The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

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The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

4.19 of 5 stars 4.19 · rating details · 1,412 ratings · 216 reviews

At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, o...more

Paperback, 512 pages

Published August 15th 2000 by Mariner Books (first published 1976)

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May 17, 2007 Bill rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: science fiction buffs

Shelves: pop-science

Coming in a close third after Immanuel Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward As Science and Beeban Kidron's To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar in the World's Clunkiest Title competition, TOoCitBotBM is surprisingly accessible given the amount of ground it covers. Combining analyses of psychology, archeology, and ancient literature, Jaynes comes up with an astounding hypothesis: early man's mind was nothing like the thing we carry around in o...more Coming in a close third after Immanuel Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward As Science and Beeban Kidron's To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar in the World's Clunkiest Title competition, TOoCitBotBM is surprisingly accessible given the amount of ground it covers. Combining analyses of psychology, archeology, and ancient literature, Jaynes comes up with an astounding hypothesis: early man's mind was nothing like the thing we carry around in our skulls today. It was more like that of a modern schizophrenic's, egoless and subject to manipulation by hallucinated gods. This was not a defect. Mass hallucination was an essential tool for early social organization, one that evolved into modern individuated consciousness only as circumstances changed. Perhaps most intriguingly, Jaynes maintains that this variety of consciousness persisted until the dawn of recorded history. So books like the Bible and the Iliad are glimpses not only into different eras, but entirely different modes of human thought. Homer and Moses are as strange to us as Martians.

As fascinating as Jaynes' ideas may be, it's not clear what we're supposed to do with them. Even at its most specific, his hypothesis is wholly unfalsifiable, and the supporting data, while extensive, is hard to evaluate. The lay reader has to take Jaynes' word for it when he uses linguistic evidence from ancient Greek to claim that somatic metaphors in the Iliad should be interpreted literally, or draws detailed inferences from the size of eye sockets in ancient Mesopotamian statues. Despite the even scholarly tone, Jaynes often sounds like a crank, though it's not clear if it's his scholarship that's at fault or the fact that his thesis is just too marijuana-friendly.

This book's weirdness, however, is an essential part of its continued popularity. Like C.G. Jung, Jaynes has a mystical appeal. He explores the spooky intersection of madness, consciousness, and the ancient world in a scientific theory that accounts for gods and oracles without wholly explaining them away. Perhaps it's best to approach "Origin" as a masterfully detailed work of science fiction (where "Julian Jaynes" is a pseudonym for Jorge Luis Borges). Bicameral breakdown or no, human consciousness had to have an origin somewhere, and a meditation on where that origin might lie makes for heady reading.(less)

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Mar 11, 2010 Terence rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Terence by: GR friend Jim's review

Shelves: science-general, science-evolution, science-psych-brain-science

I am giving Julian Jaynes’ The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (The Origin) four stars not because I’ve become a devoted follower of his theory – I haven’t – but because it reflects exactly how I feel about it – I “really liked it.” Jaynes writes in such a commanding manner that you’re helplessly swept along to the end (at which point, you can finally catch your breath and begin to assess what’s just happened). Once he’s determined the correctness of his hypothesis...more

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Jan 19, 2010 Manny rated it 3 of 5 stars

Either a work of unparalleled genius, or completely out-to-lunch loopy. No one, not even Richard Dawkins, appears quite certain which description to apply.

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There are surprising resonances between Jaynes's ideas and those proposed by Feyerabend in Chapter 16 of Against Method. I was particularly struck by the following passage (italics as in original):

The transition from [the Homeric/archaic Greek view of the world] to [the classical Greek view of the world] thu

...more Either a work of unparalleled genius, or completely out-to-lunch loopy. No one, not even Richard Dawkins, appears quite certain which description to apply.

____________________________________

There are surprising resonances between Jaynes's ideas and those proposed by Feyerabend in Chapter 16 of Against Method. I was particularly struck by the following passage (italics as in original):

The transition from [the Homeric/archaic Greek view of the world] to [the classical Greek view of the world] thus introduces new entities and new relations between entities (this is seen very clearly in painting and statuary). It also changes the concept and the self-experience of humans. An archaic individual is an assemblage of limbs, connections, trunk, head, neck, (s)he is a puppet set in motion by outside forces such as enemies, social circumstances, feelings (which are described and perceived as objective agencies): 'Man is an open target of many forces which impinge on him, and penetrate his very core'. He is an exchange station of material and spiritual, but always objective, causes. And this is not just a 'theoretical' idea, it is a social fact. Man is not only described in this way, he is depicted in this way, and he feels himself to be constituted in this manner. He does not possess a central agency of action, a spontaneous 'I' that produces its own ideas, feelings, intentions, and differs from behaviour, social situations, 'mental' events of [the Homeric/archaic view]. Such an I is neither mentioned nor is it noticed. It is nowhere to be found within [the Homeric/archaic view]. But it plays a decisive role within [the classical view]. Indeed, it is not implausible to assume that some outstanding peculiarities of [the classical view] such as aspects, semblances, ambiguity of feeling enter the stage as a result of a sizeable increase of self-consciousness.

Oddly enough, Feyerabend makes no reference to Jaynes, despite the fact that the third edition, which I am reading, was published in 1990, 14 years after Jaynes.
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May 11, 2013 Cooper Renner rated it 5 of 5 stars

I am perhaps more amazed by this book now that I was 20+ years ago, though it must have been even more eye-opening for me at that time. Now, however, might be the perfect time for me to have reread it. As I said below, it doesn't matter if it's "right" or not--it can reshape the way one looks at the world in any case. Absolutely essentially. My vote for most important book of the 20th century.

