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A breathtaking account of the "unnatural" history of consciousness and human intelligence
Taking its cue from The Dragons of Eden, Carl Sagan's 1977 classic and New York Times bestseller, Up from Dragons traces the development of human intelligence back to its animal roots in an attempt to account for the vast differences between our species and all those that came before us. In a book that will spark a storm of debate, neuroscientist John Skoyles and awardwinning author Dorion Sagan introduce a controversial theory of the origins of human intelligence that may hold the answers to questions that have haunted scientists about mind, consciousness, and the evolutionary odyssey of humankind. It also introduces the revolutionary concept of "mindware"the human, evolutionary equivalent of computer softwareand describes how the evolution-accelerating symbol-using programs that make it up have empowered us with the unprecedented ability to take charge of our own evolutionary destiny.
- Sales Rank: #1305936 in Books
- Published on: 2002-05-17
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.20" h x 1.55" w x 6.30" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 448 pages
From Publishers Weekly
When Carl Sagan published The Dragons of Eden in 1977, his speculations on the development of the human brain drew on the still-nascent field of neuroscience. Now science writer Dorion Sagan (Carl's son) and brain theorist Skoyles present a follow-up that includes not only new discoveries about brain functions but also a coherent theory as to how and why humans developed the intelligence that sets them apart from other primates. Key to this evolution, they argue, are two facts: the plasticity of the brain (particularly in the prefrontal cortex), which means that it "is not fixed in what it can do"; and our status as social beings. Because the ape brain had already evolved into a "biocomputer with a wide range of mental skills that was ready, without further physical evolution, to do totally novel things," it could accommodate the need for pre-humans to use symbols to negotiate increasingly complex social relationships. And symbols "made the mind of the human-ape unlike that of any other," enabling its capacity for kinship, emotion and abstract reasoning. "Human evolution," Sagan and Skoyles argue, "did not fix our brain's information processing but instead created reprogrammable neural circuits that could evolve new kinds of intelligence." This thesis may generate controversy, but it is supported with creative arguments and intriguing evidence. Concluding with a sketch of how brain evolution might progress in the coming millennium, Sagan and Skoyles offer a thrilling, accessible biological narrative.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From the Back Cover
One of the most exciting discoveries to emerge from the recent explosion in brain research is the phenomenon of neural plasticity. With the discovery of neural plasticity, the traditional view of the brain as a hard-wired collection of modules, virtually fixed for life by early childhood, is being replaced by a revolutionary new image of an amazingly versatile biocomputer able to quickly adapt and reshape itself in response to its external environment and, more significantly, to its internal, symbolic environment.
Now, in a book that is sure to have a profound impact on the contemporary discourse on consciousness and its origins, John Skoyles, a neuroscientist working at the cutting edge of brain-mind research, and coauthor, award-winning science writer, Dorion Sagan, explain how the discovery of the brain's remarkable flexibility changes the entire story of the evolution of human intelligence, consciousness, and culture. In the process they deal a devastating blow to currently fashionable concepts of genetically programmed minds promulgated by evolutionary psychologists such as Steven Pinker.
Bringing together a vast array of hitherto unconnected facts from the fields of neuroscience, computing and artificial intelligence, cognitive science, developmental psychology, anthropology, art history, and more, the authors reconstruct the 100,000-year evolutionary odyssey of the human mind. Beginning with our simian forebears, they trace the parallel developments of the neocortexthe brain's symbol-using "conductor"and increasingly complex primate societies held together by symbolic bonds. Step by step, Skoyles and Sagan reconstruct the slow evolution of increasingly sophisticated symbolic systems and show how the process eventually led to the development of a set of evolution-accelerating, symbol-using programs called mindwarethe evolutionary equivalent of a Windows or Macintosh operating system, and the basis for consciousness. Drawing on startling new insights into the brain's workings yielded by new brain-scanning technologies, the authors reveal how mindware functions to provide us with the sense of an "I" and the world in which it resides, and how the neocortex deploys mindware to supersede genetically programmed behaviors and impulses and to alter the very structure of the brain.
Taking its cue from Carl Sagan's 1977 classic, The Dragons of Eden, Up from Dragons is a breathtaking account of the "unnatural" history of consciousness and human intelligence.
