At the time when he developed the details of the concept of allostery, Jacques Monod had a central role in the creation of the Centre Royaumont pour une Science de l'Homme, with the idea to reconcile biology and philosophy. His ultimate view was that the link between both was ethical: there is an ethics of knowledge. Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, who had stayed for some time in his laboratory was most interested in science and philosophy, and it was natural for Monod to ask him to organise a group of reflection which would associate scientists for a variety of disciplines, with a strong emphasis on philosophy of sciences. This led to the creation of the Centre. The Abbey of Royaumont had long been a site where intellectuals and artists could convey and organise meetings where discussions went on, in the spirit of the Middle Ages disputatios. Together with Konstantin Jelenski (1922-1987) I was asked by Monod to develop new programmes aimed at understanding the relationships between the human body, brain in particular, and the most evolved and "abstract" features of human behaviour.

When the Centre closed I maintained for some time a working seminar, every wednesday afternoon at the conference room of the Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique. This seminar stopped in 1978 but eventually started again at the Institut Pasteur de Paris as a seminar in philosophy of sciences in 1990. In between, much of the previous programme had been reactivated in the creation of Fermo's Biennial Encounters, with the historian Ruggiero Romano (1923-2002) and the support of the Foundation Einaudi (developing the Enciclopedia Einaudi, with Fernando Gil (1937-2006)), and a research programme of anthropology of the west by non-westerners, starting in West Africa with Alain Le Pichon, and later developed in China under the name Transcultura, after a successful experience held by Umberto Eco – who had been previously involved in the last programme of the CRSH – at the University of Bologna. A first conference was held in Guangzhou in 1990, on the status of science and technology in the western world and in China.

The Unity of Man

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A Danchin, JP Changeux
Apprendre par stabilisation sélective de synapses en développement
In: "L'Unité de l'Homme" (Centre Royaumont pour une Science de l'Homme) Le Seuil (1974): 320-350

Animal communication and human communication

This research programme was set up in 1974 but never implemented. Several working papers in particular by Tom Pitcairn and Scott Atran were written as a preliminary set up of the programme. This situation led me to shift my research programme to a completely new domain, microbial genetics instead of neurobiology. A sequel of the programme was the Chomsky-Piaget meeting organized at the Abbaye de Royaumont in 1975

The Problem

Extensive use of symbolic language in a crative fashion is specific to Homo sapiens. The concept of communication, however, is a pervasive one, manifesting itself in an extensive variety of ways, from chemical markers among insects to bird songs, from animal signalling to human languages to the sophisticated sharing of cultural inheritance in literate societies.

The quest for the biological basis of language and communication and the search for the possibility of a common root of thes related phenomena in a fundamental anthropology implies a thorough analysis of the most recent findings in the neurosciences and a fresh review of some of the basic mechanisms of evolution. The solid framework of physiology and of the dynamics of evolution lends itself to a re-definition of certain traits in order to account for behavioral adaptation, learning abilities, and symbolic modes of communication. The understanding of the development of structures allowing for the constitution of a great variety of messages based on a combination of discrete units which are in themselves value-free is a major theoretical challenge.

The present somewhat primitive state of investigations in these fields is partly due to the fact that a solid experimental praxis has been developed for animals only, leaving out the most complex and fascinating repository of these phenomena: the human species. On the other hand, anthropology, sociolinguistics and psychology have developed autonomous logics of investigation whose direct application to anatomicla and physiological data is very difficult if not impossible.

Without denying the autonomy of these levels of description and without pretending to reduce linguistics and psychology to neuronal circuitry, a new intermediate level of analysis seems nevertheless to be attainable through a cautious but imaginative cross-confrontation of models, theories, data and techniques.

The initial aim of this project — and the first problem to overcome — is to bring together the enormous and often redundant wealth of data on physiology, anatomy, evolution and behavior of non-human species, and to confront them with the symmetrical but independent theories and experiments in the psycholinguistic disciplines.

As a consequence of these critical confrontations, lines of convergence and divergence will emerge more clearly, hopefully permitting a re-phrasing of the fundamental problems. Once this necessary and comprehensive analysis is acieved, and new investigative strategies and methodologies worked out, lines of development for tuture resarch will be charted and suitable model systems chosen accordingly.

The Approaches

A complementary study of animal and human communication provides a particularly auspicious opportunity for bringing the life sciences and the human sciences into a common focus on an anthropological problem whose biological basis is still at the early stage of exploration.

