Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin? The question invites two standard replies. Some accept the demarcations of skin and skull, and say that what is outside the body is outside the mind. Others are impressed by arguments suggesting that the meaning of our words "just ain't in the head", and hold that this externalism about meaning carries over into an externalism about mind. We propose to pursue a third position. We advocate a very different (...) sort of externalism: an _active externalism_, based on the active role of the environment in driving cognitive processes. (shrink)

The conditions of hunting and gathering through which one line of primates evolved into humans form the basis of what I term the wild self, a self marked by developmental needs of prolonged human neoteny and by deep attunement to the profusion of communicative signs of instinctive intelligence in which relatively “unmatured” hominids found themselves immersed. The passionate attunement to, and inquiry into, earth-drama, in tracking, hunting, foraging, rhythming, singing, and other arts/sciences, provided the trail to becoming human, and provide (...) external grammatical structures that became the basis of human language and animate mind. I outline my new philosophy of history as a progress in precision, counteracted by a regressive contraction of mind. The progress associated with history since the beginning of agriculturally-based civilizations can be considered as a regressive contraction from animate mind of our hunter-gatherer evolutionary past, to anthropocentric mind, and finally to the ghost in the machine world-view of mechanico-centric mind. Contemporary consumption culture represents an inversion of the original conditions of the human self, and indeed, targets aspects of developmental neoteny to condition conformity to its rational-mechanical system imperatives. (shrink)

Inspired by a debate between Noam Chomsky and Jean Piaget, this work traces the development of natural history from Aristotle to Darwin, and demonstrates how the science of plants and animals has emerged from the common conceptions of folkbiology.

The Predicament of Culture is a critical ethnography of the West in its changing relations with other societies. Analyzing cultural practices such as anthropology, travel writing, collecting, and museum displays of tribal art, James Clifford shows authoritative accounts of other ways of life to be contingent fictions, now actively contested in post-colonial contexts. His critique raises questions of global significance: Who has the authority to speak for any group’s identity and authenticity? What are the essential elements and boundaries of a (...) culture? How do self and “the other” clash in the encounters of ethnography, travel, and modern interethnic relations? In chapters devoted to the history of anthropology, Clifford discusses the work of Malinowski, Mead, Griaule, Lévi-Strauss, Turner, Geertz, and other influential scholars. He also explores the affinity of ethnography with avant-garde art and writing, recovering a subversive, self-reflexive cultural criticism. The surrealists’ encounters with Paris or New York, the work of Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris in the Collège de Sociologie, and the hybrid constructions of recent tribal artists offer provocative ethnographic examples that challenge familiar notions of difference and identity. In an emerging global modernity, the exotic is unexpectedly nearby, the familiar strangely distanced. (shrink)

Although a low genetic barrier is said to separate humans from apes, Homo sapiens is characterized by striking developmental and anatomical particularities. On the one hand, humans have a very extended life history (retardation). On the other hand, human anatomy shows many instances of both neoteny and hypermorphosis.In 1918, Bolk proposed his ''retardation theory'' that links both aspects of the human condition. We show in this paper that his theory becomes surprisingly powerful when Bolk''s retardation principle is applied to generalized (...) developmental gradients (such as the cephalocaudal gradient that dominates overall ontogeny). In this way, the main particularities of the human body (extended life history; long limbs, and very long legs; very low brachial and crural indices; highly developed pollex and hallux; reduced prognathism; advanced telencephalization etc.) can be reduced to a single developmental matrix. (shrink)

Drawing on tools from rhetoric and poststructuralist theory, the author argues that the ascent of molecular biology, with its emphasis on molecules such as DNA rather than organisms, was enabled by crucial rhetorical “softwares.”.

Concise and understandable, the book explains pertinent findings of modern neuroscience and describes how consciousness arises in complex brains.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.