Now rereading a book I first read more than 20 years ago (and then reread a big chunk of it later). An a...more

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May 20, 2008 Andrew rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Mirror Wonderers

Shelves: non-fiction

The thesis is astonishing, unbelievable:

The civilizations of ancient Egypt, Crete, Mesopotamia and Mycenae did not consist of human beings that were 'conscious' in anyway that is familiar to us moderns. Rather, the people of these civilizations (as well as societies prior) possessed 'bicameral minds.' They were automatons that moved through life in a state of religious awe, making decisions and undertaking actions at the behest of the very real auditory hallucinations of gods and dead kings whic...more

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Jun 22, 2007 Eric rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: The Ancient Greeks

Shelves: poetry, science-fiction

Synopsis: "Consciousness" is a skill wherein people create a mental world analogous to the physical world in order to attempt hypothetical solutions to novel problems. This skill was developed over thousands of years, following the collapse of an earlier system for responding creatively to unique stimuli. This system, dubbed "the Bicameral Mind" involved the right hemisphere of the brain generating solutions and communicating them to the acting left hemisphere using language as the encoding syst...more

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May 04, 2009 Bob rated it 4 of 5 stars

May 2009 - taking everything ofc "currently reading" list that I actually stopped reading a year ago - comments below still valid.

Although Julian Jaynes had a fairly conventional academic career, teaching and researching at Princeton for 25 years, this book was not quite scholarly and put forth theories that never gained complete acceptance within the mainstream of his discipline, hence it has (to my mind anyway) sat on the countercultural bookshelf for thirty years. It's also (wikipedia tells m...more

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Feb 13, 2009 George rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is actually comprised of three books. Jaynes had intended on writing four separate books, but wound up putting three of them together into one. He was to write the fourth book later, but never got around to it before passing away, which is a shame since I think he's onto something.

Book 1: "The Mind of Man".

Originally published in 1976 and quite controversial, Jaynes posited that human consciousness is a relatively recent trait of humans occurring around 3000 to 3500 years ago. Origin...more This book is actually comprised of three books. Jaynes had intended on writing four separate books, but wound up putting three of them together into one. He was to write the fourth book later, but never got around to it before passing away, which is a shame since I think he's onto something.

Book 1: "The Mind of Man".

Originally published in 1976 and quite controversial, Jaynes posited that human consciousness is a relatively recent trait of humans occurring around 3000 to 3500 years ago. Origin (as I will refer to it henceforth) touches on history, philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and anthropology. A few other "ologies" are thrown in for good measure too.

The introduction which is called "The Problem of Consciousness"challenges all theories which mankind has used to ascribe consciousness as an innate part of man and to try and say what consciousness actually is: consciousness as a property of matter, consciousness as a property of protoplasm, consciousness as the natural outcome of learning, and consciousness as a metaphysical imposition just to name a few. He meticulously explains why these views may not be true. For example (a weak one), he states, regarding consciousness as learning:

  "And hence a third solution, which states that consciousness began not with matter, nor at the beginning of animal life, but at some specific time after life had evolved. It seemed obvious to all the active investigators of the subject that the criterion of when and where in evolution consciousness began was the appearance of associative memory or learning. If an animal could modify its behavior on the basis of its experience, it must be having an experience; it must be conscious".

In the first chapter of Book 1 called "The Consciousness of Consciousness". This chapter is quite like the introduction, but instead of trying to work through all the things that people have used to describe consciousness as an unquestionable requirement in humans, he takes the reader on a quest to discover just how many of the things we do day-to-day are not conscious activities no matter how mentally involved they may be. Just as the introduction did he has sections such as: "Consciousness Not Necessary for Concepts", "Consciousness Not Necessary for Learning", "Consciousness Not Necessary for Thinking" and my personal favorite "Consciousness Not Necessary for Reasoning".

A few small excerpts from, Consciousness Not Necessary for Reasoning: "Reasoning and logic are to each other as health is to medicine, or --- better --- as conduct is to morality..." "...Logic is how we ought to think if objective truth is our goal --- and the everyday world is very little concerned with objective truth..." "...My point here is that for such natural reasoning to occur, consciousness is not necessary. The very reason we need logic at all is because most reasoning is not conscious at all".

Then he presents an example: "A boy having observed on one or more past occasions that a particular piece of wood floats on a particular pond, will conclude directly in a new instance that another piece of wood will float on another pond. There is no collecting together of past instances in consciousness, and no necessary conscious process whatever when the new piece of wood is seen directly as floating on a new pond. This is sometimes called reasoning from particulars, and is simply expectation based on generalization..." "...Such reasoning is the structure of the nervous system, not the structure of consciousness".

As a juxtaposition against the introduction where we were told what consciousness is not a property of, this section gets you prepared to accept that many of the things that we view as indicators of consciousness are in fact completely non-conscious activities. My favorite quote from this chapter is regarding reason and logic: "Surely, we exclaim, this cannot be true of the highest processes of intellectual thought! Surely there at last we will come to the very empire of consciousness, where all is spread out in a golden clarity and all the orderly processes of reason go on in a full publicity of awareness. But the truth has no such grandeur. The picture of the scientist sitting down with his problems and using conscious induction and deduction is as mythical as a unicorn".

