In this ground-breaking interdisciplinary study about conceptual origins, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone shows that there is an indissoluble bond between hominid thinking and hominid evolution, a bond cemented by the living body. Her thesis is concretely illustrated in eight paleoanthropological case studies ranging from tool-using/tool-making to counting, sexuality, representation, language, death, and cave art. In each case, evidence is brought forward that shows how thinking is modeled on the body-specifically, how concepts are generated by animate form and the tactile-kinesthetic experience. Later chapters critically examine key theoretical and methodological issues posed by the thesis, Sheets-Johnstone demonstrates in detail how and why a corporeal turn in philosophy and the human sciences can yield insights no less extraordinary than those produced by the linguistic turn. In confronting the currently popular doctrine of cultural relativism and the classic Western metaphysical dualism of mind and body, she shows how pan-cultural invariants of human bodily life have been discounted and how the body itself has not been given its due. By a precise exposition of how a full-scale hermeneutics and a genetic phenomenology may be carried out with respect to conceptual origins, she shows how methodological issues are successfully resolved. Author note: Maxine Sheets-Johnstone is an independent scholar and Courtesy Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon.
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Editorial Reviews
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"A significant contribution to the study of early humans, this book is a philosophical anthropology.... it makes genuinely novel, and highly persuasive, claims within the field itself."
—David Depew
—David Depew
"Ranging across the humanities and sciences, this thoroughly original book challenges both traditional metaphysics and contemporary cultural relativism. In their place, it persuasively develops a phenomenonological, tactile-kinesthetic account of the origins of thinking. This philosophical anthropology could not be more timely. It replaces the 'linguistic turn' with a promising new 'corporeal turn.'"
—John J. Stuhr, University of Oregon
—John J. Stuhr, University of Oregon
"This work takes a much-needed stand in the inter-disciplinary field of philosophical anthropology. Sheets-Johnstone is well-read in the history of philosophy and in contemporary anthropology. The point of view she offers is inventive, insightful, well-established, and fruitful."
—Thomas M. Alexander, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
—Thomas M. Alexander, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
From the Publisher
A ground-breaking interdisciplinary study about conceptual origins linking hominid thinking with hominid evolution
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
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A Thoughtful Book on Thinking,
This review is from: The Roots Of Thinking (Paperback)
The Roots of Thinking is the most thoughtful book on thinking I have encountered. Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, a dancer, philosopher, and evolutionary biologist, is uniquely qualified to analyze the complex evolutionary progression from body language to verbal language during the four million year history of our hominid ancestors. Her own incisive thinking reveals the soft underpinnings of many traditional ideas about the origins of cognition, including those of monuments like Piaget and Levi-Strauss. The book covers the epistemologically liberating effect of the upright posture, including not only the use of the hands for tool making but the social and psychological advantages of face to face love making as well. In a chapter that is sheer poetry, she describes the conceptual preparation required for the recognition of death in others and the inevitable fate it represents for ourselves. Every pschotherapist interested in the subtle interactions of body and min! d will enjoy and benefit from this book.
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
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sexual selection, primate patterns, pygmy chimpanzee, primate behavior, sociosexual development, primate aggression, animal communication, primate ethology, animal signals, genetic epistemology, physical anthropology, consistent bipedality, gnostic tactility, increased penile girth, gratuitous vocalizations, corporeal scanning, sexual signaling behavior, paleoanthropological reconstructions, ancestral hominid life, corporeal analyses, qualitative conservation, kinesthetic invariants, nonarbitrary sound, preverbal hominids, binary periodicities Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Paleoanthropological Case Studies, Human Evolution, Academic Press, Hermeneutics of Tool-Making, The Hague, Scientific American, Oldowan Hominids, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, University of Chicago Press, Cultural Relativism, Edmund Husserl, Human Sexuality, Free-Living Chimpanzees, Child's Conception, Treasures of Prehistoric Art, Kegan Paul, Related Matters, American Anthropologist, Martinus Nijhoff, Current Anthropology, Wolfgang Wickler, Alison Jolly, Ashley Montagu, Oxford University Press Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
sexual selection, primate patterns, pygmy chimpanzee, primate behavior, sociosexual development, primate aggression, animal communication, primate ethology, animal signals, genetic epistemology, physical anthropology, consistent bipedality, gnostic tactility, increased penile girth, gratuitous vocalizations, corporeal scanning, sexual signaling behavior, paleoanthropological reconstructions, ancestral hominid life, corporeal analyses, qualitative conservation, kinesthetic invariants, nonarbitrary sound, preverbal hominids, binary periodicities Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Paleoanthropological Case Studies, Human Evolution, Academic Press, Hermeneutics of Tool-Making, The Hague, Scientific American, Oldowan Hominids, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, University of Chicago Press, Cultural Relativism, Edmund Husserl, Human Sexuality, Free-Living Chimpanzees, Child's Conception, Treasures of Prehistoric Art, Kegan Paul, Related Matters, American Anthropologist, Martinus Nijhoff, Current Anthropology, Wolfgang Wickler, Alison Jolly, Ashley Montagu, Oxford University Press Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
34
books
cite this book:
See all 34 books citing this book
- How We Got to Be Human: Subjective Minds With Objective Bodies by William H. Libaw on 11 pages
- Feminist Phenomenology (Contributions To Phenomenology) by Linda Fisher on 6 pages
- Ontology of Sex (Routledge Studies in Critical Realism) by Carrie Hull on 4 pages
- Understanding Social Divisions by Shaun Best on page 253, page 267, and Back Matter
- Juniper Fuse: Upper Paleolithic Imagination & the Construction of the Underworld by Clayton Eshleman on page 130, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
See all 34 books citing this book
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