0519 I conclude this first look at Julian Jaynes’s breakthrough masterwork, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, with a brief summary.
I examine the First Mariner Books edition, published in 2000, which offers the advantage of a postscript… er… “afterword”, written in 1990, fourteen years after the first edition.
The afterword does not substitute for the masterwork, even though it neatly distills the complex argument into four propositions.
0520 Here are the four propositions.
0521 This examination commences with these four propositions.
Why do I pursuit of this topic?
In my view, Mithen’s 2024 work, The Language Puzzle, exhibits the hallmarks of both subjective consciousness and bicameral mind.
0522 This examination concludes with modifications on Jaynes’s four propositions.
0523 Each of these modifications have been discussed in full.
These modifications bind together Mithen’s nyet hypothesis, pertaining to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, and Jaynes’s historical hypothesis, pertaining to our current Lebenswelt.
These modifications demonstrate that our current Lebenswelt (items in blue) is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in (items in green).
These modifications propose how the first singularity is a major cause for this difference.
The first singularity stands between the green and the blue items.
0524 Steven Mithen publishes in 2024, almost precisely five decades after Julian Jaynes publishes in 1976. So much has happened during the past fifty years. Also, so little has happened, when it comes to developing Jaynes’s four propositions. How strange it is that Steven Mithen’s bicameral mind may have constructed a foreword to Jaynes’s masterwork, without the author consciously realizing it.
0525 This is precisely the irony that permeates Jaynes’s landmark work.
0001 The full title of the book before me is The Language Puzzle: Piecing Together The Six-Million-Year Story Of How Words Evolved (2024, Basic Books, New York). Dr. Mithen is a Professor of Early Prehistory at the University of Reading. He has published before. More on that later.
The book works on the metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle. Fourteen chapters present the pieces. The introduction and conclusion stage and arrange them.
0002 This current metaphor is very different than a glorious historical metaphor used in a book published almost three decades earlier. The Prehistory of The Mind (1996) offers the historical development of the architecture of cathedrals in Europe as a lens for considering cognitive evolution. The metaphor works well because the nave associates to general intelligence and side chapels associate to specialized mental modules.
0003 From the genetic divergence from chimpanzees to the start of bipedalism, the simple nave of general intelligenceadapts to cognitive challenges.
From the appearance of bipedalism to the domestication of fire, specialized modules are added to general intelligence, but the two do not integrate. Indeed, both specialized modules and general intelligence are supported by their own, thick, walls. The metaphor is the Romanesque cathedral.
From the domestication of fire until the first singularity (think, “the potentiation of civilization”), general intelligence integrates with specialized modules, presumably due to talk becoming fully linguistic. Language becomes the walls, supported by flying buttresses of automatic decoding. The metaphor is the Gothic cathedral.
0004 Here is a picture.
0005 The metaphor is so wonderful that Razie Mah publishes the e-book, Comments on Steven Mithen’s Book (1996) The Prehistory of The Mind as one of the readers that accompanies the masterwork, The Human Niche, in the series A Course On The Human Niche (available at smashwords and other e-book venues).
0006 Mithen’s approach is also echoed in the work of another evolutionary anthropologist, Michael Tomasello, working at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, as discussed in Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019) (by Razie Mah, also see blogs for January through March, 2024).
0007 Mithen’s approach is also reflected in another review that belongs to the series, A Course On The Human Niche. The title is Comments on Clive Gamble, John Gowlett and Robin Dunbar’s Book (2014) Thinking Big. In this review, social circles turn out to be very important in hominin evolution. Mammalian brain size roughly correlates to group size. So, the larger the hominin brain grows, the larger the group.
Not surprisingly, Mithen’s metaphor indicates the social circle under the most intense selection pressure, irrespective of group size.
0008 What does this imply?
Obviously, group size is not the crucial factor in hominin evolution.
Whatever is increasing hominin brain size is.
0006 To me, it is not surprising that Mithen has not encountered Razie Mah’s review of his 1996 work, even though it is one of the few more-than-surface reflections on The Prehistory of The Mind available.
Perhaps, the same will go for this blog, which will take Mithen’s metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle quite literally.