Chapter 2 is called "Consciousness" and he focuses on language, specifically written language, as being a requirement for the the start of consciousness in humans. The very first section of this chapter is about metaphor and how most of the words in any language, if you dig far back enough started out as metaphors. Essentially, when new concepts are introduced, the best way to convey the new concepts is via metaphor. He provides a series of examples and then works up to the idea that metaphor is really the "language of the mind". As he progresses he becomes more specific about language and how the concepts of "I" and "me" fit into our existing experience with consciousness. There is a lot of bouncing back and forth between the history of languages and human consciousness today with the linking entity being metaphors.

It is in the third chapter that we start getting to why he supposes that consciousness arose in humans 3000 to 3500 years ago when written language first began to appear. He starts by using Homer's The Illiad as some of his supporting evidence: "There is in general no consciousness in the Illiad. I am saying 'in general' because I shall mention some exceptions later. And in general therefore, no words for consciousness or mental acts". He uses the lack of internal motivation in all characters as some evidence. The characters are only made to do things at the whim of the gods: "When, toward the end of the war, Achilles reminds Agamemnon of how he robbed him of his mistress, the king of men declares, 'Not I was the cause of this act, but Zeus, and my portion, and the Erinyes who walk in darkness: they it was in the assembly put wild ate upon me on that day when I arbitrarily took Achilles' prize from him, so what could I do? Gods always have their way.' (19:86-90). And that this was no particular fiction of Agamemnon's to evade responsibility is clear in that this explanation is fully accepted by Achilles, for Achilles is also obedient to the gods".

Just after this point, Jaynes finally gets to the meat of the theory behind Origin. He suggests that the point of view that all men in the Illiad are driven by "the gods" and no sense of individual motive at all was not a mere poetic device. Instead he suggests that at this point in human development most humans were in fact experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations which they perceived as gods. These hallucinations were essential to humans at this time to allow them to function day to day. To give them guidance and structure. This is what he calls the Bicameral mind: "In distinction to our own subjective conscious minds, we can call the mentality of the Myceneans a bicameral mind. Volition, planning, initiative is organized with no consciousness whatever and then 'told' to the individual in his familiar language, sometimes with the visual aura of a familiar friend of authority figure or 'god', or sometimes as a voice alone. The individual obeyed these voices because he could not 'see' what to do by himself".

The purpose of the auditory and visual hallucinations, according to Jaynes, has a physiological basis. His point is that the vastly larger number of neurons firing on either side of the brain need some efficient way to communicate information to the other hemisphere over the small bridge between them. After explaining the power of auditory stimuli and how it cannot be shut out, especially if emanating from within and then moving onto auditory and visual hallucinations, he suggests that these experiences are the communications protocol between both halves of the brain.

If you look at it from the perspective of computers, Jaynes suggests that hallucinations are a form of data compression for both halves of the brain to exchange information. Or at least they were, for the bicameral man. This need became superfluous when consciousness began and humans started functioning as individuals. He doesn't believe this happened right away and suddenly everyone was conscious. He believes that this happened over a long period of time and that there are still lingering elements of bicameralism in humans.

After making this bold statement, he then walks through a few assumed counter-responses and provides his answer why he believes these arguments against him are incorrect. At one point in the chapter he also points to the greek gods in the Illiad and their limitations. They are not supernatural. They are limited by the laws of the natural world. They cannot create anything out of nothingness. They are not at all like the Hebrew god.

The remainder of book one clarifies the rest of his reasoning as to why he came to his conclusion about humans living without consciousness. He writes more on the origins of language, the experience of modern day schizophrenics, his views on how and when language arose, the development from crude burial rituals to religions and then eventually when and why consciousness happened in humans.

I enjoyed book one a lot. Partially because it pokes holes in well established and very sound beliefs, but also because it's a fascinating prospect and fairly well thought out. If only there was more room in the review to write about how good this book is.
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Jan 07, 2013 Keith Swenson rated it 4 of 5 stars

I must fall back on description of the book given by someone else: it is "either complete rubbish or the work of a consummate genius ... nothing in between."

Gave the book 4 stars because it is one of those books that really makes you think about everything.

What Jaynes does do is to look at the periods of history and identify a pattern of psychological differences over time by analyzing the writing left to us by those people. He sees a rather distinct change happen about 1000 BCE in the middle e...more I must fall back on description of the book given by someone else: it is "either complete rubbish or the work of a consummate genius ... nothing in between."

Gave the book 4 stars because it is one of those books that really makes you think about everything.

What Jaynes does do is to look at the periods of history and identify a pattern of psychological differences over time by analyzing the writing left to us by those people. He sees a rather distinct change happen about 1000 BCE in the middle east (other times in other parts of the world). He sees that trend as part of a cultural-psychological arc that extends across history in several stages: the "Enlightenment" as a more recent development in this trend.

The idea is so wacky: that the pyramids were built by unconscious people; that consciousness is a behavior that you learn from others in the your culture. I would imagine an unconscious person as wandering around as if in a dream. Jaynes' definition of consciousness might better be termed 'meta-consciousness': being aware that you are aware. The biggest flaw in the book is to call this property "consciousness" because it grates against the pop-psychology notion of consciousness. Had he invented a word (e.g. "grok") the book might be easier to discuss. Even with that, I can't say that I "believe" or even "agree" with his central thesis -- it is just too sketchy.

