Sorry. The Kingdom of Speech (Book) : Wolfe, Tom : The maestro storyteller and reporter provocatively argues that what we think we know about speech and human evolution is wrong. The Kingdom of Speech is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech — not evolution — is responsible for humanity’s complex societies and achievements. Evolution has such mountains of evidence backing it--from biological, geological, paleontological, medical and chemical bases--that any book purporting to declare that speech is somehow an event, or phenomenon, apart from evolution is, to be blunt, hokum. One who, after critiquing theorists who rule from insulated rooms, depicts himself in that exact setting for his book's final vision." Posts about The Kingdom of Speech written by bymichael2012. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of, Published This book is different in that Wolfe has ventured into scientific theory - or actually, holy writ, i.e. 1. In that regard, the KSA has readily undertaken its share of the efforts, for instance: 1 The speech of the Delegation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the Second Session of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, scheduled to take place in Geneva, Switzerland, on 16 th – 19 th June, 2009. In his new book The Kingdom of Speech, Tom Wolfe argues that speech and not evolution is responsible for the many achievements of humans.Wolfe, the author of The Right Stuff and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, went on NPR the other day to talk about the book. In the long game, the kingdom belongs to him. Speech and language are two distinct forms of communication. Download for offline reading, highlight, bookmark or take notes while you read The Kingdom of Speech. Did Wolfe touch a lot of raw nerves with this book? (I mean, these gods are worshipped so devotedly so as to make you ill). Language, speech, still an enigma to some degree even after our wandering this rock for as long as we have. Guy Deutscher's Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages attempts to convince us of what the book advertises right there in its subtitle. It’s probably because that’s the only way you get through against an establishment that stifles or ignores criticism. THE KINGDOM OF SPEECH is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech--not evolution--is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements. Now the maestro storyteller turns his attention to the mystery behind the creation of hiw own most important tool.In The Kingdom of Speech… I just loved it. It is written at breathtaking speed, motivated by the power of language, with some great protagonists and antagonists, showing that science is also, but not only, a social affair. If language was exclusively auditory (having it's origin in bird song) the deaf would not only remain mute but illiterate. Defenders of the faith? The Kingdom of Speech is best read, then, with Wolfe not just as a narrator-historian but as a character. The Kingdom of Speech is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech — not evolution — is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements. This being Tom Wolfe, the ponderous debate over language and evolution takes on a kind of pop-art pizzazz…. Welcome back. It had its funny parts and interesting moments, but it barely seemed to touch the topic of speech, spending the first half on evolution’s history, the second on the wars over language, and the last chapter focused on speech. First there was the word. That seems fitting, because The Kingdom of Speech fits in well with From Bauhaus to Our House, Wolfe’s scathing critique of modern architecture, and The Painted Word, his 1975 lambasting of the modern art scene. Alternate title: "The Wrong Stuff. Tom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, takes us on an eye-opening journey that is sure to arouse widespread debate. Book Review — The Kingdom of Speech — Part II Although Darwin held off writing up his ideas for 20 years, fearing the reaction he knew would come from the church, the criticisms that really bothered him the most were those of fellow intellectuals about the evolution of language. Or was there?Before Tom Wolfe was a bestselling novelist, he was a groundbreaking journalist. Ehhhh I dunno, 4 stars for the prose and maybe like 2.5 for the content; still good, but certainly not Wolfe at his best. The Kingdom of Speech is best read, then, with Wolfe not just as a narrator-historian but as a character. Slaughters holy scientific cows left, right and center. He also used way too many ellipses and said "solar plexus" an unreasonable number of times in such a short book. A great entertaining read. Tom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, takes us on an eye-opening journey that is sure to arouse widespread debate. We’d love your help. I hated his writing style which came across as pompous, over confident, and rude. If you have less than half a brain, please do not read this as it is pure misinformation and you are doing yourself a disservice. This is the type of rhetoric that damages the progression of science. The Kingdom of Speech is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech - not evolution - is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements. He makes several claims in the book that show how uneducated he is. Tom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, takes us on an eye-opening journey that