Out of Our Minds

by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

  The trend is conspicuous because it represents the reversal of the human story so far. Imagine the creature I call the galactic museum-keeper of the future, contemplating our past, long after our extinction, from an immense distance of space and time, with objectivity inaccessible to us, who are enmeshed in our own story. As she arranges in her virtual vitrine what little survives of our world, ask her to summarize our history. Her reply will be brief, because her museum is galactic, and a short-lived species on a minor planet will be too unimportant to encourage loquacity. I can hear her say, ‘You are interesting only because your history was of divergence. Other cultural animals on your planet achieved little diversity. Their cultures occupied a modest range of difference from one another. They changed only a little over time. You, however, churned out and turned over new ways of behaving – including mental behaviour – with stunning diversity and rapidity.’ At least, we did so until the twenty-first century, when our cultures stopped getting more unlike each other and became dramatically, overwhelmingly convergent. Sooner or later, on present showing, we shall have only one worldwide culture. So we shall have no one to exchange and interact with. We shall be alone in the universe – unless and until we find other cultures in other galaxies and resume productive exchange. The result will not be the end of ideas, but rather a return to normal rates of innovative thinking, like, say, those of the thinkers in chapter 1 or 2 of this book, who struggled with isolation, and whose thoughts were relatively few and relatively good.

  ‌Notes

  Chapter 1: Mind Out of Matter: The Mainspring of Ideas

  1. B. Hare and V. Woods, The Genius of Dogs (New York: Dutton, 2013), p. xiii.

  2. Ch. Adam and P. Tannery, eds, Oeuvres de Descartes (Paris: Cerf, 1897–1913), v, p. 277; viii, p. 15.

  3. N. Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965), pp. 26–7.

  4. F. Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (New York: Open Road, 2014), p. 50.

  5. A. Fuentes, The Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional (New York: Dutton, 2017); T. Matsuzawa, ‘What is uniquely human? A view from comparative cognitive development in humans and chimpanzees’, in F. B. M. de Waal and P. F. Ferrari, eds, The Primate Mind: Built to Connect with Other Minds (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), pp. 288–305.

  6. G. Miller, The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Behaviour (London: Heinemann, 2000); G. Miller, ‘Evolution of human music through sexual selection’, in N. Wallin et al., eds, The Origins of Music (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), pp. 329–60.

  7. M. R. Bennett and P. M. S. Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003); P. Hacker, ‘Languages, minds and brains’, in C. Blakemore and S. Greenfield, eds, Mindwaves: Thoughts on Identity, Mind and Consciousness (Chichester: Wiley, 1987), pp. 485–505.

  8. This once fashionable faith now seems nearly extinct. I refer those who retain it to my A Foot in the River (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 90–3 and the references given there, or R. Tallis, Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity (Durham: Acumen, 2011), pp. 163–70.

  9. I proposed this account briefly in a few pages of a previous book, A Foot in the River. Much of the rest of this chapter goes over the same ground, with updating and reformulation.

  10. R. L. Holloway, ‘The evolution of the primate brain: some aspects of quantitative relationships’, Brain Research, vii (1968), pp. 121–72; R. L. Holloway, ‘Brain size, allometry and reorganization: a synthesis’, in M. E. Hahn, B. C. Dudek, and C. Jensen, eds, Development and Evolution of Brain Size (New York: Academic Press, 1979), pp. 59–88.

  11. S. Healy and C. Rowe, ‘A critique of comparative studies of brain size’, Proceedings of the Royal Society, cclxxiv (2007), pp. 453–64.

  12. C. Agulhon et al., ‘What is the role of astrocyte calcium in neurophysiology?’, Neuron, lix (2008), pp. 932–46; K. Smith, ‘Neuroscience: settling the great glia debate’, Nature, cccclxviii (2010), pp. 150–62.

  13. P. R. Manger et al., ‘The mass of the human brain: is it a spandrel?’, in S. Reynolds and A. Gallagher, eds, African Genesis: Perspectives on Hominin Evolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 205–22.

  14. T. Grantham and S. Nichols, ‘Evolutionary psychology: ultimate explanation and Panglossian predictions’, in V. Hardcastle, ed., Where Biology Meets Psychology: Philosophical Essays (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), pp. 47–88.

  15. C. Darwin, Autobiographies (London: Penguin, 2002), p. 50.

  16. A. R. DeCasien, S. A. Williams, and J. P. Higham, ‘Primate brain size is predicted by diet but not sociality’, Nature, Ecology, and Evolution, i (2017), https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-017-0112 (accessed 27 May 2017).

  17. S. Shultz and R. I. M. Dunbar, ‘The evolution of the social brain: anthropoid primates contrast with other vertebrates’, Proceedings of the Royal Society, cclxxic (2007), pp. 453–64.

  18. F. Fernández-Armesto, Civilizations: Culture, Ambition, and the Transformation of Nature (New York: Free Press, 2001).

