Link for Zarni

[Medesha]

I can't post on the "sudden inspiration" thread since I broke it. This is another link that talks about what I was trying to say: link.

In short, unless Adam had someone to communicate with and a means to develop non-verbal language (assuming he couldn't just talk), it's doubtful he would think much of anything.

[Zarni]

thanks, those links make for absolutely fascinating reading.....

i have been having new ideas, or at least looking at the scenario from different points of view. adam will grow up isolated. thus he will be effectively both blind and deaf, as well as never using his senses of touch or taste. i still stand by my original hypothesis, though, in that he must develop some form of internal language. maybe he thinks only in emotions? surely emotions are ingrained. what his language is is one of the new questions i have to answer. i must also do some research into how blind children develop. i can then merge these together and make an imaginative leap to the scenario. i still stand by the idea that he will be inytelligent, if not in the conventional way, then in some way we can't quite comprehend, and that i have to discover.

this will not be a short story, it's too big for that. i'm realising this now. what about ethical and moral debates? many people would be lobbying against such an experiment; the anti-cloning activists, the human rights activists, religious extremists, etc. that gives another dimension.

in the twisted words of neo, i'm going to need 'characters. lots of characters.'

however, i may include debates between characters which will intergrate all the points and arguments that you have brought up here. thanks!

it's going to be a long project writing this story....

[Medesha]

One reason that deaf children were considered 'retarded' is that, after a certain age (around 7 if I recall correctly) our mental pathways "harden". Before that we can learn very easily. Children just soak up information. A young child raised in a bilingual or trilingual household will very easily pick up all the languages spoken around him.

After that age your mental patterns become more 'fixed' and, as anyone who's taken language classes after grade school knows, learning things like language is very hard. Adam may be able to learn language, even his own internal language, depending on how his brain is developed. If the cloning process leaves him very flexible and fluid no matter how old his physical body grows he may turn out very different than a regular boy or girl. Something to think about.

[Toptomcat]

Of course, neuroscience these days seems perpetually astounded with the plasticity of the adult brain. Could be those youngsters aren't all they're cracked up to be ;D

[Zarni]

just been thinking a little more about this discussion and the one in the sudden inspiration link; having read through articles on the development of deaf people, i have been led to another inspiration. the story i am currently writing will combine and twist elements from both 'silence', which hasn't been so well received on the whole, as others, and 'individuality', which, quite frankly, is to big for me right now.

'lucy's silence' is currently in progress...

(as is another hard sci-fi story titled 'van de graaf', a detective murder mystery with an odd scientific twist; i'll keep you informed...