Evolutionary Approach to Understanding Language and Thinking

The paper analyses language and thinking not as elemental power, but in evolutionary aspect. Language and thinking are examined as a product of evolution and result of specific type of activity – social activity and culture, interpreted as a social code, external memory, providing the continuity of social communication. Evolutionary approach applied in this research is based on the idea of global evolutionism. Evolution is interpreted as multilevel system and co-evolution of the system and the environment. This enabled us to define the levels of cognitive evolution, levels of language evolution, and to reveal the recursive mechanism of interaction between language and thinking.