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Origins of the Modern Mind Available in both hardcover and paperback.
Reprint edition (February 1993)
"A fine, provocative and absorbing account of what makes humans human." - Kirkus Reviews
Neuropsychology and cognitive science are concerned largely with the fundamental structure of the modern human mind. Although some attention has been paid to the phylogenetic succession of changes that must have led to the modern mind (see, for instance, Anderson, 1983), emphasis has been placed mostly upon the modern structure of human mental capacities, without taking their evolution into account. It is not an exaggeration to say that theories of cognitive structure are built mostly upon studies of the human mind as manifest in literate, postindustrial society and upon studies of the capabilities of computers. The extraordinary range of theory that has resulted was constructed for the most part without the constraints that must be applied to evolutionary hypotheses: continuity with previous forms, consistency with selection pressures, parsimony with regard to the number and complexity of successive adaptations, and so on. The result is that structural, that is, modular, models of mind proliferate without regard to their biological feasibility, even with neuropsychology. |
