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

by William H. Calvin

This book looks back at the simpler versions of mental life in apes, Neanderthals, and our ancestors, back before our burst of creativity started 50,000 years ago. When you can't think about the future in much detail, you are trapped in a here-and-now existence with no "What if?" and "Why me?" William H. Calvin takes stock of what we have now and then explains why we are nearing a crossroads, where mind shifts gears again.
The mind's big bang came long after our brain size stopped enlarging. Calvin suggests that the development of long sentences--what modern children do in their third year--was the most likely trigger. To keep a half-dozen concepts from blending together like a summer drink, you need some mental structuring. In saying "I think I saw him leave to go home," you are nesting three sentences inside a fourth. We also structure plans, play games with rules, create structured music and chains of logic, and have a fascination with discovering how things hang together. Our long train of connected thoughts is why our consciousness is so different from what came before.
Where does mind go from here, its powers extended by science-enhanced education but with its slowly evolving gut instincts still firmly anchored in the ice ages? We will likely shift gears again, juggling more concepts and making decisions even faster, imagining courses of action in greater depth. Ethics are possible only because of a human level of ability to speculate, judge quality, and modify our possible actions accordingly. Though science increasingly serves as our headlights, we are out-driving them, going faster than we can react effectively.

Genres: Science, Evolution, History, Psychology, Neuroscience, Biology, Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2004

About the author

William H. Calvin, Ph.D., is a theoretical neurobiologist, Affiliate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is the author of a dozen books, mostly for general readers, about brains and evolution.

(source)

Reviews

[Valeriu Gherghel · Rating 3 out of 5]

O lucrare foarte instructivă.

William H. Calvin oferă o istorie fără cronologie. Motivul e simplu. Este foarte greu să datezi momentele principale din istoria minții studiind doar fosile și unelte. E imposibil să deduci cum gîndea un om de acum 750.000 de ani doar privindu-i țeasta. Cartea cuprinde, așadar, o suită de întrebări, ipoteze și dubii. Precauția autorului e firească. Totuși, o istorie - fie și foarte scurtă - cere date, aproximări temporale, ipoteze cronologice, altfel nu e o istorie.

William H. Calvin încearcă să refacă evoluția minții umane. Nu definește termenul, nici nu e nevoie. Toată lumea înțelege expresia „mintea de pe urmă”, deși definiția termenului „minte” nu e unanimă. Autorul consideră că momentul decisiv („inițiatorul”, ca să vorbesc prețios) în această evoluție milenară a fost exersarea „aruncării” unei pietre / sulițe către o țintă în mișcare (pp.66-67, 95). „Inteligența mecanică” (p.172) a facilitat dezoltarea inteligenței cognitive. Priceperea de a arunca la țintă presupune nu numai coordonarea dintre creier și mînă, dar și un plan, o finalitate care nu e imediată. Antropoidele (cimpanzei, bonobo) par a nu fi în stare să conceapă un plan. Dar pentru a planifica, e nevoie ca hominidul să evadeze din „hic et nunc” (acum și aici), să-și imagineze o situație viitoare.

Din teama de a nu fi anacronic (de a încurca timpurile), autorul s-a ferit de cronologie. Din cele cîteva ipoteze temporale risipite în carte, putem realiza acest tablou istoric:

- 2, 5 milioane de ani î.e.n.: apariția primilor hominizi. Strămoșii omului trăiesc în grupuri mici, adoptă mersul biped, se mută la granița dintre junglă și savană (pp.61-62). Primele unelte (p.20).
- 1, 5 milioane de ani î.e.n.: toporul de piatră (pp.68-69).
- 750.000 î.e.n.: apariția protolimbajului: „hai”, „uite” etc. (pp.76-80).
- 150.000 - 130.000 î.e.n.: apariția lui homo sapiens. Creierul are dimensiunile de azi, omul e modern anatomic. Folosește un vocabular destul de bogat. Dar gîndirea lui este încă nestructurată. Nu poate construi raționamente lungi (p.101).
- 130.000 - 50.000 î.e.n.: stagnare.
- 70.000 î.e.n.: în Blombos Caves, Africa de Sud, semne care par a sugera o intenție.
- 50.000 î.e.n.: explozia cognitivă. Mintea o ia razna. Omul își spune povești, este preocupat de moarte, are emoții morale: vinovăție, remușcări etc. Picturi rupestre în peștera Lascaux. Sculpturi. Pandantive, mărgele (pp.115, 125, 145).
- 5000 î.e.n.: apariția scrisului în Sumer.

