us. Essentially this discussion revolves around the same set of categories of
thought that appear with the nature versus culture dichotomy, and also in
the arguments over reductionist analyses in anthropology. Indeed the mas-
ter trope that guides many arguments between natural and social scientists
seems often to be the same nature/culture categorization. Equally, all
resolutions of these arguments inevitably end up by breaking the frame
itself, mediating if not obliterating the dichotomy. Cognitive scientists have
approached this point by acknowledging, as Whitehouse does ( 2001 ,
p. 209), the importance of social learning and the fact that we must study
the properties of the mind“in its environment” (p. 209, emphasis in
original). This in turn implies what we would call a processual approach,
seeing learning as a continuing situation over time. Whitehouse follows a
neuroscientist, Edelmann ( 1992 ), according to whom in Whitehouse’s
words“human brains do not come pre-equipped with modules for classify-
ing the world, for acquiring grammars, or for any other mental functions”
(loc. cit., p. 213). Instead they consist of a complex mass of potentialities
(“circuitry”) within which patterns are made and strengthened through
experience (p. 213). This formulation seems to fall on the culture side in
terms of the nature/culture dichotomy, but on the nature side there is no
tabula rasa but a complex set of capacities ready to be shaped by what
Edelmann calls neuronal group selection–in other words, seen from out-
side the brain itself, what we call culture, always noting that culture, too, is
not abstract but is a matter of experience. The old terms of a nature/culture
debate thus dissolve, replaced by a complex model of interactions. Also, if
we substitute‘the embodied person’for mind in these formations we come
closer again to the way in which the world is experienced by humans.
This argument can now be carried over into the sphere of language
and culture. The human capacity for language is generally seen as a prime
although not unique or self-sufficient enabler for culture and society to
develop.Insofarasthiscapacityisindeeduniversalithasbeentempting
to consider it as specifically hard-wired into the brain, not as a general-
ized learning aptitude, but as a particular mechanism holding the ability
to understand and replicate grammatical patterns. This was the position
adopted by the famous international linguist Noam Chomsky based at
MIT in the USA. Daniel Everett, in his bookLanguage, the Cultural
Tool(Everett 2012 ), discusses the issue at some length. Is language a
cultural invention developed to meetemerging problems of communica-
tion vital for the survival of human groups and passed on for these same
purposes? Or is it something that all humans are equipped with as
70 BREAKING THE FRAMES