If you can get past this limitation, there are undeniable truths in the book that explain things that few have tried to explain. Why did so many major cultures trace their roots back to around 600BC? Why did the Oracle at Delphi persist as an institution for 1000 years with the region's smartest people visiting it regularly. There are so many beginnings at that time period that it is only natural to ask: what really changed at that time? And what is it that has really changed since then? I keep thinking of Monte Python's "Life of Brian" where they depict a time when prophets and miracle workers were a daily occurrence.

There is no doubt that members of our modern cultures think about the world in a vastly different way than people did a few thousand years ago. Jaynes attempts to plot the course of that change, and show evidence from writing at different times in history. There is certainly no question that people today think about the world the way we do because we learned it from our culture. How then does a culture change from believing in demons and gods in everything around, to a more rational view of the world? It probably didn't happened the way that Jaynes describes it, but then there still is always a chance that he is right. There is at least a germ of truth in what he says.

It is not an easy read, and draws on a hefty understanding of ancient history. Yet, it is one of those "mind blowing" books that may change your view of some things forever. I feel certain, that some future philosopher will work out actual course of such social/psychological development, and that work will no doubt cite Julian Jaynes as one of the initial sparks of innovation in that direction.(less)

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Apr 03, 2012 Kingpin543 rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is an outstanding work! The author is or was a professor of psychology, and while his premise fits within that subject it also threatens to force the re-writing of all our texts on ancient history and anthropology as well.

Basically he argues that humans have had truly conscious minds only since about 1000 BCE, and that before that time we were dominated by voices coming from the right side of our brains -- voices we interpreted as coming from gods or God. In short that all humans were more...more This is an outstanding work! The author is or was a professor of psychology, and while his premise fits within that subject it also threatens to force the re-writing of all our texts on ancient history and anthropology as well.

Basically he argues that humans have had truly conscious minds only since about 1000 BCE, and that before that time we were dominated by voices coming from the right side of our brains -- voices we interpreted as coming from gods or God. In short that all humans were more or less schizophrenic. He doesn't use Freud's term, but I take it that these voices in our head were somewhat like Freud's concept of the superego -- a conscience that made decisions for us whenever we came under the stress of making a decision outside of our day-to-day habits.

First you must understand that he defines "consciousness" more narrowly than some do, as the capacity to imagine alternatives, to reminisce (that is, intentionally call up memories), and to self-criticize.

He thinks that human consciousness is a product of language, but that it did not reach its current form with the beginning of language. As evidence he examines some of the oldest writings still extant, namely the Iliad and some of the early Hebrew prophets, to show how they indicate an entirely different kind of mind -- what he calls a bicameral mind, one in which the left brain, which controls the speaking voice and the dominant hand, occasionally received orders/commands from the right brain, which is better able to handle complex problems.

As this arrangement broke down -- he thinks due to natural disasters and/or overpopulation -- increasingly conscious humans sought to re-establish contact with the lost "gods" by turning to a few people who could still hear the voices in their heads, often by use of hallucinogenics of some kind -- the prophets, sybils, priest and oracles. But eventually even these people lost contact, leaving us with various established religions as relics of the old order and a longing for certainty and decisiveness in an uncertain world.

Along the way he explores the relationship of poets to the Muses, the nature of hypnotism, and the modern syndrome called Schizophrenia.

This book was first published in 1976 and I first read it in 1985, but I have just finished a newer edition which includes an Afterword written in 1990. I may have to read it several more times to fully understand all that it has to tell us. I have barely scratched the surface in this review.

The author's style is very readable, and every page (469 of them, not counting the index, etc.) is filled with highly interesting insights and ideas.

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Apr 20, 2011 Kareef rated it 3 of 5 stars

The ideas presented by Julian Jaynes are intriguing, if, at times, salacious if you know what I mean. Definitely brain candy, no doubt about that.

But although he presents delectable anecdotes to buttress his views about how conciousness came late to the scene via bicameralism (hearing voices, left-frain, right brain yadda) it's painfully evident . . . his ideas are hard to prove.

He asserts the ancients heard voices. And that Gods were constantly harping on this and on that, ceaselessly going on...more

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Nov 28, 2010 Ross Perlin rated it 5 of 5 stars

In a highly original and wide-ranging book, Jaynes proposes that the evolution of consciousness does not lie far back in our primordial origins, but came about approximately 3000-4000 years under the pressure of living in larger and larger settlements. Consciousness he defines as “a metaphor-generated model of the world” that features an “analog ‘I’” and a “mind-space” in which we can narratize our own actions. Before consciousness, men responded to the “gods” which commanded his obedience from...more

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Aug 26, 2009 blake rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: anthropology-sociology

A compelling thesis that left me intrigued if not overwhelmingly convinced. Jaynes certainly provides for an interesting reading of the Iliad. And it definitely makes me want to go back and peruse the Bible, an urge I can't say I've had that often in my life.

