Customer Reviews

A Brief History of the Mind: From Apes to Intellect and Beyond

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The central event in this book is the human mind's so-called "big bang" which occurred some 90,000 to 50,000 years ago.

(These are neurobiologist William Calvin's numbers from page 111 where he notes that "it now appears that humans were behaviorally modern before the last great Out of Africa" which is now understood as taking place between 60,000 and 40,000 years ago, as determined by the latest tweaking of the mitochondrial DNA dating data.)

Professor Calvin leads up to this event by starting with the proto ape that was our ancestor (and the ancestor of modern apes) that lived some seven million years ago. He takes us from that ape's jungle habitat to the woodlands, where our ancestors learned to walk upright, to the savannahs where they ran down, killed and ate large game animals. Somewhere along the way we got smart. But, Calvin wonders, did we get smart enough?

He sees a disconnect between our abilities and the world we have inherited. He asks: "Where does mind go from here, its powers extended by science-enhanced education and new tools--but with its slowly evolving gut instincts still firmly anchored to the ice ages?" Are we just a "rough-around-the-edges prototype, the preliminary version that evolution never got a chance to further improve before the worldwide distribution occurred?" (p. 178)

In other words, are we using Stone Age instincts to cope with Information Age problems? It is interesting to note that in psychologist Keith Stanovich's recent book The Robot's Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin (2004) he is concerned with the same problem from an entirely different point of view. He writes about the "potential mismatches between the cognitive requirements of the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation and those of the modern world."

Of course the problem, as both writers point out, is that cultural evolution out-sprints the biological so that our genotypes are still in the woodlands and on the savannahs as the ice ages come and go while our phenotypes have to deal with traffic jams, weapons of mass destruction, and the paperwork for our HMOs.

One of Calvin's more intriguing ideas comes from his dictum that "behavior invents and...New form follows new function." (p. 159) He argues that the higher intellectual functions of humans came from the development of a "structured suite" of brain machinery that "is shared in part with some nonintellectual functions." (p. 94) He sees "accurate throwing" as part of this structured suite, and argues that learning to hit a moving target (say a small animal), because it involved several parts of the body (hand, wrist, arm, shoulder--and eyes and legs for that matter) in close coordination, several parts of the brain were used simultaneously as well. Consequently a "structured suite" developed in the brain that later was used for the development of symbolic language. What he is saying is that, the syntax of language--that is, the "something" does "something" to "something": the subject-verb-object structure of language that works so magically for us--actually came from the body's experience running down game in Africa.

I think Calvin is on to something here because that syntactic structure which is common to people everywhere, regardless of what language they speak, mirrors the action of the world. What is important in the environment is what is being done or what is happening (the verb), by whom and to whom (or what): the bull gores the lion; the monkey peels the fruit, the wind blows the tree down, etc.

Another of Calvin's pet ideas is that education "perhaps more than any of the imagined genetic changes" is what will best help us cope with the challenges of the modern world. (p. 184) He argues that if children are exposed to "structured stuff" at younger ages, and if they can "softwire their brains to better handle" such stuff, "the more precocious children will soon double the amount of structured speech heard by the next generation." (p. 154)

Of course our brains are still being "softwired" after we leave the womb and for some many months afterwards as our experiences serve to strengthen certain neurons and discard others. It seems, however, that Calvin is getting at something larger here, a kind of quasi-Lamarckian accelerated evolutionary process. Indeed I think he intends this example as a possible explanation for the "big bang" that took place in the Pleistocene. To be honest I have no idea whether he is right or not. Certainly it is an interesting idea.

Interesting is this comment from page 104: "[M]uch of [our] higher intellectual function seems half-baked, what you ordinarily see in a prototype rather than a finished, well-engineered product. Perfection you don't get, not from Darwinian evolution...But culture...can sometimes patch things up, if society works hard enough."