Five major lines of enquiry are presently envisaged:

a) A study of the development and the structural organization of communication networks along the phylogenetic tree, with special emphasis on the genetic aspects of the problem. The analysis of genetic dterminations on the communication patterns of the various species and the selective pressures that these latter exert on the species' genome can yield new ways of examining adatation and group organization in living systems.

b) The mechanisms of learning and their genetic envelope. Song-learning in birds, and the transmission of acquired skills as a phenomenon of individual-to-individual communication. Learning and communication abilities. Learning and contingent events.

c) The biology of human language with special emphasis on the logic of inference to man of experimental evidence regrading animals. A survey of neuropsychological data (aphasia, alexia, split brain surgery). Voice versus writing, words versus songs, and the role of rhythms on memory and learning in man.

d) Epistemology of communication systems. Need to clarify the distinction between human language on the one hand and communication systems in general on the other hand, from the point of view of the science of knowldedge ("Is the genetic code a language?" – "Is the bee communication system a language?"). The problem of levels of analysis. Context and meaning as categories of linguistic analysis. The debate on semantics and the possibility of a non-semantic approach to linguistics. Independence and inter-dependence of the different levels of analysis (phonological, semantical, syntactical, generative, structural, historical, evolutionary, etc.).

e) Socialization of language and infant-caretaker relationship. Language pedagogy in man, and learning through observation in animals. Comparative study of social dynamics of communication in different societies. The role of random events and of internal constraints in communication systems. The ontogeny of communication.

f) Arts, aesthetics and super-symbolic communication. The artistic and poetic message as a communication device. Individual versus collective modes of elaboration and interpretation of super-symbolic messages.

The Method

As a preliminary step, a small team of rapporteurs will work together for a period ranging from one to three months, eventually paying visits to laboratories and individual scholars in the disciplines involved.

Critical erports elaborated by this interdisciplinary team will then be circulated and discussed at meetings in Europe and America bringing together the original research team and changing groups of senior researchers.

The object of these meetings will be to refine the findings of the original team, to work these existing findings into form for publication, and to lay out new lines of enquiry. In principle such meetings would last two days and would convene 10 to 12 scholars chosen in large part by the members of the original research team.

A possible composition of the original reasearch team would be:

• One neurobiologist with some background in linguistics and experimental psychology: Antoine Danchin, Institut Pasteur de Paris
• One ethologist with some background in neurobiology: Tom Pitcairn, Percha (Munich)
• One linguist oriented toward formal approaches: François Dell, CNRS, Paris
• One linguist oriented toward psychological experimental approaches: David Premack, University of California or a young collaborator
• One linguist with special competence in semantic problems: Jerry Katz, MIT, or a young collaborator
• One art critic with emphasis on communication theory: Umberto Eco, Parma, or a young collaborator

Once again, the list of names is tentative and neither exhaustive nor exclusive, designed rather to indicate the kind of specialists we have in mind for the project.

A preliminary list of specialists to be consulted during the planning phase, or who could take part in some capacity or other in the three year project:

• Seymour Papert, Department of Artificial Intelligence, MIT
  
• Jerry A. Fodor, Department of Psychology, MIT
  
• C.B. Trevarphon, Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh
• J. de Ajuriaguerra, Clinique Psychiâtrique de l'Université de Genève
• Vincent Bloch, Department of Psychophysiology, Université des Sciences et Techniques, Lille
• Roy John, neurophysiologist
• Peter Marler, ethologist, Rockefeller University, New York
• Ursula Bellugi-Klima, psycholinguist, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies
• Ed Klima, linguist, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies
• Salvador E. Luria (1912-1991), Department of Biology, MIT
• Jacques Mehler, psycholinguist, CNRS, Paris
• Heidelise Rivinus, St. Mary's Hospital Medical School, London
  
• Jean-Pierre Changeux, Institut Pasteur, Paris
• Dan Sperber, Laboratoire d'Ethnologie, University of Paris
  
• Gilles Fauconnier, linguist, University of Paris
• Derek Freemar, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Australian National University
• B. Hassenstein, Biologisches Institut, Albert-Ludwigs Universität
• Hans Kummer, Institute of Biology, University of Zürich, Switzerland
• Christian Vogel, Department of Anthropology, Georg-August Universität, Göttingen
• K. Immelmann, Zoologisches Institut, T. U. Carolo-Wilhemina, Braunschweigh
• Paul Ekman, San Francisco, California
• N. Blurton-Jones, Insitute of Child Health, London
• Erving Goffman (1922-1982) Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania
• W.C. McGrew, Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh
• Valentino Braitenberg, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, New York
• Michael Argyle, Institute of Experimental Psychology, Oxford
• R.L. Birdwhistell, kinesics, University of Pennsylvania
• J. van Hooff, ethology and socio-ecology, Universiteit Utrecht, Holland
  
• P.E. Meehl, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota

Several texts were written in support of this programme, in particulat texts by Tom Pitcairn and Scott Atran.

My own contribution was focused on The Biological Features of the Problem

The debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsy and Jean Piaget were invited by the CRSH to debate on the theme: "Language and Learning" at the Abbaye de Royaumont in october 1975.

On usage of the term phenocopy

The Endicott House meeting on language and neurobiology