One of my favorite things about the book was Jaynes' writing style -- eminently approachable and humble, as if he was freely admitting that he doesn't have that good of a case. I can appreciate that. Of course, when he then proceeded to rel...more

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Nov 23, 2010 Michael Steger rated it 2 of 5 stars

Jaynes's theory is that humankind developed unified subjective consciousness fairly recently: some time during the second millennium BCE for the civilizations of the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean, and perhaps much, much more recently in the Mayan and Aztec civilizations of the Americas. Prior to this development of what Jaynes simply calls "consciousness," human beings were "bicameral": they went about their lives in a very pragmatic way, doing what was necessary to stay alive, speaking bu...more Jaynes's theory is that humankind developed unified subjective consciousness fairly recently: some time during the second millennium BCE for the civilizations of the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean, and perhaps much, much more recently in the Mayan and Aztec civilizations of the Americas. Prior to this development of what Jaynes simply calls "consciousness," human beings were "bicameral": they went about their lives in a very pragmatic way, doing what was necessary to stay alive, speaking but not introspecting or telling stories, and likely possessing no distinct sense of self. In moments of stress, however, usually occurring when decisions had to be made, the right hemisphere of the brain would generate visual or auditory hallucinations that would be "understood" by the dominant left hemisphere. These hallucinations were reified by ancient peoples as deities. Thus, in Jaynes's view, in the Iliad, the gods are examples of such hallucinations. (Indeed, Jaynes uses the Iliad as Exhibit A in his argument that the Mycenaens were like automata that felt commanded to act by external forces, though these forces were being generated from within, by their own biochemistry.)

Jaynes writes well, with disarming honesty (he confesses repeatedly how outlandish his speculations must appear), and his mind roams over seemingly disparate matters with a certain evident brilliance. In the space of a page, he might go from discussing brain anatomy and chemistry to making a reference to Yeats or criticizing Marx.

Jaynes raises some very good points (e.g., that consciousness may be dependent upon language-use; that human consciousness presumably has undergone substantial changes over the long course of time; that an examination of ancient texts, such as the Iliad and the five books of Moses, does seem to suggest that the civilizations that produced such texts possessed a "mentality" radically different than our own) but he attempts to go too far on too little evidence, and he leaves significant questions unanswered, such as, is there any evidence of "bicameralism" in non-human primates? and, what was the source of the semantic content exchanged by the hemispheres of the brain in "bicameral man"? (less)

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Mar 05, 2013 JJVid rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: evolution, psychology

In short, Jaynes' theory is highly speculative at best, and intentionally misleading at worst. Jaynes believes that three plus millennia ago humans were, overall, non-conscious automatons similar to Descartes' mechanical animals. There was rationality, there was language (and communication), there was a distinction between "others" and "self", but none of this amounted to what we would call "consciousness". Consciousness, in Jaynes' opinion, did not come about until around the second century B.C...more In short, Jaynes' theory is highly speculative at best, and intentionally misleading at worst. Jaynes believes that three plus millennia ago humans were, overall, non-conscious automatons similar to Descartes' mechanical animals. There was rationality, there was language (and communication), there was a distinction between "others" and "self", but none of this amounted to what we would call "consciousness". Consciousness, in Jaynes' opinion, did not come about until around the second century B.C. Jaynes spends a good deal of space discussing what consciousness is NOT. Here I believe he errs by taking a single case and generalizing it too far; e.g. Circle, Triangle, Circle, Triangle, Circle, X... what is X? You say Triangle without thought, it was automatic and without thought... thinking, therefore, is non-conscious. What? Just because you can show ONE case where thinking simply is automatic does NOT mean that all forms of thought are relegated to the automatic and non-conscious realm. Over-generalizations like the former are replete within this book, and scientific scrutiny is often left to the wayside and substituted with bold theorizing (read: exceedingly rash speculation).

He says at the close of the first chapter, "unless you are here convinced that a civilization without consciousness is possible, you will find the discussion that follow unconvincing and paradoxical" (47). I found it utterly unconvincing.

In a large portion, Jaynes bases his theory off the anecdotal "evidence" that the earliest known Greek work "The Iliad" was an historical description of the behavioristic actions of seemingly non-conscious men. That there was no description of internal motivations, much less an internal life at all, and that the functionaries of any novel action (aka non-habitual action) was derived from the Gods literally telling the characters to do X is, to Jaynes, evidence that nothing of this sort ever occurred back then. Jaynes believes that the writing of "The Iliad" is definitely NOT a literature device, or an intentional way of conveying a narrative, but is a vivid description of human life at the time it was written. He relies so heavily on "The Iliad" as an historical document that within the text he flat out denies the existence of certain human traits, namely consciousness and introspective deliberation, simply because "The Iliad" made no mention of them. "There is no question of its historical substrate. The Iliad is not imaginative creative literature and hence not a matter for literary discussion. It is history, webbed into the Mycenaean Aegean, to be examined by psychohistorical scientists" (76). I view "The Iliad" as a fictional narrative, Jaynes views it as factual history. Whatever side you tend towards will severely affect your interpretation of this book.

I give Jaynes credit, though, for addressing some very good distinctions between consciousness and functionality. "The actual process of thinking... is not conscious at all and that only its preparation, its materials, and its end result are consciously perceived" (41). We tend to believe that thinking itself if a conscious process, but Jaynes' makes a valid argument that thinking is often automatic -- a result of past experience and learnings (which themselves are not necessarily conscious) -- and that thinking often has no counterpart in reflection; it is more of a reaction. However, like I mentioned before, a single case in favor does not generalize to all.

Jaynes' theory is, by his own admission, speculative and weak. He makes many remarks and caveats warning the reader that "what you are about to read is speculative and my own theory, it is not the orthodox opinion and is not held by most scientists in this particular field" (yes, it's a paraphrase, but he said something almost exactly like this). I thank you, Julian Jaynes, for forewarning me about the unorthodox position from which you are proffering your theories, but I would be remiss if I did not say that I've become wary of even your own belief in this theory since at almost every significant juncture of philosophizing you've felt it necessary to point out the potential and probable ridiculousness of your theorizing. It was a fun speculative adventure, and I won't say that I didn't enjoy your book (I did), but I'll chalk this one up to my "bullshit" category and feel contented that I at least got a good workout of my 'critical thinking' mental muscle. Despite your absurd ideas and wanton neglect of scientific rigor, I enjoyed following you along this delusion. You made some valid points, you forced me to think (albeit in antagonism to yourself), and I leave feeling like I learned something. It wasn't much, but it was something.

