A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness

Merlin Donald refutes the arguments of certain scientists and philosophers who have dismissed consciousness as a superficial byproduct of evolution, or even an entirely irrelevant factor in human cognition. His thesis presents the forces, both cultural and neuronal, that power our distinctively human modes of awareness. Donald proposes that the human mind is a hybrid product of interweaving a super-complex form of matter (the brain) with an invisible symbolic web (culture) to form a "distributed" cognitive network. This hybrid mind allowed humanity as a species to break free of the limitations of the mammalian brain. Marshaling evidence from brain and behavioral studies of humans and animals, Donald explains how an expansion of conscious capacity was the key to this revolutionary development and insightfully projects how the human mind might adapt in the future, as we fall increasingly under the spell of symbolic technology.… (more)