Explozia cognitivă de acum 50 de mii de ani l-a nedumerit pe antropologul antivaccinist Alfred Russel Wallace (care a propus și el o teorie a selecției naturale), pentru că ea aduce o seamă de „gratuități”. Omul știe mai multe cuvinte decît are nevoie în viața de zi cu zi (necesarul e de 500 de cuvinte, dar omul stăpînește cîteva mii), pictează, compune povestiri despre origini, citește, scrie poeme de dragoste, are trăiri estetice etc. Selecția afirmă că se păstrează doar necesarul, inutilul este lăsat în urmă, abandonat. La Homo sapiens sapiens nu mai este așa: omul are mai multă minte decît îi trebuie în mod normal*. E imposibil să găsești o explicație rezonabilă pentru această revoluție. Wallace s-a gîndit la Dumnezeu. Evoluția omului e dirijată de Altcineva (pp.110-111)...

Ultima parte a cărții consemnează o serie de meditații cu privire la „viitorul minții amplificate” (pp.215 sq).

* De aia nu știe ce să facă cu ea :)

[Sandra Deaconu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prima parte nu a reușit să mă facă prea atentă pentru că acolo predomină antropologia și arheologia, domenii pentru care nu reușesc să manifest nici urmă de interes. Am mai încercat să citesc câte ceva, ca să-mi dezvolt cultura generală, dar degeaba. Oricât de superficial ar putea suna, pentru mine antropologia este ca magia: vreau doar să mă las fascinată de rezultate, nu și să știu cum a fost realizat ,,trucul". În a doua jumătate autorul și-a adus aminte că despre creier voia să vorbească și s-a apucat de treabă. ,,O scurtă istorie a minții" este locul de întâlnire al domeniilor de mai sus, cărora li se alătură pentru scurt timp și genetica, iar autorul le dezbate realizările și le folosește ca punct de plecare pentru numeroasele lui supoziții. 

Poate cel mai captivant capitol a fost ultimul, în care autorul lansează diferite preconizări despre viitorul minții noastre. Crede că, pentru a ne adapta la ritmul tot mai alert al vieții, s-ar putea să fie necesar un alt ,,Big Bang mintal". O variantă de a-l realiza ar fi conectarea creierului la diferite dispozitive electronice, dar o soluție mai la îndemână și cu rezultate mai probabile, spune Halvin, este îmbunătățirea educației copiilor. Grozav, deci viitorul nostru e în mâinile generațiilor Tik-Tok, ale copiilor care devin isterici, dacă le iei telefonul, ale fetelor care se trag de păr pentru un băiat care râde de pe margine și ale băieților care scuipă pe stradă și poartă colanți. Încurajator! Aștept cu teamă viitorul.

Destul de interesantă, dar am citit cărți mai cuprinzătoare și complexe despre creier. 

,,După cum spunea odată Desmond Morris, preferăm să ne gândim la noi ca la niște îngeri căzuți, și nu ca la niște maimuțe înălțate. Cel puțin tragem nădejde că evoluția ne va mai îmbunătăți. Din păcate, evoluția biologică nu face lucruri perfecte – doar se mișcă către noi «produse» cu o altă serie de defecte. (Sună familiar? Gândiți-vă cât de des vi se blochează computerul sau i se face praf sistemul de operare. S-ar putea să fim și noi tot așa, nepregătiți de lansarea pe piață.) Chiar și când reușim să nu ne blocăm din cauza unei crize epileptice, ne poticnim în numeroase capcane cognitive (de care, de obicei, nici nu ne dăm seama).
Odată ce recunoaștem că suntem atropoide recent înălțate, realizăm că pur și simplu nu a trecut suficient d emult itmp ca să putem evolua la versiunea 2.0, cu mai puține probleme. Evident, inovația culturală omenească, și nu evoluția biologică este acum răspunzătoare să elimine problemele. Și încă n-am făcut mari progrese.’’ (pag. 159-160)

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty interesting, can be rather slow/repetitive at times. I found myself skipping several pages as the author keeps using the same examples to illustrate points about the evolution of our intellect from the great apes.

If you aren't going to read this book, I'll tell you the main theory put forward. Practicing ballistics is what turned our primitive mind into the creative on the fly creative machine it is today (well, some of us anyway). The end.

[Rossdavidh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Subtitle: From Apes to Intellect and Beyond. I was two-thirds of the way through this book before I realized that it was by one of the authors of "Conversations with Neil's Brain", a book I had read and enjoyed several years ago. No matter; much has been learned in the decade or more that has passed since that book was written, not least in the field of "how did our brains come to be this way?". Calvin starts about 7 million years ago, and then takes us right up to the present day, and a bit past that into some speculation about the future. This makes a ratio of evidence to speculation of about 10:1, if we look at the table of contents, and that's more or less about what I prefer.


