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09 August 2007
Thu, 09 Aug 2007 11:30:05 GMT“BEE-yah!” my 18 month old daughter used to consistently squeal when excited. I was baffled, thinking it was only gibberish, until I heard several of her same-age daycare friends repeat the identical nonsensical phrase, as if some sort of secret toddler code. It would be months later that I would discover not only the meaning of her utterance, but a key approach to resourceful practicing. It dawned on me— the children were audiblizing something very close to what they were hearing, the word “Yippee!” They were just repeating it backwards, because at this stage of language development, their memory retained what they heard LAST.
What I noticed later as her speech patterns matured over the succeeding months, was that she could learn multi-syllable words much faster if we taught her the last syllable first, and worked our way forward, “Community:” (Cum-mun-da-ditty…)
Tee. (Tee)
Nih-Tee (Nih-Tee)
U-Nih-Tee (U-Nih-Tee)
Cum-U-Nih-Tee (Cum-U-Nih-Tee)
Community… -
14 September 2006
Thu, 14 Sep 2006 17:35:46 GMT Is God an Accident?via Kjell Olsen797 days agoWhatever he is, he’s sure wedged deep into the human psyche/soul/being/etc.
Understanding of the physical world and understanding of the social world can be seen as akin to two distinct computers in a baby’s brain, running separate programs and performing separate tasks. The understandings develop at different rates: the social one emerges somewhat later than the physical one. They evolved at different points in our prehistory; our physical understanding is shared by many species, whereas our social understanding is a relatively recent adaptation, and in some regards might be uniquely human.
We have what the anthropologist Pascal Boyer has called a hypertrophy of social cognition. We see purpose, intention, design, even when it is not there.
the universal themes of religion are not learned. They emerge as accidental by-products of our mental systems. They are part of human nature.
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