It was.... okay.(less)

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Jan 30, 2009 Colin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy, scholarly-works, teaching-resources

A startling work on the origin and nature of human consciouness, based on Jaynes' theory that human beings originally possessed a "bicameral mind" and that the breakdown of this bicameral organization led directly to modern consciousness. The argument is convincingly presented, and the evidence from the Iliad is especially gripping if one has read the poem in the original Greek and can see that each of the terms for mental processes used by Homer directly supports Jaynes' hypothesis. A must-rea...more

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Dec 04, 2008 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars

A mind-fuck of the highest order. A work of polymathemetical genius, probably wrong on many accounts but absolutely original in its approach. Extremely readable, unpretentious prose and probings into one of life's coolest mysteries. You'll never read the Oddessey the same way again, or think about schizophrenia or Ancient Sumeria in the same way. It's speculative power has made many a head spin, I think.

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Apr 06, 2013 Matthew Peck rated it 4 of 5 stars

While it wasn't the sexy crime thriller that its title promised, 'Origin' is a book which, for once, earns the description of "mind-blowing". I've wanted to read Jaynes' hypothesis ever since it I found it mentioned casually in Steven Pinker's 'How The Mind Works': until about 3000 years ago, human beings were virtually unconscious and had no concept of an "I" or self. Conscious-type thoughts and volition traveled from the right hemisphere of the brain to the left as full-blown auditory hallucin...more While it wasn't the sexy crime thriller that its title promised, 'Origin' is a book which, for once, earns the description of "mind-blowing". I've wanted to read Jaynes' hypothesis ever since it I found it mentioned casually in Steven Pinker's 'How The Mind Works': until about 3000 years ago, human beings were virtually unconscious and had no concept of an "I" or self. Conscious-type thoughts and volition traveled from the right hemisphere of the brain to the left as full-blown auditory hallucinations that ordered our ancestors around, hence the gods of the Iliad and the Old Testament and Gilgamesh. When cultures collided around the 2nd millennium BC we 'learned' our way to our present consciousness and we've been haunted by this loss of our god-voices ever since. I think that he was on to something - it's wild but not THAT wild, and Jaynes was no crackpot.

The book is divided into 3 sections - in the first, Jaynes defines what consciousness is and isn't, and introduces his theory of the bicameral mind. In the 2nd, he pores over archaeological and literary evidence. This is the weakest section, because of the inherent dangers of making conclusions based on drawings and on texts that have been translated countless times. There's a lot of sentences like "this CLEARLY is because of the bicameral mind and nothing else", when that's really not the case. Most of the focus is on Mesopotamia with a little of Meso-America (that's where most of the ancient relics have survived), but Asia barely gets a passing glance. In the 3rd section, Jaynes studies contemporary phenomena like hypnosis and schizophrenia, regressions to the bicameral mind.

Jaynes is magnificent writer, with a sense of lyricism that is rare among academics. The final passage is particularly stunning, with its palpable sense of loss. 'Origin' has science, psychology, world history, poetry, spirituality, and philosophy. I'd recommend it if you're interested in even one of these categories - it has the power to change the way you look at world history, even if you don't buy into every suggestion.(less)

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Oct 15, 2012 djcb rated it 3 of 5 stars

In this book, Julian Jaynes poses the theory that until ca. 1000 BCE, humanity was not conscious. He defines consciousness perhaps a tad tighter than others do, but it refers to meta-consciousness -- being able to argue about oneself, to be introspective. A second part of his theory is that the right hemisphere of the brain (for right-handed people) was much more separate, and the source of the 'voices of the gods': the "bicameral mind", which broke down at the end of the 2nd millennium BCE. A s...more In this book, Julian Jaynes poses the theory that until ca. 1000 BCE, humanity was not conscious. He defines consciousness perhaps a tad tighter than others do, but it refers to meta-consciousness -- being able to argue about oneself, to be introspective. A second part of his theory is that the right hemisphere of the brain (for right-handed people) was much more separate, and the source of the 'voices of the gods': the "bicameral mind", which broke down at the end of the 2nd millennium BCE. A strong claim indeed -- the pyramid builders, inventors of writing, etc. did all of this in a sort-of 'mental autopilot' state!

Jaynes is a good writer -- he seems well at home in the subject matter, the various languages of the fertile crescent and the Mediterranean and their history. I enjoyed his writing style.

Now, what about his theories? I'd like to quote Carl Sagan, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Since these are certainly extraordinary claims, what can we say?

* some stylistic differences between Iliad and Odyssea - not sure what this means. These books were written down centuries after some real(?) Trojan war, it's not sure what changed and by whom (Homer is probably not an actual person)
* a bit of a goose hunt through other ancient books - allegedly, all that people did was following the voices in their heads. Jaynes likes his own non-mainstream translations.
* oracles and some people that held on to the 'vestiges of bicamerality' and could still hear the voices.
* schizophrenia -- a fallback to the bicameral days?

