The Phenomenon of Language.wmv
Channel: David Rudmin
Date: 2013-02-06

A classical (Platonic, Aristotelian, & Scholastic), human-nature-based demo of how language comes to be.  Useful for oral foreign language classes, and linguistics classes.  It offers the most important historical as well as experiential arguments for concluding that language did not arise 'upward' from meaningless animal grunts into content-laden words (as biological evolutionists argue), but rather devolved 'downward'  from pre-existing rational thought, down into sensate oral communication, and ultimately into physical writing (as rationalist philosophers argue).

**Please visit my website, www.scholastic-philosophy.com, and download the trial edition from the bottom of the homepage, to learn more.  This topic occurs within Unit II.  


Lesson Plan:  Encourage students to draw a 3-layer picture of human nature in their notes, and add to it as the video places new faculties or objects at each level.  After the video, review the dimensions, the faculties and objects at each level, the 2 major processes, and the 'circling' by which language is spread from person to person.