"This endowment, this changeling nature, this plasticity, makes us unique among animals. Other species, for the most part, remain as they were when they evolved; we instead broke that older pattern of nature and went on to discover new forms of life, thought and enjoyment. No other animal species before us has traveled so much evolutionary territory in so little time. And yet, the ticket for this immense trip is not genetic; genetically when you look in the mirror what you see could be a hunter gatherer who was living at the beginning of our species. Another kind of ticket existed that was to purchase the journey on this great evolutionary odyssey. What was it? In our view, this question is one of the greatest scientific mysteries. It can perhaps be answered simply, even glibly, with notions such as "culture " or "ideas." But until now science has not been able to provide any sort of detailed answer. Here we shall explore what happened to that hunter gatherer in the mirror. How did that person get here? What had evolved earlier in their brain to help them? And how did they get here so damned fast."
About the Author
John Skoyles, Ph.D., a polymath who has been compared to Stephen Hawking, was misdiagnosed as mentally handicapped as a child. Dr. Skoyles holds degrees from The London School of Economics and University College London. A former researcher funded by the British Medical Research Council, he has chosen to become an independent scholar. He has made significant contributions in the areas of neural network models, right hemisphere literacy, the alphabet and the brain, motor perception, and the mirror neuron. Dr. Skoyles has written numerous articles on an array of subjects, including early astronomy, open society, and the origin of classical Greek culture; these have appeared in Nature, New Scientist, Trends in NeuroScience, American Psychologist, PSYCOLOQUY, Journal of Memetics, and other prestigious journals.
Dorion Sagan, son of Carl Sagan, is an award-winning science writer. He is the author of several critically acclaimed books, including Microcosmos, Slanted Truths: Essays on Gaia, Evolution and Symbiosis, The Diversity of Living Organisms, What is Life?, and Origins of Sex. His articles have appeared in Wired, The New York Times, Smithsonian, The Sciences, and other leading publications.
Most helpful customer reviews
27 of 30 people found the following review helpful.
The Ascent of the Reptile Brain ?
By Anthony R. Dickinson
Championing the ascent of reptiles as much as the descent of man, this thoughtful volume on the evolution of intelligence by Skoyles and Sagan is a welcome addition to the nature/nurture neurophilosophy shelf. The authors take us well beyond the 'usual suspects' listing of gross anatomical brain structure and function of the familiar phyla, traveling a welcome breadth of comparative data to include a wide variety of species (including our earlier selves). Rather than merely outline the familiar shopping list(s) of evolving structures culminating in the development of the modern human cerebral cortex, Skoyles & Sagan do not end with the discussion of its distinctive "associative" or "silent" areas of the brain of old (as so many other authors are still content to do). Instead, and throughout the book's eighteen chapters, we are treated to a series of detailed proposals concerned with the continuously adaptive neural architecture of both the intra- and inter-cerebral structures underlying the evolution human intelligent behavior.
Reminiscent of learning the names of Tolstoy's characters in the early pages of 'War & Peace', one meets here parts of the brain rarely mentioned (let alone claimed to be of any significance in explaining who we are and why we behave as we do). Following the publication of this volume, the long overdue and normally restricted cast of human brain features will now include the structure and functional connectivities of the anterior cingulate, the amygdala, the insula, the orbital and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of the brain (and these are just a few of the characters amongst many others that might have been introduced here). We may still not be able to agree upon how best to measure intelligence (IQ, in my view, still tautologically measuring 'what IQ tests measure'), but the physiological substrates of the brain supporting intelligent behavior are slowly coming to be located and characterized. Many of the examples and theoretical components put forward may perhaps appear predictable to those familiar with modern paradigms in comparative psychology and the study of intelligent systems (both biological and man-made), but the real strength of this book is to be seen in its successfully discussing adaptive neural systems for the technical non-specialist. The story as told here is a great achievement for a book aimed at the popular science reader.
