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444 Roman Jakobson
human system as a sequel to the appearance of language, which changed the
biosphere into ‘a new realm, the noosphere, the domain of ideas and consciousness’.
In other words, ‘c’est le langage qui aurait cr66 I’homme, plut6t que
l’homme le langage’ (p. 23).
If the questions of goal-orientation are still under discussion in biology, any
doubts are misplaced as soon as we approach human beings, lifeways, and institutions,
in particular, human language. The latter, like man himself in Mac-
Kay’s sagacious formulation, ‘is a teleological or goal-directed system’ (114;
cf. 71). The obsolete belief that ‘purposiveness cannot logically be the mainspring
for language development’ (98, p. 378) falsifies the very nature of language
and of intentional human behavior.
Recidives of superstitious fear of a means-ends model which still torment a
few linguists are the last survivals of a sterile reductionism. As a characteristic
example we may cite a linguist’s affirmation that ‘in the discussion of man’s
place in nature there is no place for mentalism’, since ‘man is an animal and
subject to all the laws of biology’, and, finally, that ‘the only valid assumption
is that of physicalism’, since ‘life is part of the inorganic world and subject to all
the laws of physics’ (69, p. 136; 67).
This quasi-biological bias of linguists is categorically rebuffed by biologists
themselves. As for antimentalism, they teach us that in the evolution of human
nature ‘intelligence integrates knowledge and gives it direction’; it is a ‘purposively
directed mental process with awareness of means and ends’ (65, p. 367). As
for animalism, Dobzhansky condemns the fancy cliche that man is nothing but
an animal as ‘a specimen of “genetic” fallacy’. In regard to an all-embracing
biologism, he reminds us that ‘human evolution cannot be understood as a
purely biological process, because, beside the biological component, the other,
cultural factor in turn must be taken into account’ (41, p. IS). As for simplistic
physicalism, ‘organisms do in fact have characteristics and processes that do
not occur in conjunction in nonorganic materials and reactions’ (162, p. 367).
While biology has realized fully that the units of heredity are discrete and,
hence, nonblending, the same linguist, faithful to the spirit of reductionism,
ventures to explain the emergence of the discrete constituents of the verbal
code through the ‘phenomenon of blending’ as ‘the only (!) logically (!)
possible (!) way’ (69, p. 142).
The ultimate phylogenetic question of linguistics, the origin of language, has
been proscribed by the neogrammarian tenet, but at present the emergence of
language must be brought together with the other changes which mark the
transition from prehuman to human society. Such a juxtaposition can also
give certain clues for a relative chronology. Thus, attempts have been made to
elucidate the genetic interrelation between language and visual art (22; r43).
Figurative art seems to imply the presence of language and thus the earliest
vestiges of representative art provide glottogony with a plausible terminus
ante quem.
Moreover, we may connect three universals among the solely human achievements:
I) manufacture of tools to build tools; 2) rise of phonemic, purely
distinctive elements, deprived of their own meaning but used to build meaning-