Customer Reviews

Friday's Footprint: How Society Shapes the Human Mind

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A book which should help to shift the paradigm of consciousness from isolationist to interactivist, "Friday's Footprint" is a masterpiece in challenging the old ideas of brain science. We naturally think of consciousness (and mind) as isolated objects like our brains, but that is too limiting a perspective, given the almost completely social nature of the mind. Language and social interaction have conditioned us well, meaning that there is no longer any point in trying to put our finger on "consciousness" when it is just as much "out there" in society as inside our heads.

Some people particularly fearful of change may want to hold onto their belief in the representational notion of truth (that one's opinion can somehow "correspond" to a "reality" out there), but Dr. Brothers leaves no room for such beliefs in the socially-conditioned brain: "Language simply embodies the shared beliefs and practices of the community of language users." (p. 101) We're simply acting out narratives and roles, which is normal, but let's not assume that such socially acceptable terms as thoughts, emotions, self, mind and so on really have a separate, definite existence.

Dr. Brothers' book requires as much of a shift in one's thinking as it did the brain researchers who discovered socially responsive cells; as it does those "believers" in the strict objectivity of science who must realize that science is socially and culturally influenced; as it did Robinson Crusoe, alone for years when he finally found proof of the existence of another human being: Friday's footprint.

In "Friday's Footprint" Dr. Brothers uses the metaphor of Robinson Crusoe to lay out his theory on the organizational and developmental effects of society on the mind. However, his development of both this metaphor and his thesis seem to be left incomplete. The story of Crusoe is only briefly mentioned a couple of times throughout the book and the metaphor is left rather undeveloped despite its potential and the vivid description provided by most of the previews.

Likewise, the evidence that he presents to support his contention of the effects of society on the developing mind also seems rather weak and overall is simply a random collection of observations and experiments. Therefore, the reader is ultimately left with a feeling of lacking a coherent picture of society's putative effects on the mind.

Upon nearing the end of the book I was impatiently waiting for some crucial insight that would serve to really tie this random conglomeration of facts and opinions together into a meaningful picture or theory. However, the end of the book concentrated heavily on the practice and effects of psychoanalysis leaving me waiting for a legitimate conclusion. It ultimately left me in a state of extreme confusion as to how that exactly tied in and, more importantly, how that could be the end of a book with such grandiose expectations as the subtitle suggested--"How society shapes the human mind."

This book is only a collection of loosely coupled facts. Dr. Brothers doesn't show a coherent theme in his book. Although he seems to be saying that the human brain research should be pursued in social context, he doesn't give me strong evidence -- only some incomplete arguments.

He is swaying between materialism and social constructionism. For example, when talking about "mind theory," in chapter 1 he supports the materialism but in Ch 7 he supports social constructionism. He says the research that combines the two perspectives is a new paradigm but then he just stops right here. Nothing is further explained when I am looking forward to it.

Ch8, the chapter of emotion, is especially strange. He keeps saying that the current emotion research fails but gives no evidence. His logic is that emotion is a socially constructed category so emotion should not exists in "scientific researches." If this logic is true then why he supports the research of "mind theory," which, in his view, is also a socially constructed category?

This book is confusing and incomplete. Besides, his seemingly main theme, that human mind is both a social product and creator of social behavior, is not a new perspective, either (e.g. Maturana's structural coupling theory). I don't think this book is suitable for picky readers.

A book which should help to shift the paradigm of consciousness from isolationist to interactivist, "Friday's Footprint" is a masterpiece in challenging the old ideas of brain science. We naturally think of consciousness (and mind) as isolated objects like our brains, but that is too limiting a perspective, given the almost completely social nature of the mind. Language and social interaction have conditioned us well, meaning that there is no longer any point in trying to put our finger on "consciousness" when it is just as much "out there" in society as inside our heads.

Some people particularly fearful of change may want to hold onto their belief in the representational notion of truth (that one's opinion can somehow "correspond" to a "reality" out there), but Dr. Brothers leaves no room for such beliefs in the socially-conditioned brain: "Language simply embodies the shared beliefs and practices of the community of language users." (p. 101) We're simply acting out narratives and roles, which is normal, but let's not assume that such socially acceptable terms as thoughts, emotions, self, mind and so on really have a separate, definite existence.

Dr. Brothers' book requires as much of a shift in one's thinking as it did the brain researchers who discovered socially responsive cells; as it does those "believers" in the strict objectivity of science who must realize that science is socially and culturally influenced; as it did Robinson Crusoe, alone for years when he finally found proof of the existence of another human being: Friday's footprint.