Genes, Brains, and Language: An Epistemological Examination of how Genes can Underlie Human Cognitive Behavior

Abstract

How do genes encode for the formation of morphological structures such as the brain? Can genetic material also encode for behavior such as cognition, language, or culture? For many years, evolutionary biologists as well as scholars who work within extrabiological fields such as psychology, linguistics, and archaeology could only answer the above two questions in a speculative manner. This is because until recently, empirical observations on how genes underlie anatomy or behavior were generally lacking. This situation has now changed. Several genes ( MCPH1-MCPH6) have been implicated in the regulation of brain size and a first gene (the FOXP2 gene) has been identified that might underlie linguistic behavior. These discoveries allow us to finally test some of the long-standing theoretical assumptions on how genes do or do not determine morphology and behavior.

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