is sure to arouse widespread debate. Wolfe was educated at Washington and Lee Universities and also at Yale, where he received a PhD in American studies. A senior highschool student could come up with stronger arguments FOR his claims. Tom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, takes us on an eye-opening journey that is sure to arouse widespread debate. They promise a “paradigm-shifting argument” about the origins of human language — but while the book does champion a profoundly important revision to our understanding of human development, it won’t offer you a particularly comprehensive or insightful take on that new paradigm. ", This book forms a loose trilogy with "The Painted Word," Wolfe's dissection of art and art criticism, and "From Bauhaus to Our House," his similar evisceration of architectural theory. It is written at breathtaking speed, motivated by the power of language, with some great protagonists and antagonists, showing that science is also, but not only, a social affair. I normally would give this a 4 star rating, but I noticed there are a lot of pained 1 star reviews, so I upped my rating to a 5 to bring back some balance to the total average. He makes several claims in the book that show how uneducated he is. THE KINGDOM OF SPEECH is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech–not evolution–is responsible for humanity’s complex societies and achievements. I just loved it. It’s probably because that’s the only way you get through against an establishment that stifles or ignores crit. This is one of the worst books I've ever read. “To say that animals evolved into man is like saying that Carrara marble evolved into Michelangelo's David. Performance 5 out of 5 stars. It helped me understand how little understood language is so that I could more properly assess the potential of NLP. The Kingdom of Speech is… The disrespect is delicious. Darwin sought not just a workable theory of evolution in general, but a theory that would explain, without resort to God, The Descent of Man, as he titled the sequel to On the Origin of Species. – Nate Hopper, Time Wolfe's logic is completely lacking and shows how not arrive at a theory through proper scientific method. The Kingdom of Speech is a paradigm-shifting argument that speech - not evolution - is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements. Tom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, takes us on an eye-opening journey that is sure to arouse widespread debate. This is one of the worst books I've ever read. —Nate Hopper, Time Dr. A. He also appears unable to meaningfully back/cite/logically argue any of his lofty claims. One who, after critiquing theorists who rule from insulated rooms, depicts himself in that exact setting for his book's final vision." Poor Wolfe simply cannot dissect what he thinks he understands. Excellent. This book is poorly argued, makes no sense, and is generally extremely annoying. The Kingdom of Speech Tom Wolfe. But you have to go back to 1981 and From Bauhaus to Our House to find Wolfe’s last extended, book-length piece of non-fiction. If you are or were part of the gang, you should probably read it. Now the maestro storyteller turns his attention to the mystery behind the creation of hiw own most important tool.In The Kingdom of Speech… Remember that scie. ), Perhaps more along the lines that those who gave the book one star are defenders of scientific protocols for verification of proof. Perhaps the impetus for writing it came from the awareness that science, while in the 150 years that separates us from Darwin, had invented relativity and microbiology, despite intense effort had failed to produce even a compelling theory regarding the origin of speech. See all 3 questions about The Kingdom of Speech…, The Millions' Most Anticipated, Too: The Great Second-Half 2016 Nonfiction Book Preview. Now the maestro storyteller turns his attention to the mystery behind the creation of hiw own most important tool.In The Kingdom of Speech… First there was the word. I do like Tom Wolfe, so reader beware I’m probably biased. I recommend this book to you if you have more than half a brain, so that you can muse at the shortcomings. Very fun. Well...! This is one. With that said, I was happy to find that I had not yet read all of Wolfe's non-fiction (thanks to. Tom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, takes us on an eye-opening journey that is sure to arouse widespread debate. 12 people found this helpful Overall 5 out of 5 stars. This one you figure, try it, maybe? This vapid piece of preening ignorance will stand as a pointless landmark (or better yet, sink like a witless stone) to sturm-und-drang self-regard. I now want to read everything he's written. A curiously entertaining little book. Seems a lot of 1 star reviews don't like Wolfe's take down on Darwin. Five stars for making fun of Darwin (for the despicable way he double-crossed Alfred Wallace) and Chompsky (for being an armchair intellectual nincompoop). If it doesn’t come over as a reasoned and academic attack, and includes a massive amount of mudslinging. The style sticks to the middle ground between journalism and the best, most entertaining fiction. First there was the word. This is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech - not evolution - is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements. Wolfe takes Darwin’s evolution and Chomsky’s linguistics to task in a way that only Wolfe