1261 Yes, I can make out a configuration that looks like an exemplar sign-relation.
One version of the exemplar relation goes like this. Information2b (SVe) stands for a goal (SOe) in regards to a normal context asking something like, “Does this make sense?”3c operating on the potential of ‘situating information’1c (SIe).
In the above diagram, information2b (SVe) is adaptation2H. The goal2c (SOe) is the power to live as an agent. The [contiguity] (SIe) is an intersection with the phenotype3c operating on the potentials that the phenotype provides1c.
1262 For the -darwinism version of exemplar sign-relation, the two actualities are adaptation2b (SVe) and the power to live as agent2c (SOe). The contiguity is the normal context of an intersection with one’s phenotype3c, operating on the potentials that the phenotypes provide1c (SIe).
1263 For the neo- version of the exemplar sign-relation, the two actualities are phenotype2b (SVe) and the disposition to live as an agent2c (SOe). The contiguity is the normal context of an intersection with one’s adaptations3c, operating on the potentials that adaptations provide1c (SIe).
1264 What do these two exemplar sign-relations tell us?
Adaptations express power?
Adaptations allow survival to the extent that the phenotype allows them?
Phenotypes express dispositions?
Phenotypes are expressed as a suite of adaptations whether the agent needs them or not?
No wonder biologists cannot “define” evolution concisely.
1265 Surely, this argument does not please the positivist intellect of the physicists and the chemists.
Biological evolution is a mystery, the intersection of two independent sciences, natural history and genetics.
But, that is not all. I can delineate an implication for one of the contradictions inherent in biological evolution.
Phenotype is necessary for a -darwinian explanation, where “evolution” operates as an agent. Phenotypic dispositions are inseparable from individual adaptive powers.
1266 Also, adaptation is necessary for a neo- (or genetic) explanation, where “evolution” operates as an agent. Adaptive powers are inseparable from species-specific dispositions.
1267 Yes, I am arriving at a contradiction that cannot be resolved into either natural history or genetics. Both of these discipline’s semiotic agency have the same agent, “evolution”. But, what is the ‘final causality’?
1268 Here, the logics of firstness come into play. The logics of firstness are inclusive and allow contradictions. Evolution as an agent3 brings the actualities of adaptation and phenotype as semiotic agencies2 into relation with ‘a creative potential that evolutionary scientists regard as real’1. But, it is unreal, because it represents a ‘final causality’ that stands beyond anything than the human can imagine.
After all, humans are evolved living beings. What are we imaging when we try to picture this ‘final causality’?
1269 Modern evolutionary biologists may attribute the reality of the creative potential underlying evolution as an agent to matter alone, rather than matter [substance] form.
Postmodern biosemioticians may attribute the reality of the creative potential to triadic relations, such as the triadic relations reified into the matter [substance] form of semiotic agency.
1270 What does this imply?
The attribution of the biosemiotician encompasses the attribution of modern evolutionary biology.
The answer approaches the metaphysical in precisely the way that the Aristotle-tolerating positivist intellect currently uses the term, “metaphysics”, for “religious”.
The positivist intellect declares, “Religious empirio-schematic models are not allowed.”
1271 And, this raises a question, “How to define the word “religion?”
This question is the title of one of Razie Mah’s three masterworks.
1272 Biosemiotics challenges the current scientific vision of human evolution (as of 2025).
Okay, maybe I should correct that.
Razie Mah presents a challenge. Biosemioticians can board the academic siege-apparatus at their leisure.
Leisure?
In 2010, in the book, Semiotic Animal, John Deely describes the owl of Minerva taking wing in the twilight of the modern Age of Ideas. He, Thomas Sebeok and (no doubt) biosemiotician Alexei Sharov, know that the Third Age of Understanding comes to a close.
1273 In October 2023, Razie Mah blogs a review, titled Looking at John Deely’s Book (2010), “Semiotic Animal”. This examination contains the scholastic interscope for how humans think. The initial version of this interscope is developed in Razie Mah’s e-book, Comments on John Deely’s Book (1994) New Beginnings. The interventional sign-relation comes into view in Comments on Sasha Newell’s Article (2019) “The Affectiveness of Symbols”.
