NATURALISM AND THEORIES OF THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE

The question of the origin of language is becoming a purely biological thematics. The caricatural interpretation of the Darwinian theory is one of the main causes of such an approach. However, the English naturalist argues in favour of the independence of the social sciences through the deselection of natural selection. The question of the origin of language presents the particularity to link both natural sciences and social sciences. The conditions of emergence of language have to be explained biologically, through natural selection, while its development has to be explained sociologically, in the context of the deselection of natural selection. In other words, the Darwinian theory represents a solution to the problem of the origin of language avoiding both biologism and sociologism. Thanks to such an approach, an interdisciplinary dialogue can be developed between natural and social sciences, without threatening the independence of the latter.