ABSTRACT
What Wittgenstein calls (1958, §242) ‘agreements in judgements’ are necessary to learning to talk. By coming to act consistently with such agreements, babies develop biomechanical constraints necessary to encultured life. Although grooming (e.g. Hinde, 1983; Dunbar, 1996) shows many primates consistently assess status, kinship, what it is allowed and so on, they do so independently of local behavioural dispositions or ‘habitus’ (Bourdieu, 1971, 1991). Human perceptual ecology, by contrast, is irreducibly historical. As infants get caught up in a matrix of conduct, by the fourth month, they begin to participate in culturally appropriate activity. Using primate biology, they find themselves adapting to historically derived practices. Below, I argue that these capacities for consistent behaviour enable babies to enter history.