It was once a simple matter to explain the process of evolution as it applied to brain power. Our nearest relatives have more brain power than most other mammals, and mammals have more brain power than most non-mammals, and that goes along with us having more brain power than our nearest relatives to make a nice, even progression, with each step in the evolutionary process leading to greater success in propagating, hence more brain power in the future. It's still true, as far as it goes.

Once you get into the details of how the brain works, however, the picture becomes more complicated. The human brain is not just bigger (relative to body size) than other animals; it is different. The brain has different parts, visibly different when the brain is dissected, and also different in how they behave; FMRI and other scanning tools have given us more visibility in recent years into just how segmented and specialized the brain is.

Plus, our thinking about evolution has, uh, evolved. If brainpower is so great, why haven't other primates been getting more of it? It is no surprise that some primates have more than others; nothing says that all species have to evolve at equal speeds, since it is a process driven by a number of random factors such as mutation and sexual recombination. But many primates don't seem to be any brainier than they were several million years ago, while human brainpower seems to have undergone not just one but several big upward jumps. What caused these, and why didn't any of it seem to occur in any other part of the primate family tree (or any other part of the tree of Life, for that matter)?

Calvin does a nice job of covering this (quite substantial) ground in about 200 pages, a quite astonishing feat when I think about it. Necessarily, though, he does sometimes have to engage in a bit of speculation, as for example when he proposes that the task of throwing accurately from an upright pose, was a main driver of early brain growth for our species. It may be, as he claims, that this is a mentally challenging task that gives substantial payoffs for modest improvements, in the form of higher success at taking down prey at the watering hole, and it is something that not every primate species has a use for. But it cannot be considered as anything like proven, or even adequately demonstrated.

Calvin admits as much, however, and takes care to provide, where appropriate, a range of different possibilities for what drove the several "big bangs" of human brain growth. One interesting fact he points out is that the big bangs in brain size don't, really, correlate with the big bangs in our toolmaking capabilities. Either we were using our newly improved brains for making tools out of wood and other biodegradable tools, for a while, or else we had those big brains for something other than toolmaking for quite a while before we "realized" that all that cranial capacity could be put to use making better stone tools as well.

Either case raises some interesting questions, but it is the second possibility that Calvin spends the most time examining, and it is that our brain got bigger for one reason and then utilized for several others. Kind of like the Internet being invented in order to allow academic and defense researchers to share their findings, and then it gets used for commercial things like Amazon and Ebay.

The last chapter of Calvin's book spends some time examining the possible problems which our brain's "buggy" design might cause. Whether you think thermonuclear warfare, human-induced climate change, or pandemics that can ride airplanes to every city on the planet in a week, it is clear that we have new threats in the last few centuries which our savanna-dwelling ancestors did not evolve to handle. Calvin suggests that it may require us to reinvent how our brains work, once again, just as he suggests that we have done several times before, whether by inventing language or religion or [insert favorite paradigm-shift here].

Calvin states, several times in the book, that we are operating with what he compares to version 1.0 of a product, a brain that uses language and technology. Thinking on what our experience with version 1.0 of most products is, it is not hard to imagine that there could be serious flaws, perhaps fatal ones, in how the human brain works. To get a better version, however, will require a conscious act of (re)design on our part, rather than waiting several million years for natural selection to do the job.

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

The rise of "beyond the apes" intelligence

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.

--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”

[Mihai Zodian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The combination of neurology and psychiatry has become more popular in recent years. In A Brief History of the Mind (2004), the scientist William H. Calvin crafted an interesting perspective on the process of humanization, the way a group of primates became the early modern humans. The author emphasized the interaction between the brain and human activities and the values of structured thinking. I recommend the book to anyone interested in an easy to read popular science work.

William H. Calvin is a psychologist and psychiatrist interested in the neurological study of the mind and in education and the book is a very good illustration of how an evolutionary perspective should look like. A Brief History of the Mind covers a very long period, starting with the anthropoid apes of several million years ago, up to the modern humans. It includes classical topics, such as the comparisons with chimpanzees and bonobos, our “closest cousins”. The best chapters are the middle ones, where the author tries to reconstruct the way our mind appeared.

For William H. Calvin the essential progress was the structured brain activity. He suggested that it evolved in a yet unknown way from activities like spear-throwing, which are dated 400.000 years ago for Homo heidelbergensis, the ancestor of us and Neanderthals. Other factors were likely involved, according to A Brief History of the Mind. Creativity became practical, several neural and brain functions improved, learning became maybe faster and more profound.