There are more things in the book of course, but overall I found the evidence insufficient. He did address some of my doubts it in the Afterword in the '91 edition (regarding 'shame' -- I would think that the accusation 'shameless' from Achilles to Agamemnon in the Iliad suggests that Achilles could place himself in Agamemnon's sandals, which requires some 'meta-consciousness').

Jaynes is not a crackpot, and sometimes states his uncertainty quite honestly -- but in other places, he seems rather overconfident. There is certainly an element of confirmation bias, and seeing bicamerality behind every tree. Could he be right about his great theory? Possibly, but I'm not convinced. Also, there is a sense of near-unfalsifiability in the theories -- based on a subjective analysis for a rather limited amount of material.

2.5 stars for this book -- but since that is not possible and I'm in a generous mood, 3 stars.(less)

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Jan 22, 2011 Justin rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book has a astounding hypothesis that Jaynes beginwith a percise definition of consciousness and what it is not, marches through the literature of ancient cultures and lands finally through poetry, music, hypnosis and schizophrenia. His thesis is powerful and persuasive. However, there are some arguments he proposes that could be taken to a different conclusion, such as the beginnings of consciousness were fragmented and broken and over time have joined together through the use of language...more

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Apr 15, 2012 Nicholas rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: psychology

Anyone with any interest in cognitive neuroscience,consciousness studies or ancient history,can't avoid coming into contact with this authors intriguing theory sooner or later.
In a nutshell the theory states that the development of language facilitated more efficient neural inter-hemispherical communications,allowing mankind to form more sizable communities when these hallucinated thoughts where synchronised in the form of a familiar collective authority.Eventually these hallucinated thoughts d...more

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Jul 14, 2012 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science, philosophy, mind-science, mind-and-consciousness

If nothing else, Jaynes gets his stars just for telling a good story and making me think. I understand now why Dawkins said what he did about this book -- Jaynes's ideas on the historical development of consciousness are either brilliant scholarship or starry-eyed quackery. My current philosophical views on consciousness leave me sympathetic to the former, though I imagine a more skeptical lot will find much to pick apart.

Jaynes's premise begins simply enough. Up until around 3000 BC, give or t...more If nothing else, Jaynes gets his stars just for telling a good story and making me think. I understand now why Dawkins said what he did about this book -- Jaynes's ideas on the historical development of consciousness are either brilliant scholarship or starry-eyed quackery. My current philosophical views on consciousness leave me sympathetic to the former, though I imagine a more skeptical lot will find much to pick apart.

Jaynes's premise begins simply enough. Up until around 3000 BC, give or take a few millennia, human beings weren't conscious as we understand the idea today. Our species lacked the internal mind-space, the capacity for narratization (story-telling) of past and future, and the sense of "I" that we all take for granted as features of the mental. In place of the intentional sense-of-self, we were split in half: the brain's left hemisphere, capable of language, could understand commands but not issue them, while the right hemisphere, which lacks linguistic powers, generated auditory and visual hallucinations under conditions of novelty or stress which, Jaynes argues, stood in for volition or will in this bicameral arrangement.

The hallucinations manifested as gods, deities, and other assorted spirits, and Jaynes draws on a diverse range of historical, anthropological, and literary sources to make his case. He argues that, despite common features of language, there was something different about ancient peoples up until around the first millennium BC. Ancient art and text from Egypt, Mesopotamia, and what little we have from China and the Indus Valley all suggest a mode of thought which is substantially unlike present-day peoples, and this manifested in the very structure of civilization at the time.

There's much more to be found here, and Jaynes paints a convincing case to which I see no easy knock-down response. As a read, the book is easy enough if you have any familiarity at all with the subject matter. It does in places stray into some detail on language and mentation in the first section, but anyone reading this would likely have an interest in those areas to begin with. I found section II, detailing the literary and historical records, to be the slowest part of the book and I ended up skimming quite a bit in those chapters. The final section deals with a range of topics from hypnosis, possession, poetry and music, schizophrenia, and the remnants of the bicameral mind in modern science, and I found these chapters to have a more lively pace.

Have a look if you're interested in consciousness and a thought-provoking case on how it might have originated (and shaped history).(less)

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Apr 23, 2007 khashayar XerXes rated it 5 of 5 stars

the most recent greate astonishing theory about "consciousness" & the "ME" inside!
& its origin!

IF u havnt read this yet,4GET ABOUT THINKING or having a BeLieve or a discussion about religious or spritual or celestial or.. things!
cuz without any shame,WE WILL LAUGH OUT LOUD at YOU...!!!

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Feb 03, 2009 David rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Jaynes writes engagingly, persuasively: I had intended only to reread Part I of the book but I ended up going through the whole text. His psychological research is buttressed by close readings of Homer and the Old Testament. The Greek and Hebrew, conveniently, are transliterated. One wonders what he would have made of recent findings in fMRI, of the latest biblical scholarship. One wishes for a more detailed comparison of the rise of civilization and consciousness between East and West.

Jaynes cu...more

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Oct 19, 2012 Ben rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy, psych

This book is incredible. Briefly, it posits the idea that you can have a functioning, even literate society without having consciousness - and that indeed the first societies were not conscious ones. Consciousness is said to have arisen around 3000 years ago, with societies before that time essentially following the exhortations of hallucinated voices that came to be known as Gods.

