In 1979 "Disturbing the Universe" by Freeman Dyson was published.
Chapter 20, "Clades and Clones" contains a fair amount of speculation
about the appearance and staying power of new languages. I'm curious
whether any of the usual suspects, here, are familiar with Dyson's ideas
and what opinions various linguists thought about them.

I now from prior mingling with language folks that it would be a
miserable idea to ask whether Dyson's ideas are right or wrong. Rather,
I'll merely enquire whether they were found interesting or not?
--
Jeff Barnett

On Thursday, August 4, 2022 at 12:04:44 AM UTC-4, Jeff Barnett wrote:

> In 1979 "Disturbing the Universe" by Freeman Dyson was published.
> Chapter 20, "Clades and Clones" contains a fair amount of speculation
> about the appearance and staying power of new languages. I'm curious
> whether any of the usual suspects, here, are familiar with Dyson's ideas
> and what opinions various linguists thought about them.
>
> I now from prior mingling with language folks that it would be a
> miserable idea to ask whether Dyson's ideas are right or wrong. Rather,
> I'll merely enquire whether they were found interesting or not?

I haven't heard of that book (which also means it didn't arouse
indignant reaction from linguists), but when another prominent
hard-scientist, Murray Gell-Mann (the quark guy), got involved
in linguistic topics, the results weren't great. I don't think he did
any himself, but his Santa Fe Institute funded some things that
might better have not been funded,

I found a pirated pdf of the book on line and looked through the
chapter. Mostly he's impressed that linguistic minorities can
maintain their language in the face of oppression, but also he
draws parallels between language "evolution" and biological
evolution -- an enterprise that goes back to Darwin. (I didn't
notice anything about "new languages" -- they just happen
when speech communities split up, which gives him the
opportunity to mention clades and cladistics.)