Could a technological society develop without language?

[paeng]

I think it's a combination of the bridge between brain hemispheres plus a tongue that can make various sounds sufficiently plus something like the opposing digit, or thumb, that allows for precision work.

Combine the three, and you have a species that can overwhelm others using a combination of increasing levels of technology and sophisticated coordination through a language that can also be used to transmit complex information, and not just orally but even through technologies via writing (also, thanks to the opposing digit), and used for those increasing levels of tech.

 

[Wayne Mack]

Imagine a creature with hundreds of limbs, massive brain power and centuries of productive career time. Such an entity would not need assistance and could conceive of an invention and take it to full development while still fully capable.

How would that individual creature making a discovery generate a society and then a technological society sans language?

 

[Swank]

How would that individual creature making a discovery generate a society and then a technological society sans language?

He gives or trades that discovery to other people, and they do the same. And I didn't say the discovery creates the society - neither did the OP.

The premise seems to be that you can have societies without language - because there are many observable ones in the animal world. But that such a society cannot either develop or broadly adopt technology without language. And I think that premise is faulty because aliens don't have to think or live or work like humans to be smart and inventive and social. They simply need to be fairly different from us.


Which maybe that is a tough idea to swallow when the criteria for alien in most people's minds is having something funny attached to your forehead and speaking oddly emphasized English.

Certified extra terrestrial:

 

[paeng]

As techne becomes more sophisticated, then more instructions would be needed, in turn necessitating transmission of such via language. The same techne would also be needed to store what's transmitted for others to follow.

 

[Montero]

Huh - made me realise all my thinking has been on the construction end not the user. Thinking about
1, The number of people today who don't cope with instruction manuals
2 How recent instruction manuals are.
3. I can remember seeing, and presumably there still are, shops and salesmen demonstrating how useful something is, and even home delivery with demo for the somewhat bigger ticket items.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

The number of people today who don't cope with instruction manuals

The paperless revolution has revolutionized instruction manuals into the realm of you see it once and you never see it again.

 

[paeng]

Also, they try to make things easier to use.

 

[-K2-]

Reading @Montero post on elephant communication, reminded me of problem I have in an unfinished novel idea. Namely:
How can a species develop a technological society without language?
It is trickier than you might at first think.
Ants nest or herd behaviour is one thing, wired in, but a developing a techno culture something else.

So first off, a language, be it words, thoughts, facial expressions or gestures, instinct (genetically passed triggered responses), accepted actions and responses, or whatever is a common, understood communication between two or more individuals. Without a language, there is no communication and, with no communication there is no society. The individuals go about their lives in interactive isolation and never directly share their ideas or opinions.

E.g., if it is an accepted practice that when I design a new tool (merely a picture), I tack it outside my front door for others to copy or learn from--nothing more--it means I/we are still communicating, which makes it a language of sorts.

If we eliminate language and society, individuals can still learn from one another through observation. Sometimes their inference will be accurate, others wrong, and I'd expect that misapplied uses may even result in improvements or advances. That said, any advancement would be excruciatingly slow with much of it lost before the next generation takes over and must grind through the same successes and failures again. Remember, no language, so information is not even shared with offspring.

If such a group ever advanced to more technologically advanced things (mechanics, chemical/gunpowder, electricity), progress would slow significantly more, and for many I suspect, stop. Not only that, such advancements would be unfathomably rare. Remember, each generation must learn the same things and make the same advancements the previous one did. So for the most part, such a collection of individuals would reach a point they could never progress any further since beings only live so long and they must go through the same learning curve as the previous generation.

In the end, the greatest invention of any individual in such a group would be the 'invention of a language.' Think about humans. To this day we still consider the printing press, radio, TV, and the internet as the greatest collective advancements of our society. The means to share those ideas so that more minds contribute to the collective knowledge base. Even AI requires such sharing or it would be nothing more than a dandified calculator. Language is so important to the formation of a 'society' that we even have a parable to explain how important.

Genisis 11:1-9
1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
2 And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
3 And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar.
4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."
5 The LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built.
6 And the LORD said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech."
8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.
9 Therefore it was called Babel, because there the LORD confused (balal) the language of all the earth, and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

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[Robert Zwilling]

The babel incident is strange. There already were groups of people with different languages building things. It was an engineering feat. One take has it that Alexander the Great was impressed by it and had it taken it apart, intending to ship it back home where it would have been reassembled. Only he died before it could be shipped out, so the locals carried everything away for their own personal use.

 

[-K2-]

The babel incident is strange. There already were groups of people with different languages building things. It was an engineering feat. One take has it that Alexander the Great was impressed by it and had it taken it apart, intending to ship it back home where it would have been reassembled. Only he died before it could be shipped out, so the locals carried everything away for their own personal use.

Perhaps 'one language' refers to mathematics. It may mean though many languages existed, the people found a way to communicate via a new language with each other.

Against the advice here--though I softened much of it and make it absolutely clear that English dominates all other languages--I use conlangs in my long-polished novel. The region is packed with people who spoke every other language except English to cause conflict amongst them. At one point the protagonist considers: It was dangerous enough that P-say was a pidgin. Since speakers of different languages had collectively devised it, P-say fostered harmony and cooperation without excluding any group or stripping their identity. Solidarity between them, against her.

Regardless, the point is reinforced that push-come-to-shove, a common means to communicate between different people is so important that the situation doesn't improve until the people devise their own form of pidgin. The government even tries to head it off with their own pidgin, meant to confuse and keep the people fractured.

Communication/language = means a society's people can work out their differences. The mastery of language--or communicating with others = power. According to the parable, those in power use language while they simultaneously fear the power of language.

