[MD] The Unsocialised Ape

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Ian]
In the same way as biological patterns can be fossilized in the 
physical. Social (and intellectual) patterns can be "fossilized" in the 
biological.

[Arlo]
I have no doubt that intellectual activity shapes the trajectory of 
social evolution, and social activity shapes the trajectory of 
biological evolution, and that biological activity shapes the trajectory 
of inorganic evolution, in similar form the foundations shaping the 
trajectory of subsequent emergent levels.

But social patterns are NOT biological patterns, and cannot be reduced 
to biological patterns. You can encode, say, an intellectual pattern in 
the inorganic electrical signals of a computer, but that computer will 
not spontaneously write a book. For the encoding to have meaning, it 
takes (in addition to the encoder) and decoder capable of understanding 
and interacting with patterns on that level.

While the data is slim (who wants to apply for an IRB release to drop a 
newborn child onto a deserted island?), the data we do have 
categorically denies your position, the "feral children" we have 
witnessed (who even WERE socialized for several years) exhibited no 
greater behavior or agency than a wild animal. Helen Keller described 
her pre-language time as a wave that never grounded, she had no 
thoughts, no social behavior, and was until the point she, through the 
shared attention with another human, learned "water", she was an animal. 
She had no spontaneous language or intellect that emerged in her head 
because of some biological fossilization.

And to say that a socialized adult is dropped onto a deserted island 
demonstrates that we don't need others to form social or intellectual 
patterns is inane, of course we have the capacity for memory. But even 
the little data we have on adults being kept in isolation indicates that 
there is a rapid loss of social and intellectual capacity when the 
social and intellectual surround is removed.