Exercise 5.2

1. Vegetation covers the earth, except for those areas continually covered with ice or utterly scorched by continual heat. Plants grow most richly in fertilized plains and river valleys, but also at the edge of perpetual snow in high mountains. Vegetation is also dense in the ocean and it's edges, as well as in and around lakes and swamps. Plants can be found in the cracks of busy city sidewalks as well as in seemingly barren cliffs. Vegetation covered the earth before humans existed and it will continue to cover the earth long after evolutionary history swallows us up.

2. Animals in their natural states can not create and communicate a new message to fit into a new experience. The genetic codes of animals limit the ways they can communicate. Bees for example can only communicate information about distance, direction, source, and richness of flowers. Animals of the same species must communicate with a limited repertoire of messages delivered in the same way for generation after generation in all significant respects.

3. Language skills are important to children's problem-solving skills, as stressed by Jones(1985) in his paper on children's thinking. Reports show that when language skills improve, nonverbal problem solving improves. Previously acquired language habits used for problem articulation and activation of knowledge may cause better performance. Using language skills to approach a nonlinguistic problem before solving the problem may be a way to enhance problem solving in general.