How Deeply Human Is Language?

As a student, I read a popular history of medicine The Body in Question by English opera director Jonathan Miller, who was a physician by training. I was struck not only by the smoothness of his reflective prose, but also by the recurrent idea that every epoch uses its top contemporary technology as its metaphor for the understanding of ourselves. I will never forget his description of how William Harvey, King Charles I's physician, discovered the principle of the blood's circulation through the body, which could not be made without an understanding of the mechanics of pumps. I am often reminded of Miller's vivid prose when I see how easily people are convinced that our brain is a computer. To an extent, I share this belief, though in a manner that is not as concrete as some others. The computer metaphor permeates our lives for good reasons, but we need to be mindful of how we harness it to enhance our thoughts, and beware of hurdles and pitfalls along the path. This is what I've been trying to do, and I truly hope that the specifics of my view will be apparent to each and every reader.

I do not know who my readers will be, but when I was writing, I was hoping to reach a broad spectrum of readers: people interested in philosophy, science, and technology, curious readers who have heard about modern linguistics and about Noam Chomsky but have never understood what the fuss was about; engineering students who have taken or plan to take a course in natural language processing; linguists who fear that their discipline may soon be erased off the academic map; neurologists and neurosurgeons who have seen the wonders of the talking brain, as well as speech and language therapists who try to fix it when it fails; engineers and developers who may have followed some of the debates on X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, and other media, and want to build better language bots; and, of course, my academic colleagues from all relevant disciplines.

There's something here for everyone, I hope. Enjoy!