ABSTRACT
What is generally accepted, however, is the evolution of species. The evolution of behaviour is certainly finding a growing number of new advocates, who deserve credit for having succeeded in reopening the nature-nurture debate. Future data and debate in the neurosciences will tell whether their conception of nature is the right one. In mainstream linguistics, evolution is simply taboo-species evolve, behaviour has perhaps an evolutionary background, but it is adamantly maintained, no doubt for ‘higher motives’, that languages do not evolve (Bichakjian 1993). The situation is comparable with the one denounced by Richard M.Restak, who reminds his reader that
even as recently as the late 1960s…psychiatry-certainly American psychiatry-was heavily committed to the idea that mental illness resulted from psychological causes. Those few psychiatrists and psychiatric trainees who suggested that much mental illness might have physical causes…were invited to pursue other specialty interests.