1274 Then, starting in July and running through October 2024, Razie Mah offers a series of examinations in his blog, including Looking at Steve Fuller’s Book (2020) “A Player’s Guide to the Post-Truth Condition”;Joesph Pieper’s book (1974) “Abuse of Language: Abuse of Power”;Vivek Ramaswamy’s book (2021), “Woke, Inc.”;Michelle Stile’s book (2022), “One Idea to Rule Them All”; and N.H. Enfield’s book (2022), “Language vs. Reality”.
These reviews, full of diagrams of the interventional sign relation and detailing its relevance to the current historical moment, are collected in three e-books, Parts 1, 2 and 3, of Original Sin and The Post-Truth Condition.
1275 The owl of Minerva lands in the dawning Age of Triadic Relations.
1276 This brings me to the question of human agency.
Section 3.6 of Semiotic Agency is titled, “Development of Human Agency in Historical Perspective”.
The authors’ story begins with the Neolithic Revolution of the Fertile Crescent, starting around 12,000 years ago, then seamlessly drifts to our own current day. It reads as if our current Lebenswelt starts with the Neolithic archaeological period.
1277 This story of the development of humanity is not much different from the written myths of the ancient Near East, where humans are um… created… when some differentiated god places special seeds in the soil… or something like that. These ancient myths are recorded on cuneiform clay tablets, that are preserved by their incineration in royal libraries thousands of years ago.
Yes, incineration.
The tablets are made of clay.
The capital burns. Clay fires to brick. Brick lasts so long that an archaeologist can read the script of a tablet millennia later.
1278 The origin myths of the ancient Near East testify that humans are recent creations, formed from differentiated gods, for the god’s own purposes. That sounds like our current Lebenswelt to me. That sounds like the “Development of Human Agency in Historical Perspective”.
Why don’t civilized humans have the agency to see beyond the start of their own civilizations?
1279 Biosemiotics has an answer. Civilized humans practice a type of semiosis that differs from the type of semiosis that their ancestors practiced.
What am I talking about?
The evolution of talk is not the same as the evolution of language.
1280 Our current Lebenswelt of civilizations practices speech-alone talk. Speech-alone talk offers the comforts of implicit abstraction (characteristic of icons and indexes) and facilitates the unexpectedly profitable rewards (and the unanticipated costs) of explicit abstraction. Speech-alone talk can attach a label to anything. In short, anything can become a sign-vehicle (SVs), just by speaking the label.
1281 So, what does a spoken word mean? Is the nature of its presence merely a label? What message does that send? The answers to all these questions are explicit abstractions. Spoken words facilitate explicit abstractions based on the purely symbolic-sign qualities of symbols.
1282 The Lebenswelt that we evolved in practices hand-talk (for the Homo genus) and hand-speech talk (for the species Homo sapiens). Hand talk permits implicit abstraction.
What do I mean by “implicit abstraction”?
The diagrams in my examination of Alexei Sharov’s and Morten Tonnessen’s book,Semiotic Agency, depict purely relational structures that hominins adapted to over the course of millions of years. The idea is mind boggling to the modern. However, implicit abstraction accounts for modern trends, such as the appearance and success of phenomenology in a civilization prospering on empirio-schematic inquiry.
1283 One of the first items of value for the biosemiotician are works that are contained in the series, A Course on Implicit and Explicit Abstraction, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.
1284 The Lebenswelt that we evolved in practices only implicit abstraction.Our current Lebenswelt also practices explicit abstraction.
1294 Biosemiotics is born out of the tradition of phenomenology.
Biosemiotics explains of how phenomenology works in light of modern biology.
In Semiotic Agency (7821 U0′), Alexei Sharov and Morten Tonnessen effectively propose the first step of a biosemiotic noumenal overlay. Alexei Sharov and George Mikhailovsky complete the overlay in 7824 with Pathways to the Origin and Evolution of Meanings in the Universe.
The biosemiotic noumenal overlay consists in semiotic agency and the interventional sign-relation.
1295 The examination of these works has proceeded in Razie Mah’s blogs since the start of January, 2025. The examination is not exhaustive. But, it has been revealing. These blogs will be collected into four books, titled Biosemiotics as Noumenon (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues).
Of course, Razie Mah has been writing and blogging on semiotic topics for over a decade. The blog may be found at Razie Mah’s website. E-articles and e-books for sale are available at smashwords and other e-book venues. These works are placed in series for convenience. A full table of contents for e-works and the blog should be available by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, a few suggestions for further research follow.
