Watching Lily slowly expand her phonemic repertoire, and begin to show the first signs of language (as opposed to just vocabulary) is an absolutely phenomenal sight, that could be easy to overlook. A staff of researchers could spend their lives training a monkey, and that monkey will never be able to do what Lily (and most every other nearly-2 year old's) mind will do over the next year - learn to speak. She'll develop those skills with nurturing parents around her, but would do the same in any environment where she is exposed to people speaking. She'll do that not because our brains are so complex that they naturally pick up any language it is exposed to (during that brief window of the first 4 years), but because that's how the brain was designed. We are programmed for language.
The development of language is made even more amazing when you realize that it's only the visual part of how her mind will be shaped as this programming begins to take effect. Language rests on a logical interpretation of the world - causation. For example, we can imagine a person standing next to a unicorn, but can not imagine the same thing with the additional requirement that one is NOT to the left of the other. So, by design, our minds are bound to logic (causation), but not to reality (we can still imagine). So, we know where the cup ends and the table begins, and can differentiate between that cup and the shards of glass it becomes if it falls to the floor. This is all due to the base programming - the awesome software design - in our head, that was there from the start.
As parents we have the ability to point the child in one direction or another, but it's a tweak rather then any grand effect. That is not to say that parenting has anything less than a drastic effect, but it does us best to remember that the prototypical child comes pre-programmed in many facets.
As a computer programmer and human being, I'm in awe. The complexity of the human eye has often been cited as proof of creation over evolution. The eye is protected perfectly in the skull, 180 degree movement, auto focus, stereoscopic (as in two, to give us depth but isn't it amazing how we only 'see' one image?)....and that's just humans -- every animal species ocular set is just as well 'designed'. The focus is always the hardware though - when it's the software - the mind that interprets that data which those two perfectly placed camera's return, that is really amazing. What we have here is intricacy and complexity beyond human comprehension, so to assume it arose from anything but a higher intelligence is irrational.
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