A Brief History of the Mind: From Apes to Intellect and BeyondThis book looks back at the simpler versions of mental life in apes, Neanderthals, and our ancestors, back before our burst of creativity started 50,000 years ago. When you can't think about the future in much detail, you are trapped in a here-and-now existence with no "What if" and "Why me?" William H. Calvin takes stock of what we have now and then explains why we are nearing a crossroads, where mind shifts gears again.The mind's big bang came long after our brain size stopped enlarging. Calvin suggests that the development of long sentences--what modern children do in their third year--was the most likely trigger. To keep a half-dozen concepts from blending together like a summer drink, you need some mental structuring. In saying "I think I saw him leave to go home," you are nesting three sentences inside a fourth. We also structure plans, play games with rules, create structured music and chains of logic, and have a fascination with discovering how things hang together. Our long train of connected thoughts is why our consciousness is so different from what came before.Where does mind go from here, its powers extended by science-enhanced education but with its slowly evolving gut instincts still firmly anchored in the ice ages? We will likely shift gears again, juggling more concepts and making decisions even faster, imagining courses of action in greater depth. Ethics are possible only because of a human level of ability to speculate, judge quality, and modify our possible actions accordingly. Though science increasingly serves as our headlights, we are out driving them, going faster than we can react effectively. |
Contents
The way we were 7 million years ago? | 3 |
In the woodland between forest and savanna | 15 |
Flickering climate toolmaking and bigger brains | 23 |
Adding more meat to the diet fueled the first Out of Africa | 33 |
What kicked in about 750000 years ago? | 45 |
Twostage toolmaking and what it says about thought | 53 |
The big brain but not much to show for it | 61 |
The curbcut principle and emerging higher intellectual function | 83 |
From planting to writing to mind medicine | 139 |
The moderns somehow got their act together | 151 |
Inventing new levels of organization on the fly | 161 |
A combustible mixture of ignorance and power? | 171 |
Afterword | 191 |
Recommended Reading | 193 |
Notes | 197 |
| 207 | |
Was the stillfullofbugs prototype what spread around the world? | 107 |
Higher intellectual function and the search for coherence | 127 |
Other editions - View all
A Brief History of the Mind: From Apes to Intellect and Beyond William H. Calvin Limited preview - 2004 |
A Brief History of the Mind: From Apes to Intellect and Beyond William H. Calvin Limited preview - 2004 |
A Brief History of the Mind: From Apes to Intellect and Beyond William H. Calvin Limited preview - 2004 |
Common terms and phrases
ability accurate throwing adults Africa anatomically modern ancestors animals apes areas average become behaviorally modern better bigger brains biological bone bonobos brief history Calvin capable Cerebral Code chimpanzees chimps climate cognitive coherence common consciousness creativity culture Darwin Darwinian David Brin Dennett Derek Bickerton developed early evolutionary evolved example forest Frans de Waal genes grasslands handaxe happen higher intellectual function hominid Homo erectus Homo sapiens sapiens hunting ice age improve intelligence intuitions invention involves language learning levels of organization logic look mental metaphor Michael Tomasello million years ago mind mirror neurons modern Homo sapiens modern humans monkeys natural selection Neanderthals neural novel Paleoanthropology payoff perhaps Pinker planning population problem protolanguage role savanna seen sentences shared social softwiring species speed stage STEVEN PINKER story structured stuff structured thought syntax things tion toolmaking transition University Press usually woodland words