Mark Changizi: Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man

Praise for Mark Changizi and Harnessed

“The theoretical neurobiologist Mark Changizi has a dazzling ability to change the way we think by providing compelling answers to big, important questions that had never occurred to most of us in the first place.”

—Roger Highfield, editor of New Scientist and co-author of SuperCooperators

“In this remarkable book, Mark Changizi performs surgery on the mind, revealing nothing less than the origins of the abilities that make us human. And his conclusions are both provocative and surprising: The uniquely human facility with language and the universal human propensity to create and enjoy music came about not through biological adaptation, but through cultural evolution. Human culture harnessed what our brains already did well—perceiving physical events and human movements. Changizi’s carefully constructed evolutionary explanation of language and music promises to revolutionize thinking about what separates us from apes.”

—Dan Simons, co-author of The Invisible Gorilla

“Among the abundant theories on the origins of language and music, Mark Changizi’s book is unique in proposing a very precise hypothesis that leads to many testable and surprisingly accurate predictions. Bold, speculative, highly stimulating and entertaining, this book might hold a key to one of humanity’s longstanding mysteries.”

—Stanislas Dehaene, author of The Number Sense and Reading in the Brain

“Mark Changizi is always daring and original, and his theory of how we learned language and music from nature is truly unique, opening up our ears and eyes to a whole new vision of humanity.”

—David Rothenberg, author of Survival of the Beautiful and Why Birds Sing

“ Harnessed is one of the most interesting and original books I’ve read in the past few years. Changizi is an excellent writer, a compelling theorist, and relentless and ingenious in seeking evidence to back his theories. His approach to music is at once quite different from other work in the field and yet accessible and intelligible. He has answers where others don’t even know how to ask questions. What I like about his approach is that he shows how a brain that has been shaped in certain ways has latent capabilities that can be harnessed to tasks that are different from those that shaped it. That is an important idea and is certain to yield further insight.”

—William Benzon, author of Beethoven’s Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture

“A rich tapestry of hypotheses about why language and music sound the way they do.”

—Gary Marcus, professor of psychology at New York University, and author of Kluge: The Haphazard Evolution of the Human Mind

Praise for The Vision Revolution

“The novel ideas that Mr. Changizi outlines in The Vision Revolution —together with the evidence he does present—may have a big effect on our understanding of the human brain. Their implication is that the environments we evolved in shaped the design of our visual system according to a set of deep principles. Our challenge now is to see them clearly.”

— The Wall Street Journal

“The writing style is clear and captivating; the illustrations are nicely done and helpful.” — Choice

“Throughout the book, Changizi peppers his explanations with quick, fascinating visual exercises that help to drive his points home. . . . One thing is certain: The Vision Revolution will make you wonder the next time you notice someone blush, catch a ball or finish reading a magazine page.”

— Scientific American MIND

“Filled with optical illusions and simple experiments for the reader to perform, this book may be the most fun you’ll have learning about human cognition and evolution.”

— The Barnes & NobleReview online publication

“ The Vision Revolution is essential science writing, not because the ideas are definitely correct, but because the book can give the ordinary reader an glimpse of how science can work. Changizi is unusual in the range and quality of his ideas, and the clarity and humour with which he can lay them out; but the real value of this book is in the excitement of the scientific process that it conveys.” — The Psychologist

“The book contributes an interesting set of new ideas that are explained in a way that should engage a wide range of readers.”

— The Quarterly Review of Biology

“. . . fascinating book” — New Scientist

“. . . challenges common notions regarding sight . . . keep[s] them . . . dazzled.” — Publishers Weekly

“. . . see how a masterful theorist revisualizes one of the oldest subdisciplines of psychology.” — PsychToday

Harnessed

How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man

Mark Changizi

BenBella Books, Inc.

Dallas, Texas

Copyright

Copyright © 2011 by Mark Changizi

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

BenBella Books, Inc.

10300 N. Central Expressway, Suite 400

Dallas, TX 75231

benbellabooks.com

Send feedback to feedback@benbellabooks.com

Printed in the United States of America

10987654321

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title.

ISBN 978-1-935618-53-9

Editing by Erin Kelley

Copyediting by Annie Gottlieb

Proofreading by Michael Fedison

Cover design by David Drummond

Text design and composition by Neuwirth & Associates, Inc.

Printed by Berryville Graphics

Distributed by Perseus Distribution

perseusdistribution.com

To place orders through Perseus Distribution:

Tel: 800-343-4499

Fax: 800-351-5073

E-mail: orderentry@perseusbooks.com

Significant discounts for bulk sales are available.

Please contact Glenn Yeffeth at glenn@benbellabooks.com or (214) 750-3628.

Contents

IntroductionThe Reading Instinct

Chapter 1 Nature-Harnessing

Chapter 2Speech Events

Chapter 3Soylent Music

Chapter 4Musical Movement

ConclusionSo What Are We?

Encore

AppendixWord Events

Introduction

The Reading Instinct

At the beginning of his book The Language Instinct , Steven Pinker demonstrates the amazing power of language with an example. He writes:

The [language] ability comes so naturally that we are apt to forget what a miracle it is. So let me remind you with some simple demonstrations. Asking you only to surrender your imagination to my words for a few moments, I can cause you to think some very specific thoughts:

When a male octopus spots a female, his normally grayish body suddenly becomes striped . . .

Cherries jubilee on a white suit? Wine on an altar cloth? Apply club soda immediately . . .

When Dixie opens the door to Tad, she is stunned, because she thought he was dead . . .