Department of History and Philosophy of Science
University of Cambridge
gmr22@hermes.cam.ac.uk

abstract

This paper will deal with some of the historical and conceptual issues surrounding primate language experiments. I shall focus in particular on a contrast between two different sorts of experiment: instructional experiments, which explore the abilities of primates to learn human-like language; and translational experiments, which explore the abilities of primates to communicate with one another in the wild. In the twentieth century, instructional experiments dominated, with little headway made in translational experiments until the 1970s. Why this asymmetry? There are two obvious explanations: first, that it was just easier to instruct in laboratories than to translate in the field; and second, that the recording technology needed for field translation was not available for a long time. I shall argue that the largely forgotten career of the pioneer primate language researcher R. L. Garner (1848–1920) shows both explanations to be inadequate. Garner in the 1890s was using the Edison cylinder phonograph for purposes of translation. On the basis of these experiments he claimed to discover a "simian tongue", different only in degree from human tongues. Furthermore, in 1892 he travelled to the French Congo to carry out phonographic experiments among wild gorillas and chimpanzees; and it was while there that he first attempted to teach a young chimpanzee to speak. Both sorts of primate language research thus began in their modern forms at roughly the same moment, receiving a great deal of popular and scientific attention. Both involved considerable difficulties. So why did instruction flourish and translation fizzle? And what does the dominance of instruction reveal about primate language research and its significance in the twentieth century? In offering some preliminary answers to these questions, I shall be arguing more generally for the value of a clearer view of the historical origins of the commitments – theoretical, methodological, institutional – that shape present debate on language and evolution.

 Conference site: http://www.infres.enst.fr/confs/evolang/