1296 For the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, the following should be of interest.
1297 For the twist in human evolution, the following applies.
1297 For our current Lebenswelt, there are many threads to follow.
1299 All these works pertain to chapter three of Semiotic Agency, titled “Human Agency”.
They show what biosemiotics can do.
1300 My thanks to Alexei Sharov, Morten Tonnessen and George Mikhailovsky, as well as the many contributors to Pathways, for interesting material to examine. As noted elsewhere, all the material in these examinations, as well as in Biosemiotics as Noumenon, are available to these authors and contributors to use in their efforts to build biosemiotics as a specialization… or… maybe I should say… a “noumenalization” of what all biological processes have in common.
0735 How is biology… er… NeoDarwinism… incomprehensible?
0736 First of all, neodarwinism is an intersection. An intersection contains contradictions that cannot be resolved. That is why intersections are mysteries. Philosophers can elucidate the contradictions, but they can never resolve them without cognitively reconfiguring the single actuality.
0737 For example, there are two major branches of evolutionary science. For the most part, natural historians ignore the vertical axis and geneticists ignore the horizontal axis. Everyone else ends up confusing niche1H and genotype1V as if these potentials1b situate “equivalent” actualities2a.
0738 The mystery within neodarwinism may be of interest to those concerned about mysteries.
After all, the Positivist’s judgment does not anticipate anything like this. How can terms for two radically different models for the origins of species simply be clapped together? I suppose that speech-alone talk can label anything, even mysteries… even, “neodarwinism”.
Well, “neo” is not exactly “genetic”.
Genodarwinism?
Perhaps, “neodarwinism” should be called out for what it is.
0739 Another reason why neodarwinism is incomprehensible is because the (hidden) content-level actualities2a do not have normal contexts3a and potentials1a. They are the foundations2a of situation-level potentials1b that support situation-level normal contexts3b (natural selection3b and body development3b). Does ecology and environment (as actualities independent of the adapting species)2a have anything to do with DNA2a (as the template for reproduction and cellular organization)?
I think not.
0740 So, how does one make biology… er, the evolution of subjective meaning on Earth… comprehensible?
This is the question that the author wrestles with.
The answer is in the title. It must have something to do with the operations of self-reinforcing cycles. How does biological meaning evolve?
Occasionally, mistakes do not act as impediments, but serve as empedoclements.
0741 Plus, the answer may have something to do with Peirce’s natural signs and how brainless creatures behave according to what we expect in terms of these natural signs. When the behavior of brainless creatures is regarded through the lens of Peirce’s natural-sign typology,directionality and originality are obvious. These obvious concepts must be indispensable for an explanation of the evolution of subjective meaning within biological entities.
0742 Neodarwinism will not do (S, T, U).
That much is for sure.
The role of Peirce’s natural signs (V) is a guess.
Or, should I say, “an intelligent guess”?
0751 For me, one of the pleasures of examining these chapters comes from the fact that the authors do not have a diagram of the S&T noumenal overlay before them, but they write like they are fishing around for the diagram.
In this case, the author does not catch, but almost hooks, a much bigger fish than neodarwinism. Indeed, directionality (the horizontal axis) and originality (the vertical axis) are built into the diagram of the semiotic agent as a mystery, in the style of neodarwinism.
0752 Remember, the author discusses non-human, or rather, brainless organisms and ends up with an alluring line for appreciating the evolution of meaning in the universe.
My thanks to the author for the fishing expedition. What a wonderful cast.
0389 The book before me published by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The question? What makes humans unique? The approach is scientific. Humans think differently than great apes, their closest biological kin. One way to understand that difference is to observe and measure the cognitive capacities of human newborns and infants, as well as the cognitive abilities of adult great apes.
This book belongs to a decades-long arc of inquiry by the author. During much of this time, Michael Tomasello serves as co-Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. I cover two decades in my examinations. Here is the fourth book in the list.
0390 What has this semiotician found so far?
First, from the very start of his journey, the content-level of Tomasello’s vision corresponds to the situation-level of Razie Mah’s hypothesis. The ultimate human niche consists of the potential of triadic relations.