can, and he does it by following the positions of Wallace (on evolution) and Everett (on language) sympathetically in their struggle against the weight of academic 'authority'. I used it as additional ammun. by Tom Wolfe. Or was there?Before Tom Wolfe was a bestselling novelist, he was a groundbreaking journalist. His world , though, is literary, not scientific, not one predicated on hard facts, which means that its one thing to eviscerate a Mailer, an Updike or a John Irving on the basis of having a quicker, snarkier tongue and quite another to put on the gloves and climb into the ring to take on science. The sharply-dressed wordsmith returns with The Kingdom of Speech, his first non-fiction work since his 2000 collection of essays, Hooking Up. Or was there?Before Tom Wolfe was a bestselling novelist, he was a groundbreaking journalist. But you have to go back to 1981 and From Bauhaus to Our House to find Wolfe’s last extended, book-length piece of non-fiction. He also used way too many ellipses and said "solar plexus" an unreasonable number of times in such a short book. Maybe Tom Wolfe should be commended for diving headfirst into a complicated, even esoteric, debate raging inside linguistics and exposing it to a far larger audience than ever before. The Kingdom of Speech is an extraordinary display of intellectual independence. 1. (I mean, these gods are worshipped so devotedly so as to make you ill). Buy this book. 25 August 2016. The Kingdom of Speech is best read, then, with Wolfe not just as a narrator-historian but as a character. Now the maestro storyteller turns his attention to the mystery behind the creation of hiw own most important tool.In The Kingdom of Speech… He's got a remarkable gift with words, so it is not remarkable that he would turn is attention in this book to the subject of how we got them. Speech is what man pays homage to in every moment he can imagine.” ― Tom Wolfe, The Kingdom of Speech The maestro storyteller and reporter provocatively argues that what we think we know about speech and human evolution is wrong. —Nate Hopper, Time The Kingdom of Speech Quotes Showing 1-30 of 31 “To say that animals evolved into man is like saying that Carrara marble evolved into Michelangelo's David. Now the maestro storyteller turns his attention to the mystery behind the creation of hiw own most important tool.In The Kingdom of Speech… Wolfe gets off some magnificent and irreverent lines, aimed at the neo-Darwinian hand-wavers. Perhaps more along the lines that those who gave the book one star are defenders of scientific protocols for verification of proof. I now want to read everything he's written. I used it as additional ammunition for a talk about natural language processing (NLP), which is a machine learning (= AI) application. Wolfe , of course, is a former journalist, a novelist who overrates his worth, and a clever ironist who can catch the flaws and contradictions in the statements of other creative writers. THE KINGDOM OF SPEECH is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech--not evolution--is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements.From Alfred Russel Wallace, the Englishman who beat Darwin to the theory of natural selection but later renounced it, and through the controversial work of modern-day anthropologist Daniel Everett, who defies the current wisdom that … White stuff: Tom Wolfe at home / AP. The maestro storyteller and reporter provocatively argues that what we think we know about speech and human evolution is wrong. I generally enjoy Tom Wolfe, but this is an exception. This comment about Darwin’s view of speech stuck out (emphasis mine): He could not figure out what it was. First, he rounds up the usual emperors in their usual new clothes, parades them before us, and pokes them with sticks that wouldn't hurt so bad i. I was scrolling through thousands of my library's digital offerings when I saw this and thought, "Hmmm...I've never read any Tom Wolfe; maybe I should give him a try." If you ever wanted to read a book about a scientific field or two (in Wolfe's trademark flamboyant prose) that was utterly innocent of any understanding of science, here's your chance. I am sure it is possible to write a great book with this technique and perhaps Tom Wolfe has already done it, but this one is unfortunately a complete mess. David Sexton. Most troublesome of all, Wolfe acted like an annoyed child each time he had to “correct” himself with the “new politically correct” terms for indigenous people, making it partway through the word “native” EVERY TIME. The Kingdom of Speech is not a journal paper but a mass market book intended to open these questions for the general public's enlightenment. This is the type of rhetoric that damages the p. This book is, simply put, the heresy of an uneducated washed-up author. This applies across the board , in all areas of research endeavor, whether biology, astrophysics, or linguistics. 