February 26, 2020 I will be speaking on my book, How Language Began:
Presented by Harvard Book Store, the Harvard University Division of Science, and Cabot Science Library

Date: Wednesday, February 26, 2020
Event Start Time: 6:00pm

Venue/Location:
Harvard Science Center, Hall C
1 Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

March 27, 2020 I will be speaking at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Vancouver, B.C., Department of Philosophy. I will be discussing the concept of “universal grammar” as used by C.S. Peirce and Noam Chomsky, contrasting Peirce’s semeiotic approach with Chomsky’s grammatical approach to the nature and origins of human language, arguing that what eventually became Peirce’s “Speculative Grammar” is still the best and most profound theory of human language yet developed. 

April 3, 2020 I will be speaking at Cambridge University, England at a small invitation-only workshop on Human Time:
Title: Temporal Semantics and Grammar In Piraha~

Abstract: In this talk I offer an analysis of time, aspect, and their manifestations in the grammar and semantics of Piraha. Although there is a rich system of verbal aspectual suffixation in the language, there is no purely temporal morphology. There is also a very limited number of time words. At the same time, the Pirahas do know about the past and the future, as opposed to the present, though they have culturally-imposed restrictions on how these can be talked about. This mismatch between Piraha temporal grammar and semantics is reflected elsewhere in the language, as in their discrimination of colors without naming them and their recursive thought without recursive grammar. Taken together, these facts argue strongly for a cultural semeiotics that weaves grammar, culture, and meaning together in ways important to the further understanding of human cognition.

June 21-23, 2020 I will once again be at the invitation-only “mother of all conferences”, SciFoo Camp, in the GooglePlex at Mountain View California.

This conference brings together some 250 invitees from around the world, from Nobel Prize winners to entrepreneurs. It is always a privilege to receive an invitation to SciFoo, sponsored by Google, O’Reilly Media, Digital Science, and Nature. Here is some background information on SciFoo: https://www.digital-science.com/resources/video/scientists-predict-the-future-at-sci-foo/

UPDATES: I have reduced my travel plans, as well as my social media presence in order to concentrate on two major projects that see my research move in a new direction – semeiotics and the philosophy of science. Books for Princeton University Press and Oxford University Press are now underway.

In 2018 I began a four year dual project for two new books on Charles Sanders Peirce. The first of these books is the first-ever in-depth intellectual biography of Peirce: “American Aristotle: Charles Sanders Peirce and the Shaping of the American Mind.” This biography will be published by Princeton University Press, under the editorship of Rob Tempio. The projected length is roughly 200,000 words.
 
The second book, for Oxford University Press, is “Peircean Linguistics: An Essay in the HIstory of Empiricist Thought,” to be edited by Meredith Keffer. Projected length roughly 100,000 words. 
 
An early statement of mine on the importance of Peirce for world intellectual history, especially American intellectual history, is found in my Aeon Magazine article on Peirce: https://aeon.co/essays/charles-sanders-peirce-was-americas-greatest-thinker

First reactions to How Language Began: the Story of Humanity’s Greatest Invention, released this fall:

“Very few books on the biological and cultural origin of humanity can be ranked as classics. I believe that Daniel L. Everett’s How Language Began will be one of them.”

Edward O. Wilson, University Research Professor Emeritus, Harvard University