Evolution, lineages and human language

In life as in language, living beings act in ways that are multiply constrained as history works through them both directly and as mediated by what we identify as structures (e.g. genes or words). Emphasising direct effects, we replace the 'language metaphor of life' with the view that language extends the domain of the living. Just as a living proteome system manages without central control, so does language. Both life and language enable living beings to expand into -and create - new domains or Umwelten. Pursuing the parallel, we link emphasis on fitness with Berthoz's notion of simplexity and the distributed view of life/language/cognition. The semiosphere evolved, we suggest, as systems found novel ways of tapping into the bio-ecology's energetics. Accordingly, there are striking parallels between how regulatory genes influence body structures and how, in humans, community histories re-echo during conversation. In both cases, cross-talk prompts living systems to re-enact a lineage/community's music (or 'worldviews'). While rejecting Berthoz's residual neuro-centrism, we find 'simplexity' to be a powerful heuristic. Instead of proposing a single explanatory principle (e.g. computation, autonomy), lineages and communities build on meaning by altering ways of coordinating/cooperating. In all cases, life and language co-operate to bring forth new possibilities. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.