Gary Marcus' talk

      Gary Marcus’ presentation dealt with the evolution of language and music, concepts closely tied up with the field of evolutionary psychology. He started up with the brief history of survival of the fittest. He proposed that language and music evolved for couple of reasons. First of all, language evolved for social purposes as a way of communication between people of various cultures. Secondly, Marcus indicated that language evolved as means of attraction of mates; he brought up the concept of sexual selection. He spoke about the origin of language, specifically how it actually evolved. Marcus claimed that language did not evolve as a result of new dramatic, genetic changes but rather it happened to evolve as an outcome of tiny genetic changes that were critical enough for adaptation and preservation through generations. Also, he stressed that language should not be viewed as an innovation but something that was always there; acquired by our ancestors and passed down to the offspring. He called the theory of evolution of language a Descent with Modifications. He intertwined concepts from his books: The Guitar Zero and Kluge. Marcus suggested that our language is also a kluge, meaning it is not perfect.  How many times when you try to find the proper word to use in a particular moment and you have it right on “the tip of your tongue”, you cannot retrieve it? It frequently happens to all of us. This is due to weak connections of speech sounds represented in our memory. 

      Moving on to music, Gary Marcus advocated that thanks to language we have music. Music as a result of culture’s influence is like social glue; brings people together to create a cohesive society. He gave us examples of how music affects our rewarding systems in the brain. When we hear something that has the same beat, our rewarding systems gets activated, similarly when the beat of the song changes. He made a distinction between language and music by comparing language to instinct, something that is innate, and music being a technologically acquired skill. 

      I enjoyed Marcus talk because it was much like my anthropology class, where evolution of human social behavior is a hot topic