Razie Mah’s hypothesis applies the two-level interscope for Darwin’s paradigm to human evolution.
0391 First, the general Darwinian paradigm looks like this.
0392 In The Human Niche (available at smashwords and other e-book venues), Razie Mah proposes that the ultimate human niche1b is the potential of triadic relations.
Tomasello’s hypothesis that joint attention2b and shared intentionality2b are behavioral and cognitive adaptations to the niche of sociogenesis1b reconfigures the situation-level of Darwin’s paradigm, resulting in what I call the “Tomasello-Mah synthesis”.
0393 Yes, fortune turns her wheel. Tomasello does not know Mah’s hypothesis. Tomasello’s arc of inquiry is underway in 1999. Mah’s hypothesis first appears online in 2018. So, Tomasello configures his insight, corresponding to the situation-level of the Darwinian paradigm, as the content-level of his vision.
Tomasello’s vision offers a way to bring a phenotype (of human ontogeny2c’) into relation with a foundational adaptation (of joint attention2a’). But, according to Mah, phenotype and adaptation are two independent fields of evolutionary inquiry. One does not situate or contextualize the other. Rather, the two intersect.
Consequently, Tomasello’s vision resolves the internal contradictions of the intersection of genetics and natural history,by assigning the phenotype to the category of thirdness and the adaptation to the category of firstness, while maintaining the actuality of both.
0394 Here is a picture of Tomasello’s vision.
0395 Of course, this examination appears precisely 25 years after Tomasello’s vision is cast in 1999 AD.
His vision is maintained throughout his arc of inquiry.
Consequently, his conclusions carry an awkward emptiness. The emptiness compares to the basement of a house. The basement is dark, cool, foundational and ignored, until of course, one must seek refuge in a storm.
0396 The previous examinations of Tomasello’s works demonstrate that the house, the abode of his vision, is furnished with morality.
Tomasello can ignore the basement, haunted by immaterial beings called, “triadic relations”. Yet, in that place, where a family might store potatoes, onions, smoked meat, along with luggage and Christmas ornaments, dwells something that Tomasello may safely ignore. I call that ghost, “religion”.
0588 The Tomasello-Mah synthesis shows the ghost in the basement of the house of Tomasello’s vision.
Indeed, as this version of Darwin’s paradigm begins to haunt the entire edifice of human evolution, then Tabaczek’s housebecomes more than a house with a basement. If sociogenesis1b is the potential1b of triadic relations2a, then Tomasello’s arc of inquiry may be re-articulated using triadic relations.
0589 For example, Razie Mah’s Primer on Sensible and Social Construction may be used to re-label the eras of individual, joint and collective intentionality. Individual construction associates to the category-based nested form. Sensible construction associates to the two-level interscope, containing content and situation levels. Social construction associates to the three-level interscope, containing content, situation and perspective levels.
Here is a list of what that might look like.
0590 To continue, the re-labeled eras may be regarded in terms of the evolution of talk.
The evolution of talk is not the same as the evolution of language. Language evolves in the milieu of hand talk.
0592 Next, I would like to focus attention on the era of collective intentionality.
Here is a list depicting the timeframe.
0593 Before the era of collective intentionality, hand talk is confined team activities. Hand talk produces sensible constructions. Each team develops its own way of hand talking.
After the domestication of fire, team-tradition hand talk starts to be used generally, eventually producing fully linguistic hand talk.
The situation is very dynamic. Since cooking with fire increases the number of teams, fully linguistic hand-talk is re-appropriated for specialized use in more and more teams. Fully linguistic hand-talk influences all social circles. In some of these circles, grammatically correct, yet apparently nonsensible statements, generate social constructions that open new cognitive spaces. These novel cognitive spaces become sites for more sensible construction.
0594 The voice comes into play during community meetings (150), seasonal mega-band round-ups (500) and special occasion tribal pow-wows (1500). The voice is used for synchronization. Song brings a large gathering of hominins into synchronization. Once this cultural habit starts, then singing joins other traits in sexual selection. The voice comes under voluntary control.
0595 Most likely, the early speciations of late Homo erectus produced species that could sing and hand-talk. But, they could not speak.
Speech is added to hand-talk with Homo sapiens. Anatomically modern humans practice a dual-mode of talking, hand-speech talk, for the next two hundred-thousand years.
