Colin Baker, Review of Sarah Winter’s ‘Darwin’s Saussure: Biosemiotics and Race in Expression’

摘要

In "Darwin.s Saussure", Sarah Winter admirably confronts a range of seemingly disparate debates currently raging among Darwinian historians, medical sociologists and scholars of modern linguistics, ultimately producing a series of controversial arguments which demand the attention of academics currently working in each of these fields. With varying degrees of success, Charles Darwin has been upheld as a central figure in the histories of a vast spread of intellectual disciplines. Here, Winter.s central aim is to establish Darwin as a pivotal player in the foundation of modern linguistics, posturing that the naturalist bore a key influence on the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. An impressive range of evidence is marshalled in support of this cause. Winter firmly establishes that Darwin was not only well-versed in language theories developed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but that this .linguistic. background actively informed much of the naturalist.s research, manifesting itself in both his notebooks, his correspondence and the seminal On the Origin of Species (1859).