The sapient mind : archaeology meets neuroscience / edited by Colin Renfrew, Chris Frith, Lambros Malafouris.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Renfrew, Colin, 1937-2024.

Frith, Christopher D.

Malafouris, Lambros

George Clapp Vaillant Book Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Evolutionary psychology.

Cognitive psychology.

Human evolution.

Human remains (Archaeology).

Physical Description:

xiv, 204 pages, 1 unnumbered leaf of plates : illustrations (1 color) ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2009.

Summary:

The turn of the twenty-first century has seen a new era in the cognitive and brain sciences that allows us to address the age-old question of what it means to be human from a whole new range of different perspectives. Our knowledge of the workings of the human brain increases day by day and sodoes our understanding of the extended, distributed, embodied and culturally mediated character of the human mind. The problem is that these major ways of thinking about human cognition and the threads of evidence that they carry with them often seem to diverge, rather than confront one another. 'The Sapient Mind' channels the huge emerging analytic potential of current neuroscientific research in the direction of a common integrated programme targeting the big picture of human cognitive evolution. Up to now, working in isolation, both archaeology and neuroscience have made a number ofimportant contributions to the study of human intelligence. Archaeology, for instance has given us a good idea about where, and an approximate idea about when, Homo sapiens appeared - in Africa somewhere between 100 000 and 200 000 years ago. Neuroscience, on the other hand, has given us a goodindication about where in the human brain modern human capacities (e.g. language, symbolic capacity, representational ability, theory of mind (ToM), causal belief, intentionality, sense of selfhood) can be identified and the possible neural networks and cognitive mechanisms that support them. Thechallenge facing us then is how do we put all these different facets and threads of evidence about the human condition back together again?This book presents the work of leading researchers from archaeology and the brain sciences, showing how a new framework that integrates two hithero isolated disciplines can provide us with a much deeper, more informative, account of where we came from, and why we developed as we did.

Contents:

Neural correlates of early Stone Age toolmaking : technology, language and cognition in human evolution / Dietrich Stout ... [et al.]

Tool use, communicative gesture and cerebral asymmetries in the modern human brain / Scott H. Frey

Biology is only part of the story / Dwight Read and Sander van der Leeuw

Big brains, small worlds : material culture and the evolution of the mind / Fiona Coward and Clive Gamble

Wild agency : nested intentionalities in cognitive neuroscience and archaeology / J. Scott Jordan

Between brains, bodies and things : tectonoetic awareness and the extended self / Lambros Malafouris

Social ontologies / Chris Gosden

The role of cultural practices in the emergence of modern human intelligence / Edwin Hutchins

Evolving intentions for social interaction : from entertainment to joint action / Günther Knoblich and Natalie Sebanz

Social cognition / Chris D. Frith

Neuroscience, evolution and the sapient paradox : the factuality of value and of the sacred / Colin Renfrew

Things to think with : words and objects as material symbols / Andreas Roepstorff

Why religion is nothing special but is central / Maurice Bloch.

Notes:

Outgrowth of a symposium of the same name held at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge, from Sept. 14 to 16, 2007. Cf. Introd.

Originally published in 2008 as: Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society. Series B, Biological sciences, v. 363 (no. 1499).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the George Clapp Vaillant Book Fund.

ISBN:

9780199561995

0199561990

OCLC:

271771916