2. Tom Wolfe's The Kingdom of Speech adds to a growing body of popular books on the topic of how language, thought, and culture influence one another, and more specifically on which one ultimately holds most sway. This is not because he disagrees with the standard theory, but because his arguments consist of claiming there is no proof. Tom Wolfe wrote a book on a subject where he has no knowledge. I was scrolling through thousands of my library's digital offerings when I saw this and thought, "Hmmm...I've never read any Tom Wolfe; maybe I should give him a try." A senior highschool student could come up with stronger arguments FOR his claims. / 200 pages. I'm not sure that I disagree - I'll wait until I've read the book to dete, Your rebuttal would be compelling if it weren't just an appeal to authority. Tom Wolfe is back!!! First, he rounds up the usual emperors in their usual new clothes, parades them before us, and pokes them with sticks that wouldn't hurt so bad if they'd observed just a modicum of decorum. Wolfe's "Kingdom of Speech" theory can be refuted by two words: Helen Keller. For a reporter-then-novelist to write about evolution is like me writing a treatise on brain surgery. The Kingdom of Speech. This is a bit like his classic attacks on pretentious flim flammery, This book is, simply put, the heresy of an uneducated washed-up author. Other articles where The Kingdom of Speech is discussed: Tom Wolfe: Wolfe returned to nonfiction with The Kingdom of Speech (2016), in which he sharply criticized Charles Darwin and Noam Chomsky as he argued that language was not a result of evolution. The Kingdom of Speech is best read, then, with Wolfe not just as a narrator-historian but as a character. Those two books also dealt with a smaller topic - the conflict between American independent thought and the tendency of American intellectuals to follow European "isms," one of Wol. Combining the vagueness of informal language with the pomposity of formal language, Wolfe's style is grating and awkward for non-fiction writing, but this book is short enough that it didn't accumulate into intolerable for me. In The Kingdom of Speech, Wolfe makes the captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech—not evolution—is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements. After Wolfe's death I looked for books he authored that I hadn't read. The Kingdom of Speech: Tom Wolfe / Little, Brown Pub. From Alfred Russel Wallace, the Englishman who beat Darwin to the theory of natural selection but later renounced it, and through the controversial work of modern-day anthropologist Daniel Everett, who defies the current wisdom that language is hard-wired in humans, Wolfe examines the solemn, long-faced, laugh-out-loud zig-zags of Darwinism, old and Neo, and finds it irrelevant here in the Kingdom of Speech. Superficially, this book is about linguistics but not really. If you have always been suspicious of the Chomsky hagiography gang, you will enjoy this book. The Kingdom of Speech is a paradigm-shifting argument that speech - not evolution - is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements. Outstanding. He has them eating out of his hand as he loudly, and drunkenly, has a one sided debate about language, Darwinism, and his own wit. Protocol requires if new evidence emerges that credibly challenges established conclusions, scientists reexamine the issue at hand and alter theories as required to accommodate new data. Story 5 out of 5 stars. Both Huxley's in his day and now Chomsky's forces use tactics of smear, threat and professional ruin to exclude any contrary opinions and thereby create a consensus of fear rather than allow the chips to fall as they may. This is a book that treats Charles Darwin as a toplofty prig and Noam Chomsky as a haughty fake—which is to say it aims to harpoon two of the biggest whales of modern secular thought. The text, while clearly under-researched, still touches on enough important. The Kingdom of Speech is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech — not evolution — is responsible for humanity’s complex societies and achievements. The Kingdom of Speech is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech -- not evolution -- is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements. “The Kingdom of Speech” is meant to be a provocation rather than a dissertation. Wolfe takes Darwin’s evolution and Chomsky’s linguistics to task in a way that only Wolfe can, and he does it by following the positions of Wallace (on evolution) and Everett (on language) sympathetically in their struggle against the weight of academic 'authority'. Now the maestro storyteller turns his attention to the mystery behind the creation of hiw own most important tool.In The Kingdom of Speech… That seems fitting, because The Kingdom of Speech fits in well with From Bauhaus to Our House, Wolfe’s scathing critique of modern architecture, and The Painted Word, his 1975 lambasting of the modern art. This book is a Chestertonian take-down of Darwin and Chomsky. One who, after critiquing theorists who rule from insulated rooms, depicts himself in that exact setting for his book's final vision." primary homework help victorians famous. Groundbreaking journalist and bestselling novelist Tom Wolfe, author of The Bonfire of the Vanities, A Man in Full, and I Am Charlotte Simmons, now applies his virtuosity to the source of all of humanity's achievements. Finding books | Z-lib We are made to laugh at their self-inflicted ridiculousness before they shuffle off the stage in shame. This book forms a loose trilogy with "The Painted Word," Wolfe's dissection of art and art criticism, and "From Bauhaus to Our House," his similar evisceration of architectural theory. There is a cardinal distinction between man and animal, a…dividing line as abrupt and immovable as a cliff: namely, speech.” As is typical with Wolfe, he finds considerations of class and fashion crucial to his argument. 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