The Miracle of Language

Consider the first pioneers of language, whoever and whatever they were. It must have been a social thing - in family life shared sonic forms crystallized, and facilitated coordination. These forms offered purchase for one mind upon others. They must have seemed to be products of those minds and bodies, dependent on particular cognitive and physiological adaptations and serving life's needs.

The hand shapes the rock and the rock shapes the hand, and so tools are bound to tool makers and tool users. But what happened to language makers? Somehow their tool outgrew its purpose. Language renders forms that offer our minds purchase not just upon the minds of other language users but upon our world, the universe, possibilities. Language is an accidental cosmic trick. We seemed to forge it in a grand epochal project, for us, by us - not even for all humans, but for our clans, our cognates - and in a flourish we saw it was a piece of something singular and eternal.