Biology
I understand that testosterone, oxytocin, cortisol, etc all have specific effects on our bodies. It's my understanding that we produce and consume them in largely a closed system, and they signal our various cells to do various things. I'm curious, though, if the specifics of what different hormones signal is dependent on their specific chemical structure, or if they're more like words in a language, where a completely different evolutionary history could have resulted in, for example cortisol regulating sleep while melatonin triggers the heightened senses and energy of a stress response. If it's the latter is there any literature on the "language" from a linguistics perspective?