As a p.s.: My protag ridicules the people for not previously using their common words, no matter their differences, and allowing the government to strip them of their power. All sides used the words, freedom, liberty, rights, justice, etc. So they all had a common foundation to come together and work out their conflicts before tyranny took hold--but they didn't apply those words to all, just themselves.

Point being, individuals without a common language (spoken or not) can never progress far. I don't believe a 'society' could develop otherwise.

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[Swank]

Having "differences" is as much a result of the kind of language we have as what we use it to mitigate them.

I've made this point many times: Natural human languages are mostly about creating and enforcing social structures. When we have to do something technical we move to created symbology and refer to physical acts.

 

[-K2-]

Having "differences" is as much a result of the kind of language we have as what we use it to mitigate them.

I've made this point many times: Natural human languages are mostly about creating and enforcing social structures. When we have to do something technical we move to created symbology and refer to physical acts.

Language is a tool, and the result stems from its application. How it is applied fosters differences or understanding. I would also disagree that human languages are 'mostly' about the application of power. Again, the intent and how it is applied determines social structures, which may work toward the positive. Symbology and physical acts to elicit a response are still forms of languages. One person writes down symbols or gestures, and if known by others, is understood. So they are communicating in a common language.

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[Swank]

Language is a tool, and the result stems from its application. How it is applied fosters differences or understanding. I would also disagree that human languages are 'mostly' about the application of power. Again, the intent and how it is applied determines social structures, which may work toward the positive. Symbology and physical acts to elicit a response are still forms of languages. One person writes down symbols or gestures, and if known by others, is understood. So they are communicating in a common language.

K2

If you parse my post, you'll note a drew a line between natural languages and symbology. Symbology is a type of language, but one so abstract from natural languages that you often can't speak them accurately. As in my earlier math example.

Natural languages aren't about "power", but relating socially significant concepts to each other - good, bad, love, hate, impressive, nice, tall, pretty, follow, ask, borrow, us, them, etc. We have adopted the content of natural language to use in more concrete forms - but early hominids had already invented fairly impressive technological skills before the rise of really impressive modern language skills. Language was essentially the final step to invent civilization. And what we see in civilization isn't just a wider spread use of technology, but the development of really complex (and wacky) social conventions.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

Human beings are exclusively in the business of exercising power, either by direct action, or by supporting the actions of others. Driving cars or using money is following the examples of others. Everything we do amplifies our impact, that is power. Communication can be achieved by sharing symbols, but understanding is a gray area that ranges from not understanding, understanding the immediate situation, to understanding the implications or not.

 

[Parson]

Human beings are exclusively in the business of exercising power, either by direct action, or by supporting the actions of others.

When I hear something like "Human beings are exclusively" something within me balks. I think you'd really have to do some mental gymnastics to see something like a runner turning around and helping another runner finish as being about exercising power. I'd call that exercising love. What about the soldier who throws himself on a grenade to save others?

**But I have to admit that it wasn't as easy to come up with negative examples as I thought it would be. I would agree with "almost exclusively."

 

[Robert Zwilling]

Everyone is doing it. Nature is a powerhouse and we are part of it. Everything experiences entropy, including us, it's energy bleeding out, that's handling power even if it does get away from us. Wearing cloths amplifies our actions, you can't get any more basic than that. Eating prepared foods and wearing premade clothes saves us energy and gives us power which we then use as we see fit. Recycled clothing is found in every part of the world. Shoes make a big difference as well. And that's only the basics.

 

[-K2-]

Before the invention of verbalized, word-based languages there were countless other languages, still in use and critical to convey meanings today. Grunts, nods, pointing, shrugs, facial expressions, and so on, all work as a language to communicate. E.g., if I set a trap, trip it, then nudge you and gesture toward it with a raised brow, most likely you would understand that I want you to now set it as I did. IOW, we have a common form of communication, a rudimentary language of demonstration, gesture, and expression which is likely enough. When more is needed, sounds (grunts, clicks, whistles) might be employed. This is how I suspect information was passed from one generation to the next, and since the next generation did not need to learn it on their own, humanity advanced.

Language develops with need and only advances as much as is needed. Advanced word-based languages only developed to express ideas or abstract thought that otherwise cannot be conveyed. However, those same primitive facial expressions, sounds, and gestures are still critical today to clarify our implication when the words could be taken many different ways.

Nevertheless, since any action to convey something between two or more people who understands its meaning is a language, without any language, there is no society and little to no advancement.

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[Wayne Mack]

I would interpret communication as something broader than language. I would include gestures, tone of voice, physical contact, facial expression, even paintings, sculpture, and music without lyrics as forms of communication that do not constitute language. These all express very general information within the current time frame. Language is needed to express specifics or about either the past or future.

Simple communication will allow social groupings to develop, but, without language, the social groups will be unlikely to grow beyond about a dozen and technology will be limited to simple, physical tool making.

 

[Swank]

I would interpret communication as something broader than language. I would include gestures, tone of voice, physical contact, facial expression, even paintings, sculpture, and music without lyrics as forms of communication that do not constitute language. These all express very general information within the current time frame. Language is needed to express specifics or about either the past or future.

Simple communication will allow social groupings to develop, but, without language, the social groups will be unlikely to grow beyond about a dozen and technology will be limited to simple, physical tool making.

So is the thread about any kind of communication, or something like complex human type language?

 

[Wayne Mack]

So is the thread about any kind of communication, or something like complex human type language?

The thread is specifically about language.

How can a species develop a technological society without language?

It does help, though, to try to define what constitutes language in order to be able to speculate on how a species might develop without it.