0596 Hand-speech talk would still be practiced by anatomically modern humans today, were it not for the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia. The hypothesis of the first singularity proposes that the Ubaid is the first culture on Earth to practice speech-alone talk.
Here is a picture of the era of social construction.
0598 Today, all civilizations practice speech-alone talk.
This brings me to the limit of Tomasello’s vision. I open the door, and step out into the realization that our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in. I step into the vision of Razie Mah.
0599 The arc of Tomasello’s inquiry, spanning from 1999 to 2016, opens onto three masterworks by Razie Mah. These electronic books are available at smashwords and other e-work venues. This examination relies primarily on The Human Niche, along with books contained in the series, A Course on The Human Niche. A related series is titled, Buttressing the Human Niche.
Here is a list of Mah’s masterworks.
Still, there is more.
A Commentary on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019) is available at smashwords and other e-book venues. This commentary includes Mah’s blogs for January, February and March, 2024, along with an examination of Becoming Human (2019), the fifth book in a sequence of five books.
0600 My thanks to Michael Tomasello, who writes the books under examination while Co-Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, for conducting a scientific inquiry, from which I have examined only several works.
0187 In the preface, the author notes that this book is a prequel to The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (1999, Harvard University Press). The question is the same. What makes humans unique? The answer is the same. Humans think differently than great apes, their closest biological kin.
In 1999, researchers in evolutionary anthropology could say, “Only humans think of other humans as intentional agents. Plus, my cat and my dog are intentional operators, as well, say nothing of the weather.”
Okay, I added the second sentence for dramatic effect.
Unfortunately, research conducted after 1999 introduces a problem. It turns out that great apes recognize intentionality in others.
Uh oh.
0188 This book is the third marker in Tomasello’s intellectual journey. I start following his trek with Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (1999) “The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition” (appearing in Razie Mah’s January 2024 blog). The second marker that I examine may be found in Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2008) “Origins of Human Communication” (appearing later in the same blog for the same month).
0189 In the publication before me, A Natural History of Human Thinking (2014, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts), Tomasello explicitly abstracts three cognitive processes in order to distinguish humans from apes. The processes are cognitive representation, inference and self-monitoring. He then proposes that all three components were transformed in two key steps during hominin evolution. He labels his claims, “the shared-intentionality hypothesis”.
0190 Does this follow the trajectory set by previous works?
Here is a theme that appears in the second marker, pre-emptively modified with the above propositions in mind.
0191 This modified picture allows me to offer slogans for movements zero and one.
0383 Chapter five is titled “Human Thinking as Cooperation”.
Tomasello considers other theories of human cognitive evolution (but not including Razie Mah’s masterwork, The Human Niche, available at smashwords and other e-book venues).
He draws four general propositions.
0384 One, for the era of individual intentionality, competition with groupmates leads to sophisticated forms of primate social and practical cognition, characteristic of great apes.
Two, for the era of joint intentionality, obligate collaborative foraging favors the evolution of new forms of hominin social coordination and thinking, without (what a modern anthropologist would label) culture.
Three, for the era of collective intentionality, intergroup competition, exploration of novel ecologies and environments, and larger group size favors the evolution of conventionalized culture.
Fourth, in regards to whatever may be missing in the first, second and third points, culture accumulates and allows specializations that cultivate a wide variety of cognitive skills and types of thinking.
0385 This examination demonstrates that each of these four general propositions coheres with the hypothesis contained in The Human Niche.
This may not be a surprise, since Razie Mah’s masterwork summarizes commentaries on four works in evolutionary anthropology, published within the past three decades.
0386 Here is a list of the four commentaries.
Comments on Steven Mithen’s Book (1996) The Prehistory of The Mind
Comments on Clive Gamble, John Gowlett and Robin Dunbar’s Book (2014) Thinking Big
Comments on Derek Bickerton’s Book (2014) More Than Nature Needs
Comments on Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky’s Book (2016) Why Only Us?
0387 Along with A Primer on Natural Signs and the masterwork, The Human Niche, these four commentaries constitute A Course on The Human Niche, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.
0388 But, that is not all.
This examination of Tomasello’s arc of inquiry continues.