I found intriguing the analogy between spear-throwing in hunting and symbolic language as examples of structured thinking. They are both organized activities, based on rules, but ones who are leaving a lot of choice to the user. The most important part of A Brief History of the Mind shows to the reader that they also involved several stages, which must be linked, in the moment of performance, like the aim or the way the arm should move for the throwing, in analogy with the meaning intended and how to arrange the words to make them play the intended roles, for the speaking. Similar processes are involved, according to William H. Calvin, in planning, reasoning or some types of gaming.

These activities acted like a network and improved each other, once they gradually evolved.A Brief History of the Mind is very fuzzy on the details and on causality and it`s difficult to know when the structured brain activity first appeared and why. Therefore, it is easy to argue that William H. Calvin`s arguments show us how much we don`t know about the history of humanity, or that the book may be dated. Nevertheless, the arguments are interesting and the neurological accents go well with recent scientific trends.

[Socrate · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Este uimitor cât de multe lucruri au reușit să descopere creierele noastre în doar câteva milioane de ani."

"Creierul nostru este o mașină de învățare impresionantă, care se adaptează constant la noile informații și provocări."

"Evoluția a creat creierul nostru pentru a ne ajuta să supraviețuim și să ne reproducem, dar acum l-am folosit pentru a crea tot felul de lucruri uimitoare."

"Mințile noastre au evoluat pentru a face față provocărilor din trecut, dar acum trebuie să ne adaptăm la o lume care se schimbă rapid."

"Creierul nostru este o minune a naturii, care ne permite să gândim, să simțim și să învățăm." -

[Ion · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nu e o scurtă istorie a minții. Domeniul e mult prea vast și sunt atâtea lucruri incerte. Cred că ar fi putut să citească și cărțile lui Daniel Kahneman și Antonio Damasio, ultimul e pomenit în treacăt.

[Andrei Cioban · Rating 4 out of 5]

Might have been a 5 star. But boy the translation to Romanian was a mess. So pick the english version.
Very informative. Provides a wide range of theories and poitn of views on the human mind/brain and how it can evolve in the future.

[一般樓 · Rating 4 out of 5]

看了本書，我想到一句話：「勞動在從猿到人轉變過程中的作用」。calvin扣緊了從猿到人的考古證據，來「推測」心智的演化發展與階段成就，敘述本身很有故事性。總體上，我對他的「創造力」，比較覺得大而無當，不接地氣。首先就是他強調氣候在心智演化中的關鍵性。照我想，在小行星撞地球後，造成環境氣候丕變，哺乳類取代恐龍鋪滿大地的這種情況，氣候確實扮演了關鍵角色。但心智發展....！在我看來，心智的演化，粗略來說，就是聰不聰明，在應對氣候變化處理的好不好，都不會有什麼差別。就算你一整個族群都是愛因斯坦，在原始時代，甚至是文明時代，面對氣候變化，例如說乾旱，存活的機率，都沒有什麼不同，可以說是純靠運氣。本來我還設想，演化就是長時間的優勢累積，說不定聰明一點，存活機率就會高一點，長時間的優勢累積之下，自然選擇或許真的讓心智高的族群倖存。但證諸歷史，如果氣候變化夠頻繁，那麼，那一點心智的成長度，都將在氣候碾壓式的淘汰下被抹平。其次，calvin喜歡用投擲(標槍)的系統活動來類比語言的句法結構。簡單粗略的說，投擲活動形塑出一種神經回路，這種神經回路因為「斜坡效應」，被「徵用」為語言的句法結構。我覺得其間的跳躍性太大。還不如說，因為社交的演化壓力，才形成語言。在這裡，我反對對語言「結構」的強調。語言，它的第一位就是「名詞」，只要有名詞，後續的所謂句法，都能「邏輯」的產生。因為我們的行動本身就都有一定的邏輯性(先後次序)，根本無需去對映投擲的轉體、跨步、擺肩等動作。這種生硬的類比，就好像運動專家看到一個天賦型選手，就拚命將他的動作賦予科學的意義。而其實，天賦型選手就只是本能的做了他感覺最好的動作。所以我說他不接地氣。第三點是關於心智「大霹靂」。他否定基因突變在心智演化上的作用。在這裡，他否定了基因是微小優勢的累積這個比較主流的觀點。以語言來說，他認為非得演變出完整的語法結構，否則「半調子」的語言(突變)，是沒有用的。依我看，這也是他過於強調語法結構的問題。