The thesis presented is quite plausible, though it is so revolutionary that it demands a lot of evidence - extraordi...more

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Jun 26, 2012 Roger Miller rated it 5 of 5 stars

As Richard Dawkins said in one of his recent books, Julian Jaynes' classic exploration is either complete rubbish or complete genius. Like Dawkins, I'm inclined to go with the former, but either way it makes great reading and will lead you to so many provocative and insightful observations you'll never look at the world in quite the same way again. Jaynes' premise is well-summarized elsewhere, so I won't bore you with repitition. Instead, I'll tell you that I've given this book away three times...more

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Jan 19, 2010 Jim Good rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, non-fiction, religion, science, sociology

Few books are more ambitious in scope than this. The thesis is interesting enough, but becomes mind blowing when taken in the context of the time scale Jaynes proposes. In summary his thesis is:

 Consciousness is an outgrowth of language and the structure of the human mind (being bicameral)
 The bicameral mind is an evolutionary structure facilitating hallucinogenic voices that became early man’s gods, and allowed for the building of relatively large communities;
 Written history shows that in t...more Few books are more ambitious in scope than this. The thesis is interesting enough, but becomes mind blowing when taken in the context of the time scale Jaynes proposes. In summary his thesis is:

 Consciousness is an outgrowth of language and the structure of the human mind (being bicameral)
 The bicameral mind is an evolutionary structure facilitating hallucinogenic voices that became early man’s gods, and allowed for the building of relatively large communities;
 Written history shows that in the first millennium BC that consciousness was born as the communities became too large to be maintained through the bicameral mind and the gods began to “die”;
 Remnants of the bicameral mind are evident today in hypnotism, schizophrenia, and religion

The book starts by asking the seemingly simple question of what is consciousness and defines it as the ability to think about an conceptual “I” with related memories and an ability to think forward into a more abstract future. Jaynes then takes the definition so offered and notes that language is a necessary tool for the establishment of an inner monologue. An interesting concept and one I have thought about before. How would the brain function without language in which to organize an inner monologue? An interesting concept that I would have liked to hear more on, but Jaynes asks that the reader just accept that the condition is unconscious man living in the moment and guided by right brain hallucinogenic voices that give directions as from the gods.

The most amazing assertion is that the “breakdown” into consciousness occurred after the invention of writing and is therefore evident. He uses the Iliad to illustrate the point. While I will tackle the Iliad again sometime in the future and certainly will do so with a different ear, I won’t be able to undertake the learning of early Greek conjugation to counter his arguments. In this I would be interested in reading further evidence outside the Greek culture as well as linguists take on Jaynes’s interpretations.

The book does everything I’d ask of a book. It asks fundamental questions about the nature of man, challenges my base assumptions and existing paradigms of thought, and provides well reasoned (if not entirely provable) theories that tie together the strings of evidence. The only missing piece is a thorough discussion of what the future holds. Limited to eight paragraphs at the end of the book it is unsatisfying, but that may because Jaynes thought he would write more at a later time.
(less)

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May 01, 2009 Marvin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

One of the most mind boggling books I have ever read. Jaynes' theory of the evolution of consciousness may be unprovable but he makes his case so eloquently and logically that it is hard to ignore. If it ever was proven, it would be a world changer on the level of the theory of evolution itself and the theory of relativity. this is far from light reading as you can get but Jaynes is an involving writer whose ideas flow rather easily. From what we know about the ancient world and from my own perc...more

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Mar 15, 2013 Andy Bodle rated it 5 of 5 stars

What most non-fiction wants to be when it grows up.

No telling yet how many of this man's prodigious ideas will turn out to be true, but it's a meticulously researched and fascinating journey through several fields of knowledge - psychology, ancient literature, neurobiology and palaeontology, to name but four - in a quest to find out how, and when, consciousness and language evolved in humans.

Among Jaynes's more controversial conclusions are that we sang before we could speak, and that at one p...more

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Mar 16, 2013 Bob Thurber rated it 4 of 5 stars

I first read this fascinating book in 1977.
And I've reread it a few times since then.
Just the other day I stumbled upon this article:
http://nplusonemag.com/there-is-only-awe

* *
Critics described it as a bizarre and reckless masterpiece—the American Journal of Psychiatry called Jaynes “as startling as Freud in the Interpretation of Dreams.” Drawing on evidence from neurology, archaeology, art history, theology, and Greek poetry, Jaynes captured the experience of modern consciousness—“a whole kingd...more

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About Julian Jaynes

Julian Jaynes was an American psychologist, best known for his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976), in which he argued that ancient peoples were not conscious.
Jaynes defines "consciousness" more narrowly than some philosophers. Jaynes' definition of consciousness is synonymous with what philosophers now call "meta-consciousness" or "meta-awareness" i.e. a...more

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Consciousness and the Voices of the Mind

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“Our sense of justice depends on our sense of time. Justice is a phenomenon only of consciousness, because time spread out in a spatial succession is its very essence. And this is possible only in a spatial metaphor of time.” — 6 people liked it

“O, what a world of unseen visions and heard silences, this insubstantial country of the mind! What ineffable essences, these touchless rememberings and unshowable reveries! And the privacy of it all! A secret theater of speechless monologue and prevenient counsel, an invisible mansion of all moods, musings, and mysteries, an infinite resort of disappointments and discoveries. A whole kingdom where each of us reigns reclusively alone, questioning what we will, commanding what we can. A hidden hermitage where we may study out the troubled book of what we have done and yet may do. An introcosm that is more myself than anything I can find in a mirror. This consciousness that is myself of selves, that is everything, and yet is nothing at all - what is it?
And where did it come from?
And why?” — 6 people liked it

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