The Symbolic Species

The Symbolic Species (published 1997) is a book by anthropologist Terrence Deacon. It attempts to unravel the evolution of language and symbolic thought and to explain why language is unique to humans. Terrence W. Deacon is an American anthropologist (Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology, Harvard University 1984). He taught at Harvard for eight years, relocated to Boston University in 1992, and is currently Professor of Biological Anthropology and Neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley.Prof. Deacon's theoretical interests include the study of evolution-like processes at multiple levels, including their role in embryonic development, neural signal processing, language change, social processes, and focusing especially on how these different processes interact and depend on each other. He has long stated an interest in developing a scientific semiotics (particularly biosemiotics) that would contribute to both linguistic theory and cognitive neuroscience.The Symbolic Species is a multi-disclipinary book that at the time of publishing was seen as groundbreaking. It is considered to have bound together a wide array of ideas in a way that advanced the understanding of professionals in several fields. The reasons for the unique cognitive capacity of humans are explored, along with those for why many human activities are impossible for animals. Human use of language is said to be responsible for both. A chicken-and-egg problem is shown to exist between the emergence of symbolic thought and language: language is said to be the medium of symbolic thought, but it is reasoned that mastery of language would first require the ability to think symbolically. The solution of this chicken-and-egg problem, according to Deacon, is the subtle evolutionary process of co-evolution.