The basic thesis of the book follows the development of the nervous system in the aftermath of the 'KT event' (coincident with the demise of the reptilian dinosaurs), which favored flexible, mobile species with nocturnal, cold-adaptable behaviors, capable of finding shelter and forage. In contrast, species with relatively reflexive nervous systems, whilst satisfactory when situated in a stable, predictable environment, can often fail to adapt to changes within the time course of sudden catastrophic events. En route to the architecture of the modern human brain, we meet the aetiology of social and emotional life and their associated neural substrata in the prefrontal cerebral and limbic cortex (amongst other structures). The level of neuroanatomical detail is sufficient to provide a coherent and consistent story of successive adaptations leading to the development of 'higher intelligence', but the pathway taken argues not for this result deriving solely from phylogenetic mutation (per se), but, and more importantly, from ontogenetic neural plasticity and enculturation despite the SAME genetic makeup.
If this idea is new, and at first glance appears to be an uncomfortable one, don't panic! If the authors are right, your prefrontal brain cortex will soon get to work in generating some reflex inhibition, allowing one to assess (and reassess) the situation, temporarily delay one's actions, and then to organize and activate novel planned behaviors towards worked goals. Whether the modern human can prove him/herself to be intelligent enough to plan the survival of any future catastrophe (whether it be of our own making or another KT-like event) we will have to wait and see. In the meantime we have in this book, an accessible version of a still-emerging story telling how, and as the solution to what challenges, the intelligence of a variety of species (including modern humans) currently evolved to demonstrate.
Excellently referenced throughout, with bibliography aplenty for those wishing to read more of the detailed research literature, my only gripe with this book would be with its lack of visualization aids for those unfamiliar with the brain areas mentioned. Although the text is sufficiently detailed to allow the reader to construct crude schematics for him/herself (as one may have done in the case of Tolstoy's family trees?), both anatomical and flowchart illustrations might be of help in hastening the orientation of those perhaps new to the anatomy and neurophysiology of the brain.
Whether this would indeed have been the book that Carl Sagan would have written in 1977 had he possessed the vast corpus of knowledge concerning the brain now available, one may only guess? It is my own view that Skoyles & Sagan's title serves more than to merely pay homage to 'The Dragons of Eden', in whose memory this book is in part written.
16 of 19 people found the following review helpful.
The only book on our origins that will be read 100 years on
By Steven Smith
"The only book on our origins that will be read 100 years on". Surely not? But this book hides the nuts and bolts of a new answer to an old question that will reshape the sciences of human nature - below I give details and let you decide whether this is indeed the next big thing.
But first that old question: what turned the human brain -- initially evolved 100,000 years ago to be, and only be, a smart hunter-gatherer -- into a brain that in each of us is superfitted for our hi-tech modern life. The problem is an embarrassment to science. No neurologist or paleoanthropologist can explain why your brain so obviously not evolved to read this, does so, like with so many other nonevolved modern skills, with such great finesse. Human evolution lacks foresight and so could have made no preparation. It is a big question. Evolutionary psychology offers no explanation. But the genius of Skoyles and Sagan provides a clear and plausible account.
Before summarizing what that is, a criticism. You start off thinking this is Dragons of Eden: The 25 year Sequel -- but Carl was a science populariser; this book, though averagely well written, lacks illustrations and has rather too many notes and references - more a book for getting out of the library than buying for a holiday read. That said, you soon realize that, with all respect to Carl Sagan, this book is much more important than anything he wrote.
Request, even buy, and get it, for its explanation of that old problem. Chapter 14 lays out its core story one which fits together the jig-saw puzzle pieces that the authors have earlier assembled in chapters 3-13 that describe the latest findings in neuroscience and paleoanthropology. The synthesis they offer is a radically novel, reductive and unexpectedly powerful new neurobiological and anthropological theory of symbolism.
Two theories intertwine. First, that the radical changes in cognition and behavior that make us unique are piggybacked upon earlier evolved primate cognitions and emotions. Symbols - stand-ins - they show are at the heart of the human revolution. Evolved primate cognitions process innate inputs - but culturally transmitted nonevolved signs can co-opt their innate processes. The co-optation just needs (and humans are good at this) the ability to learn abstract associations. When symbols co-opt innate ape psychology, it is like an engine being put into a new chassis -- ape psychology is refitted thus into doing something radically new -- human psychology with all its nonevolved cognitions. For example, the core process of fear in apes uses the innate inputs of snakes, spiders, angry faces and blood. But humans can uniquely hock on novel sign inputs such as swastikas, the radiation sign, evil eyes and the thoughts of God - and so use them to power the radically new behaviors that make us cultural.