This is my first experience with reading Calvin, and I can say that reading this book is like engaging in a conversation with a wise and learned man who likes to share his ideas.

"A Brief History of the Mind" is a breezy, readable account of the evolution of modern humans from ancient African primates, starting around 7 million years ago. There have been some interesting new insights in the field during the past few years, and the story is well worth retelling. Indeed, what makes humans so different from other animals is that we would consider telling "our story" at all.

The core of the book is the chain of events that could have created our modern minds from those of our ancestor apes. It stresses the concept of humans getting an evolutionary "free ride" from fortuitous changes. For example, the author offers the controversial suggestion that the increased cortical connections that eventually enabled our higher thinking abilities originally benefited pre-humans by helping them coordinate the complicated body movements used in hunting herd animals. Those with more neural connections had a better chance of bringing home lunch. Intelligent thought was simply a happy later by-product.

Anthropologists usually look backwards, but this History takes a quick peek at the future. Modern minds are far more than the hardware of cortex and neurons. Human infants start busily "softwiring" language and other skills into their brains as soon as they are born. William Calvin considers this new stage of evolution - one that we actually have some control over - and comes up with some surprising, and disturbing, predictions for our postmodern future.

For a short book, (fewer than 200 pages), Dr. Calvin provides a wealth of information from a wide variety of scientific disciplines, and a HUGE bibliography. He approaches evolutionary cognitive development from the standpoint of a neurobiologist.

He has excellent, entertaining quotes to begin and finish many chapters, and nice illustrations. He provides brief (one paragraph) chapter summaries in the Table of Contents. I read that first, and reread individual chapter summaries before and after each chapter. In chapter 8, he discussed this structured, obsessive, pattern-seeking behavior of mine.

Here is the plot: 7 million yrs ago, we emerged from the apes. Bt 160,000 yrs ago, we were homo sapien. By 50,000 yrs ago, we were homo sapien sapien - same physique, same sized brain, just soft-wired more elegantly. Dr. Calvin says, "It's just in the last 1% of that up-from-the-apes period that human creativity & technological capabilities have really blossomed. It's been called 'The Mind's Big Bang'."

How did this happen?

On page 153, he listed 5 candidates, all of which he said were probably operative, but he has a favorite. (Interestingly, he leaves out Matt Ridley's favorite from THE RED QUEEN; that it's all about the battle between the sexes.) In Dr. Calvin's theory, "Evo-Devo," he relies on syntax development and spear-throwing skills as catalysts to the "Mind's Big Bang," and spends a lot of of time explaining his thoughts. He is obviously very well informed about language development. I won't try to explain this complex theory here, but I did think it had merit. I thought, however, that for the crown jewel of his book, it was not presented clearly enough.

I began to wonder where gene change was going to fit in. As I read, I searched for indications that the current brand of natural selection was in play. In one segment, he suggested what sounded exactly like vertical transmission of memes, although he didn't call them memes. He extrapolated this into the future, saying, "a number of present day human abilities have some potential for future elaboration even without natural selection." I couldn't help but wonder what Richard Dawkins would think about this. It sounded awfully Lamarckian to me.

As the plot unfolded, the existing product (our minds) was shown to be jury-rigged and unfinished, in evolution's usual fashion...so, as humans, we have tendencies to misinterpret in our own favor, rationalize, use faulty logic, wage war, etc. In short, we are "NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME."

This book is well-written, extensively researched, and entertaining, about a subject in which informed speculation appears to be the state of the art. Too bad we don't have hard evidence for the "how" of evolutionary cognitive function such as what mitochondrial DNA is to geneology.

I recommend this book highly, and am inspired to read more on the subject, probably from books he mentions. Because his charts in chapter 8 were unclear, I give him a 4.