  19. V. S. Ramachandran, The Tell-tale Brain (London: Random House, 2012), p. 4.

  20. M. Tomasello and H. Rakoczy, ‘What makes human cognition unique? From individual to shared to collective intentionality’, Mind and Language, xviii (2003), pp. 121–47; P. Carruthers, ‘Metacognition in animals: a sceptical look’, Mind and Language, xxiii (2008), pp. 58–89.

  21. W. A. Roberts, ‘Introduction: cognitive time travel in people and animals’, Learning and Motivation, xxxvi (2005), pp. 107–9; T. Suddendorf and M. Corballis, ‘The evolution of foresight: what is mental time travel and is it uniquely human?’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, xxx (2007), pp. 299–313.

  22. N. Dickinson and N. S. Clayton, ‘Retrospective cognition by food-caching western scrub-jays’, Learning and Motivation, xxxvi (2005), pp. 159–76; H. Eichenbaum et al., ‘Episodic recollection in animals: “if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck …”’, Learning and Motivation, xxxvi (2005), pp. 190–207.

  23. C. D. L. Wynne, Do Animals Think? (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 230.

  24. C. R. Menzel, ‘Progress in the study of chimpanzee recall and episodic memory’, in H. S. Terrace and J. Metcalfe, eds, The Missing Link in Cognition: Origins of Self-Reflective Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 188–224.

  25. B. P. Trivedi, ‘Scientists rethinking nature of animal memory’, National Geographic Today, 22 August 2003; C. R. and E. W. Menzil, ‘Enquiries concerning chimpanzee understanding’, in de Waal and Ferrari, eds, The Primate Mind, pp. 265–87.

  26. J. Taylor, Not a Chimp: The Hunt to Find the Genes that Make Us Human (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 11; S. Inoue and T. Matsuzawa, ‘Working memory of numerals in chimpanzees’, Current Biology, xvii (2007), pp. 1004–5.

  27. A. Silberberg and D. Kearns, ‘Memory for the order of briefly presented numerals in humans as a function of practice’, Animal Cognition, xii (2009), pp. 405–7.

  28. B. L. Schwartz et al., ‘Episodic-like memory in a gorilla: a review and new findings’, Learning and Motivation, xxxvi (2005), pp. 226–44.

  29. Trivedi, ‘Scientists rethinking nature of animal memory’.

  30. G. Martin-Ordas et al., ‘Keeping track of time: evidence of episodic-like memory in great apes’, Animal Cognition, xiii (2010), pp. 331–40; G. Martin-Ordas, C. Atance, and A. Louw, ‘The role of episodic and semantic memory in episodic foresight’, Learning and Motivation, xliii (2012), pp. 209–19.

  31. C. F. Martin et al., ‘Chimpanzee choice rates in competitive games match equilibrium game theory predictions’, Scientific Reports, 4, article no. 5182, doi:10.1038/srep05182.

  32. F. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. 26–31.

  33. K. Danziger, Marking the Mind: A History of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 188–97.

 
34. D. R. Schacter, The Seven Sins of Memory (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001).

  35. R. Arp, Scenario Visualization: An Evolutionary Account of Creative Problem Solving (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008).

  36. A. W. Crosby, Throwing Fire: Missile Projection through History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 30.

  37. S. Coren, How Dogs Think (New York: Free Press, 2005), p. 11; S. Coren, Do Dogs Dream? Nearly Everything Your Dog Wants You to Know (New York: Norton, 2012).

  38. P. F. Ferrari and L. Fogassi, ‘The mirror neuron system in monkeys and its implications for social cognitive function’, in de Waal and Ferrari, eds, The Primate Mind, pp. 13–31.

  39. M. Gurven et al., ‘Food transfers among Hiwi foragers of Venezuela: tests of reciprocity’, Human Ecology, xxviii (2000), pp. 175–218.

  40. H. Kaplan et al., ‘The evolution of intelligence and the human life history’, Evolutionary Anthropology, ix (2000), pp. 156–84; R. Walker et al., ‘Age dependency and hunting ability among the Ache of Eastern Paraguay’, Journal of Human Evolution, xlii (2002), pp. 639–57, at pp. 653–5.

  41. J. Bronowski, The Visionary Eye (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978), p. 9.

  42. G. Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages (New York: Metropolitan, 2010); S. Pinker, The Language Instinct (London: Penguin, 1995), pp. 57–63.

  43. E. Spelke and S. Hespos, ‘Conceptual precursors to language’, Nature, ccccxxx (2004), pp. 453–6.

  44. U. Eco, Serendipities: Language and Lunacy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), p. 22.

  45. T. Maruhashi, ‘Feeding behaviour and diet of the Japanese monkey (Macaca fuscata yakui) on Yakushima island, Japan’, Primates, xxi (1980), pp. 141–60.

  46. J. T. Bonner, The Evolution of Culture in Animals (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 72–8.

  47. F. de Waal, Chimpanzee Politics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), p. 19.

  48. J. Goodall, In the Shadow of Man (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), pp. 112–14.

  49. J. Goodall, The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behaviour (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 424–9.

