A Natural History of Human Thinking Quotes

“Thinking would seem to be a completely solitary activity. And so it is for the other animal species. But for humans, thinking is like a jazz musician improvising a novel riff in the privacy of his own room. It is a solitary activity all right, but on an instrument made by others for that general purpose, after years of playing with and learning from other practitioners, in a musical genre with a rich history of legendary riffs, for an imagined audience of jazz aficionados. Human thinking is individual improvisation enmeshed in a sociocultural matrix.”
― Michael Tomasello, A Natural History of Human Thinking

“Human culture is early human cooperation writ large.”
― Michael Tomasello, A Natural History of Human Thinking