Feel free to remove this, mods, if it’s too tangential to modern science, but I thought the community might find this early nature vs. nurture hypothesis amusing

    • PugJesus@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      99·
      18 hours ago

      He caught one of the nursemaids speaking G*rman to the infant and the experiment had to be aborted. RIP

    • Depress_Mode@lemmy.worldEnglish
      51·
      18 hours ago

      According to Wikipedia:

      “The experiments were recorded by the monk Salimbene di Adam in his Chronicles, who was generally extremely negative about Fredrick II (portraying his calamities as parallel to the Biblical plagues in The Twelve Calamities of Emperor Frederick II) and wrote that Frederick encouraged ‘foster-mothers and nurses to suckle and bathe and wash the children, but in no ways to prattle or speak with them; for he would have learnt whether they would speak the Hebrew language (which he took to have been the first), or Greek, or Latin, or Arabic, or perchance the tongue of their parents of whom they had been born. But he laboured in vain, for the children could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments.’”

      So, as you’d expect of someone raised without any formal language, other means of communication were necessary.

      • Asetru@feddit.orgEnglish
        10·
        12 hours ago

        But he laboured in vain, for the children could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments.

        Am I the only one who interpretes this as “well, they died”?

        • Depress_Mode@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          55 minutes ago

          It sounds to me it’s saying you had to do things like clap your hands to get their attention, gesture to communicate what you wanted them to do, and that you had to do so kindly and patiently or else they may not respond well. Alternatively, maybe it was the children who had to clap their hands and gesture, but then I’m not sure how they’d speak blandishments (kind, gentle encouragements, like “good job!”) to others.