Читать книгу Introducing Cognitive Analytic Therapy - Anthony Ryle - Страница 62

In the view proposed here, although humans retain their biological characteristics, the sources of their evolutionary success are to be found in the ways in which they are radically unlike other animals. These include notably: (a) the enormously enlarged brains which enabled our ancestors to replace stereotypic and predetermined techniques with flexible, intelligent solutions in the struggle to wrest a living from nature; and (b) the development of faculties, eventually speech, which enhanced their ability to work together and to pass on knowledge from one generation to the next. As a result of these changes, cultural evolution became a dominant factor in how humankind evolved biologically. As new social forms radically altered the behaviors and qualities of individuals likely to aid survival of the group, individuals evolved who could learn the skills and values of the particular group they were born into, that is, people whose nature it was to be formed by nurture. There is also direct biological evidence for the social formation of mind, namely the shaping of neural pathways which occur during early development. To quote a classic review of the field by Eisenberg (1995): “Major brain pathways are specified by the genome; detailed connections are fashioned by, and consequently reflect, socially mediated experience in the world.”

How evolution led to the remarkably flexible and capable mind of modern humans will now be considered in more detail. Much of this is well articulated by Donald, on whose work the following account is drawn (Donald, 1991, 2001). Adding understandings drawn from cognitive psychology to the traditional sources in archeological, anthropological, and biological studies, offers, in our view, a convincing and fascinating reconstruction of the main stages in the evolution of the modern mind.

Four million years ago, our ancestors the australopithecines already shared food and labor and formed nuclear family structures. One and a half million years ago, Homo erectus, blessed with a much larger brain, managed to build shelters, use fire, and develop better tools. Over the following period the size of the brain compared to that of other mammals continued to increase markedly, with a last period of rapid growth occurring 0.3 million years ago. These changes were accompanied by another significant anatomical development: the evolution of the human vocal tract, with its capacity for the rapid generation of differentiated sounds allowing speech.

Donald describes how contemporary chimpanzees are capable of flexible and non‐stereotypical ways of thinking and relating and how their social organization is dependent on their capacity to remember “large numbers of distinctly individual learned dyadic relationships.” The development of the human brain from an equivalent level went through a number of intermediate stages, each conveying greater cognitive and social advantages. During the first of these (the Mimetic culture), non‐linguistic skills in representing, differentiating, rehearsing, and communicating were elaborated. Knowledge could now be contained and communicated using metaphoric activities; both tool‐using and sign‐using were established. This allowed the greater cohesion of social groups, which developed complex structures sustained by group rituals. The semantic and social structures that developed over the million or more years of this phase were accompanied by developments in the brain which prepared the way for the addition of symbolic language, but it appears that this developed independently, existing alongside the mimetic modes which persisted and are still a powerful aspect of human communication. The evolution of the larynx and the acquisition of language in the Mythic age provided the individual with the basis for the conscious mobilization of mental capacities. It also enormously enhanced the cohesion and purposefulness of human society by linking, in stories and myths, the guiding values and meanings of the group. The power of oral transmission is illustrated by the account of Australian Aboriginal myth which incorporates accurate descriptions of a terrain, recently identified, which has been under the sea for the past 8,000 years (Tudge, 1996). Another example is provided by the Maori of New Zealand–Aotearoa whose ancestors arrived in a small number of boats. Traditional accounts trace their ancestry of different groups to one or other of these boats and genetic studies have provided confirmation of the groupings.

Speech is now the dominant mental function because, with it, both memories of events and descriptions of the skills and sequences which can be conveyed mimetically can be described and communicated in abstract, generalized forms (see Maturana, Mpodozis, & Letelier, 1995). Language opened the way for the theoretic culture we now inhabit, where we are capable of analytic, de‐contextualized forms of thinking which the earlier systems could not sustain. These functions were sustained in turn by the manufacture of pictorial or sculpted artifacts, perhaps initially serving mythic functions, and the development of external, physical mnemonic devices such as notched sticks, indicators of astronomical events, maps, and eventually, 8,000 years ago, writing. The development of written records greatly increased the accumulation and transmission of information. External symbolic storage, vaster than any single mind could conceivably hold, has now become a dominant factor in human thought. