, you want to go outside,' he suggested. |
| 0:48.3 | "'She thought for a while, and replied, |
| 0:51.1 | "'Outside? No, want food, apple. |
| 0:55.0 | I have no food, he apologised, sorry. |
| 0:59.0 | A singularly unremarkable dialogue, one might think. |
| 1:03.0 | Indeed, the girl seemed rather backward in her grammar. |
| 1:06.0 | But the conversation wasn't spoken. |
| 1:08.0 | It was conducted with a series of hand movements in American Sign Language for the Deaf. |
| 1:13.6 | Lucy isn't deaf, however. She's a chimpanzee with human foster parents. |
| 1:20.6 | She's a member of a small and elite group of apes who are unknowingly excavating the foundations on which man has built the myth of his biological uniqueness. |
| 1:30.3 | The attempt to teach language to apes has a history of at least 50 years, |
| 1:35.3 | but early efforts founded because they sought to persuade chimpanzees to do something that they simply cannot do, to speak. |
... |
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