Dr. Calvin has done an excellent job detailing the history of how mind development may have transpired over the last several hundred thousand years. While I have no formal education on the subject, I was able to easily comprehend and enjoy most of the book. There are a few chapter towards the middle and the end where he seems to go off on technical tangents that are rather dull and long winded. But the first several chapters concerning early forms of the mind are incredibly enlightening and make for good reading. He also does a commendable job of speculating about future "expansions" of the minds ability, which he believes we are on the brink of. The only other complaint I have is that the good doctor lets his current political opinions taint his message substantially, particularly towards the end of the book. I was disappointed in that. But overall it was a good book, but I will bet there are better on the market, although I haven't had the good fortune to sample any others just yet.

Always a lively and informative read, Calvin has capped his many fine works on the human intellect with this book. Never hesitant to propose novel ideas, he incorporates fresh thinking on the cause of our consciousness. "Stories around the campfire" depicts his theme - the campfire for cooking meat and the narratives exchanged among the diners. The meat implies hunting and the conversation implies speech and complex thinking. Only humans engage in these practices - how did that come to be? In this provocative and compelling book, Calvin answers this and other questions with his usual expressive style. Abetted by explanatory diagrams and photographs, he takes us back to a distant time in searching for our origins. We learn what makes us unique among primates and are given a view of possible future paths.

No work in anthropology can ignore our primate relatives. Calvin's opening chapter asks "what is it like to be a chimpazee?" This query raises the point of similarities and differences among primate species. Apes have fair-sized brains and useful "hands". While some hunt, some use tools and all vocalise, only humans developed those capacities fully to create complex societies and learn to write books - or plays and poetry. All fossil evidence, plus genetics, Calvin reminds us, indicate our origins lay close to what chimpanzees exhibit today. How did we change from a forest-dwelling ape to one living in nearly every habitat and babbling expressively?

For Calvin, environment shifts are a major driving force in evolution - perhaps none more so than in the case of human evolution. Variations in climate drives adaptation, and our ape-like ancestors were challenged by some severe, and possibly abrupt, shifts. More than simply more or less frequent rainfall, these changes modified whole habitats. Our ancestors had to relocate, shift lifestyles or both. Calvin argues that the shift meant a new existence, a new diet plus gaining some additional skills.

The new diet was meat. With the human brain consuming 20 per cent of the body's resources just to "tick over", a high protein source is a necessity. Primates are mostly vegetarian, with chimps adding some termites and the occasional monkey for dinner. Shrinking rainforests reduced available fruits and nuts, leaving meat as a more significant diet item for the new ape. There are two ways of obtaining meat - scavenging it or hunting it. Scavenging means waiting for leftovers or chasing away predators. Either is risky. Active hunting is more direct, but requires complex skill sets involving vision, muscle coordination, memory capacity and predictive skills. The act of spear-throwing, which Calvin calls a "structured suite" had to be a "package deal" of muscle functions directed by a developing cortex. To Calvin, the "package deal" implies a sudden rise in evidence for complex human cognition. With bipedalism a foundation, the new ape could build thinking capacity with tool-making, spear throwing for meat to feed the demanding processor of these activities. Only after the mind was able to handle involved thinking could language emerge, adding to the brain's capacity, while furthering more cognitive development.

Calvin recognises the sudden apparent rise in complex thinking of fifty thousand years ago as a given. Many recent fossil finds, plus weapons, cave paintings and linguistic analysis support the notion. While it has taken some time for anthropologists to accept that sudden burst in symbolic thought, it is now the consensus view. The causes of "the Great Leap Forward" remain obscure and debateable. Calvin's proposal will assuredly add to that debate. Not the least of his critics will be the "gender feminists" who abhor biological causation in any form. Yet it's clear his scenario suggests males, as hunters, drove the "cognitive explosion". He anticipates the strident chorus that will greet his proposal, but dismisses it easily. With his engaging style and solid experience in neurobiology, this book will bring new focus to our intellectual roots.
[stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Ontario]

I'm still in the process of reading this book, but will come back to update my review once I'm done.

