Anatomie animali e linguaggio: Claude Perrault e il dibattito post-cartesiano sulla differenza antropologica

The assertion that humans differ from animals in their use of lan- guage has been the subject of much discussion as scientists have investi- gated language use by non-human species. This paper considers Claude Perrault’s views on animal language and cognition. One of the leader members of the Early Parisian Académie Royale des Sciences, where comparative anatomy emerged in the late seventeenth century, Claude Perrault rejects both the Cartesian hypothesis of beasts as mere automa- ta and of Pineal Gland as siège de l’âme within the human brain. He con- ceives the animal soul as an immaterial and cognitive agent spread in the whole body, involved in the functional regulation of the all life process- es. Animal thoughts, according to Perrault, must necessarily correspond to «animal voices». Nevertheless, he underlines that la parole depends far less on organs than on imagination, as shown by monkeys, unable to speak even though they own larynxes and other parts similar to human ones, and by birds like parrots, that can reproduce human speech.