  50. R. M. Sapolsky and L. J. Share, ‘A Pacific culture among wild baboons: its emergence and transmission’, PLOS, 13 April 2004, doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0020106.

  Chapter 2: Gathering Thoughts: Thinking Before Agriculture

  1. R. Leakey and R. Lewin, Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human (New York: Abacus, 1993); C. Renfrew and E. Zubrow, eds, The Ancient Mind: Elements of Cognitive Archaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

  2. M. Harris, Cannibals and Kings (New York: Random House, 1977).

  3. A. Courbin, Le village des cannibales (Paris: Aubier, 1990).

  4. P. Sanday, Divine Hunger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 59–82.

  5. Herodotus, Histories, bk 3, ch. 38.

  6. B. Conklin, Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001).

  7. L. Pancorbo, El banquete humano: una historia cultural del canibalismo (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 2008), p. 47.

  8. D. L. Hoffmann et al., ‘U-Th dating of carbonate crusts reveals Neanderthal origins of Iberian cave art’, Science, ccclix (2018), pp. 912–15.

  9. D. L. Hoffmann et al., eds, ‘Symbolic use of marine shells and mineral pigments by Iberian Neanderthals 115,000 years ago’, Science Advances, iv (2018), no. 2, doi:10.1126/sciadv.aar5255.

  10. C. Stringer and C. Gamble, In Search of the Neanderthals (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1993); P. Mellars, The Neanderthal Legacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); E. Trinkaus and P. Shipman, The Neanderthals: Changing the Image of Mankind (New York: Knopf, 1993).

  11. C. Gamble, The Paleolithic Societies of Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 400–20.

  12. I. Kant, The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, [1785] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), and A. MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics (Indianapolis: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), are fundamental. I. Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledge, 1970), is a study of the problem of whether morals are objective, by a writer whose wonderful novels were all about moral equivocation.

  13. C. Jung, Man and His Symbols (New York: Doubleday, 1964).

  14. W. T. Fitch, The Evolution of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); S. Pinker and P. Bloom, ‘Natural language and natural selection’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, xiii (1990), pp. 707–84.

  15. J. Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 3–7.

  16. L. Lévy-Bruhl, Les fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1910), p. 377.

  17. C. Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (London: Weidenfeld, 1962); P. Radin, Primitive Man as Philosopher (New York: Appleton, 1927).

  18. A. Marshack, The Roots of Civilization (London: Weidenfeld, 1972).

  19. M. Sahlins, Stone-Age Economics (Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1972).

  20. J. Cook, Ice-Age Art: Arrival of the Modern Mind (London: British Museum Press, 2013).

  21. C. Henshilwood et al., ‘A 100,000-year-old ochre-processing workshop at Blombos Cave, South Africa’, Science, cccxxxiv (2011), pp. 219–22; L. Wadley, ‘Cemented ash as a receptacle or work surface for ochre powder production at Sibudu, South Africa, 58,000 years ago’, Journal of Archaeological Science, xxxvi (2010), pp. 2397–406.

  22. Cook, Ice-Age Art.

  23. For full references, see F. Fernández-Armesto, ‘Before the farmers: culture and climate from the emergence of Homo sapiens to about ten thousand years ago’, in D. Christian, ed., The Cambridge World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), i, pp. 313–38.

  24. L. Niven, ‘From carcass to cave: large mammal exploitation during the Aurignacian at Vogelherd, Germany’, Journal of Human Evolution, liii (2007), pp. 362–82.

  25. A. Malraux, La tête d’obsidienne (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), p. 117.

  26. H. G. Bandi, The Art of the Stone Age (Baden-Baden: Holler, 1961); S. J. Mithen, Thoughtful Foragers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

  27. P. M. S. Hacker, ‘An intellectual entertainment: thought and language’, Philosophy, xcii (2017), pp. 271–96; D. M. Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of the Mind (London: Routledge, 1968).

  28. ‘Brights movement’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brights_movement (accessed 22 June 2017).

  29. D. Diderot, ‘Pensées philosophiques’, in Oeuvres complètes, ed. J. Assézat and M. Tourneur (Paris: Garnier, 1875), i, p. 166.

  30. H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Zurich: Weidmann, 1985), Fragment 177; P. Cartledge, Democritus (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 40.

  31. B. Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (New York and London: Henry Holt and Co., 1912), ch. 1.

  32. M. Douglas, The Lele of the Kasai (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), pp. 210–12.

  33. Radin, Primitive Man as Philosopher, p. 253.

  34. T. Nagel, Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).

  35. Aristotle, De Anima, 411, a7–8.

  36. J. D. Lewis-Williams, ‘Harnessing the brain: vision and shamanism in Upper Palaeolithic western Europe’, in M. W. Conkey et al., eds, Beyond Art: Pleistocene Image and Symbol (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 321–42; J. D. Lewis-Williams and J. Clottes, The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance Magic and the Painted Caves (New York: Abrams, 1998).