But what enables humans to put a new culturally derived `chassis' on the ape brain? Here is their second theory. Symbolic co-optation arose from the prefrontal cortex working memory acting as an abstract association "catalyst" upon neural plastic networks. Many molecules would meet too rarely to react unless another molecule - a catalyst puts them together. The same with the neural connections that underlie the abstract associations of symbolic cognition - the `catalyst' in this case being the working memory of the prefrontal cortex that can 'tutor' new neural links. And the new associations that it creates happen thanks to the recently discovered phenomena of neural plasticity which allows old cognitions to rewire to do radically new tasks. The theory uses bits of already established science. It is theoretical innovation at its best - clear "mechanical" sound processes with no hand waved `dues ex machine' processes. Simple - yet overlooked - perhaps because of the breadth of knowledge they bring together -- by those whose business it is to invent such ideas.
You have to read the argument to appreciate its explanatory power. For a hint, consider how our social attachment is both different and not different from that of other apes. Both ape and human attachment depends upon the same limbic processes. But in nonhuman apes, the inputs to such process arise entirely from the actual physical presence of another individual -hugging, grooming, facial reactions, and the feel of warmth. Symbolic culture puts new a chassis on these limbic processes by adding new inputs such as wedding rings, name changes, and rituals. In doing so, the new `symbolic chassis' enables our ape limbic brain to create human specific forms of social bonds - such as those of marriage, with distant kin, the supernatural and society. This idea is simply an act of genius since reveals how neuroscience and grammatology so easily fit under anthropology and even such fields as cultural studies.
Further, the authors make the breakthrough of showing how what is a transient and private emotion in other apes could by a simple scientifically analyzable process become one that in humans is resistant to separation (symbols can stand-in for missing people and relationships with them), and embedded in communities (symbols allow societies to define relationships and so build up social complexity). One hates the phrase "scientific revolution" or "new paradigm" but these authors have done it - the core problem of our origins has been found. They call their idea, the missing link of human evolution. And they are right.
The resulting approach is not only elegant, simple and powerful - but the stuff of which I bet further science discoveries will be born. It is the first book that can be properly called `neuropaleoanthropology'. It is the beginning of something big. The oddly titled book - a wrong title if there ever was one -- does what evolutionary psychology should have done, but has not - reveal the biological dragons under our anthropological Eden.
7 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
Not What I'd Hoped For
By J. Frakes
I can't support the glowing views of the others here. Overall, I found the book lacks a clear central focus and development. At times the associations the authors are tying to make wander as we shotgun through examples and analogies and variations to the point that you wish for a more clearly stated concept. There is a substantial amount of useful information here, and some things to ponder. There is some good discussion on neural networks and plasticity. Beside that, however, one of the overriding weaknesses is the failure to examine contrasting view points, as a good science discussion generally does. Their opinion is that learning to think symbolically was the evolutionary pressure that generated human divergence but make an unsubstantiated case for this. There is no anatomical evidence that early humans had the capacity for symbolic associations, modern imitation studies included. While fundamentally important, most evolutionary timelines place that as a very recent development. To confuse matters even worse, the authors state on page 260, "Our evolution up until 100,000 years ago left our brains dumb. We lacked even the knowledge that it was possible to do new and unimagined things." That's when symbolic representation probably did accelerate modern human development, but the authors' attribute its influence all they way back to Australopithecus. There is no anatomical or anthropological support for this. Genetics is dismissed almost without mention and the contrary beliefs of Steven Pinker and others that subconscious daemons regulate consciousness is also ignored in total. And when its all said and done, we really haven't covered the evolutionary process very well at all. All the pop analogies with familiar experiences and modern culture only diverted from the theme. The time would have been better served with more discussion of the evolutionary past. The chapter on consciousness is almost juvenile. I would suggest Merlin Donald's Origins of the Modern Mind for a much more balanced discussion of evolutionary human intelligence since contrary views are given their justifiable recognition in this still embryonic science.
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