[Michael Holm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dr. Calvin offers here his speculative explanation for the cultural 'creativity explosion' now perceived in the evolution of Homo sapiens sapiens which occurred about 50 thousand years ago. A review of chimpanzee behavior (and mind) begins the study because they are so similar to the Australopithicines. Then Lucy the Australopithicene is discussed, showing no evidence of tool use but decidedly bipedal. He considers the development of the mind by tool technology evidence (Oldawan, Acheulian, Mousterian, etc) because that is about the only evidence we have, along with brain size. Oldawan culture persisted for a very long time. Likewise, the Acheulian (handaxes by Homo erectus) which is correlated with a increase in brain size. With the advent of Homo neanderthalensis, the rate of change in tool technology picks up, along with another increase in brain size. Modern man, Homo sapiens, appeared about 200,000 years ago with a slightly smaller brain and very little tool technology innovation. About 50,000 years ago Homo sapiens sapiens began to improve technology in several ways, especially with tool manufacture and creating works of art such cave painting and ornamentation. What caused this 'creative explosion' of technological development?

Just when language begins and how it develops is not clear. Language with syntax and grammar rules is credited for initiating the explosion in human culture and technology. Language development has been associated with social development. And seen as contributing to the increase in brain size. However, modern brain size is slightly less than in the Neanderthals. So then we are faced with a slight contradiction in the effect of language development on brain size. Efficient transmission of human culture from one generation to the next seems to be key in modern society.

It is suggested that the early hominids' mind was compartmentalized into a technological mind, a social mind and a navigational mind. At the time of the sudden florescence of creativity and culture as seen in ornamentation and art, these compartments were unified with crossover abilities, enabling efficient transmission of knowledge and culture. The author supplies his example of throwing ability which then serves as a template for other tasks.

The hominid ability to control and use fire is not thoroughly discussed. A Wikipedia article says that Homo erectus may have used fire for cooking. It certainly seems to me that Homo neanderthalensis would have used fire to inhabit Europe during glaciation. The use of skins for clothing would also seem likely and is also associated with Neanderthals in Wikipedia. So the 'sudden' appearance of such technologies does not seem so sudden after all. Nevertheless, it does seem that there has been dramatic improvement in tool and clothing technology at about that time.

The basic problem is that hard evidence in the form of bones and burial remains is still very sparse. How much evidence has been found of early Homo sapiens? The Neanderthal DNA that has been obtained is not complete, only partial. Apparently DNA deteriorates over time and is gone after about 100,000 years. How much of our current language ability can be attributed to specific genes? If there is such a number as the average mutation rate, why was more mutations not reflected in the vast time of Homo erectus? Perhaps an expanding band (troop?) size promoted a growth in brain size. Perhaps it was due to stress from more conflicts with other bands.

I remain somewhat skeptical about a sudden dramatic mental change. I feel that gradual changes preceded the advent of modern Homo sapiens, but there is not enough evidence to prove this. But I do respect the opinion of Dr. Calvin and the paleoanthropologists who are working on these questions. I certainly do not have a better alternative explanation myself. And I find the subject very interesting.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally finished this book!

This is the first book I have read by William Calvin. I found parts of the book intriguing. Other parts seemed redundant and were hard to keep re-digesting.

I found the last 15 pages of the book to be the most thought provoking; Calvin writes about the global affects of relative cultural speed and evolutionary lurches, and how these recent and historic technological and educational advances could be symptoms of 'the bigger we are, the harder we fall' syndrome.

I'm glad I read it, but most of the book did not pique my interest as much as other books on this topic I have read over the years.

[Ronald Wise · Rating 3 out of 5]

An analysis of the human mind in terms of what distinguishes it from that of Neanderthal some 50,000 years ago. Calvin emphasizes the qualitative and quantitative developmental leap that occured in human intellectual abilities. He also discusses what may be happening, and what might happen as science and technology extend the power of human thought, while placing more demands on the mind. I learned of this one from an appearance by author Calvin on KUOW's Weekday on 16 August 2004.

[Steve Wiggins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating. It is amazing for a materialist to recognize the importance of non-rational thought. Calvin is one of the few scientists who can disbelieve religion and yet treat it with respect. A wonderful little book full of great insights. Further comments may be found on my blog: Sects and Violence in the Ancient World.

[John Hewlett · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm going to once again have to give a Calvin book 3/5 stars. As with "A Brain for All Seasons" this isn't so much in response to the actual content of the book (although that is mostly a rehash from his previous books) but the way in which he writes. Absolutely brilliant man, but his sentence structure makes it a real slog.