Be forewarned that this is a rather "cheaply" made paperback book. The cover is thin and the paper quality average. Inside there are a number of black and white photographs that appear as though they were colored photos copied from a high speed low quality scanner. Most of them are unintelligible. Of course, this isn't a photographic book and the images are only a small part of what is presented, but I would have appreciated being able to see the visual details that the author meant to convey.

The material within is fascinating, and there's quite a lot of content here that you won't find laying around the Internet. Calvin does have some intriguing observations and assumptions about how we've come to have the minds contained in our heads today. This book is like a documentary. It reads fairly well to the lay person, but it does get a bit stuffy at times. I recommend reading it in a quiet location where you can devote full attention.

What drew me to this book is the "beyond" part... Calvin's ideas as to where we are going as a species. Quite frankly, I'm alarmed at what is going on in the world today at the hands of human beings. We are at a pinnacle of technological prowess with pockets of reasonably peaceful societies, but we are still savagely destroying each other and exploiting natural resources with reckless abandon. Greed is at the forefront of our problems. And now we are at a phase where prominent people who are supposed to be highly esteemed and well respected are willing to risk their reputations for the gaining of finances and/or power. The social experiment of large scale civilization is a very mixed blessing and I'm very curious as to whether we are going to "make it." Perhaps we might reach that next "big bang" in the evolution of our minds such that we'll be able to transcend our most pressing faults and find a way to achieve a healthy sustainable form of society across the globe.

It is hard to be optimistic in this day and age... I'm hoping Calvin has something to say that can support an optimistic outlook.

This author is vastly under-appreciated. His books are guaranteed to be both informative and educational (his, out of print, "The River that Flows Uphill" is my all-time favorite non-fiction book). If you are still among the deluded who think that climate change is human-induced, read, "A Brain for All Seasons: Human Evolution and Abrupt Climate Change."

I'll try to make this review brief because that's all this book really deserves. It all started off so well with a reasonably interesting table of contents. It was a bit vague but it promised to hit on some topics that a person who'd read a book titled "A Brief History Of The Mind" would find worth the time. However, once underway, I found it to be really lacking in actual good thinking. It didn't have interesting conclusions adroitly supported with interesting findings of fact. Instead it had rambling and bizarre conjectures presented as if they were obvious to all. By way of example, I randomly opened the book and picked a couple of pages to highlight this. My first random sample comes from page 113 where the author says "But some differences [in ethnicity] are indeed biological. [Well, duh.] Appearances sometimes involve specific physiological adaptations, such as keeping the dust out of the eyes in Asia." What? Did I just read that right? Is he saying Asians have squinty eyes because of squinting? What about those squinty Clint Eastwood-type, blue-eyed people trying to avoid snow blindness (or intimidate gangsters)? It's just such a weird conjecture to drop as if it were a given fact. Ok, here's the next sentence pulled completely at random from the book (page 144): "For people and pets, this works pretty well, though some people talk to plants too." Now, you're probably thinking that I'm taking this out of some grand point-making context. But the fact is that for me, this kind of free association sounding stream of consciousness is about how the whole thing went for me. I could not find some well-supported notions around which to crystallize a favorable impression of this book. I'm very interested in this topic, but it seems like the author has somehow convinced himself that by merely writing a book, it would be interesting. Not so much.

This is a thought provoking yet personable survey of the evolution of our species' mental abilities. I read it after I'd written my book, "Concept: A ProtoTheist Quest for Science-Minded Skeptics", else I might have used some of his ideas in my chapters eight and nine (I do reference two of his earlier books). He elaborates and illustrates many of the concepts (tho' sometimes he uses `concept' were I'd use `percept'). However he largely ignores the functions of the pre-, sub- and un-conscious, yet speculates on "The Future of the Augmented Mind." Also, while he mentions on pages 171-2 "the evolutionary trajectory we've been on," he doesn't elaborate (as I do in chapter eleven) and thus has difficulty sustaining his optimism about our future.