Feel free to remove this, mods, if it’s too tangential to modern science, but I thought the community might find this early nature vs. nurture hypothesis amusing
To be fair, given the model he was working with, this was actually a descent experiment so long as you ignore the ethical implications.
Something tells me the results were displeasing
He caught one of the nursemaids speaking G*rman to the infant and the experiment had to be aborted. RIP
I think after it’s born, it’s just a murder.
And, honestly, calling it “the experiment” is pretty rough.
According to Wikipedia:
“The experiments were recorded by the monk Salimbene di Adam in his Chronicles, who was generally extremely negative about Fredrick II (portraying his calamities as parallel to the Biblical plagues in The Twelve Calamities of Emperor Frederick II) and wrote that Frederick encouraged ‘foster-mothers and nurses to suckle and bathe and wash the children, but in no ways to prattle or speak with them; for he would have learnt whether they would speak the Hebrew language (which he took to have been the first), or Greek, or Latin, or Arabic, or perchance the tongue of their parents of whom they had been born. But he laboured in vain, for the children could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments.’”
So, as you’d expect of someone raised without any formal language, other means of communication were necessary to get the children to do anything. The last sentence seems to indicate that they didn’t respond well to people who appeared unhappy with them.
But he laboured in vain, for the children could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments.
Am I the only one who interpretes this as “well, they died”?
It sounds to me it’s saying you had to do things like clap your hands to get their attention, gesture to communicate what you wanted them to do, and that you had to do so kindly and patiently or else they may not respond well. Alternatively, maybe it was the children who had to clap their hands and gesture, but then I’m not sure how they’d speak blandishments (kind, gentle encouragements, like “good job!”) to others.
This should be obvious, but even children will invent basic language. You only need to look as far as the deaf community for that, that always came up with pidgin languages even as they were forced to try and learn spoken language.
There’s an interesting free short documentary here: https://www.bslzone.co.uk/watch/history-deaf-education-1
His face when they just make incomprehensible grunts and poop on the rug.
They ended up developing a rudimentary sign language based on facial expressions and gestures. Because the women who were taking care of them were strictly instructed to never speak… But they were never given any instructions regarding facial expressions or gestures. So the kids learned that expressions and gestures are how to communicate.
This was perhaps done to “prove a hole in Adam and Eve story”? They were manufactured as adults, but might then lack the childish capacity for language learning. If created with fully developed language capacity, then why not create them with full understanding of obedience to God’s will. It would take a lot of time and patience to teach God’s language at a pace suitable for undeveloped beings made of dust and ribs.
Some goat herders in the bronze age had this fun story about why snakes, the smartest animal, didn’t have legs. Also the storm God of wrath that demands the blood of the first born babies or he will strike you dead, made a golem and named him ‘red man’ and he made a woman from the golem parts, and there were trees of concepts, and a flaming sword, and uhh… yeah it kind of went off the rails. This is why I only worship Ashera. El and Adoni are such dicks.
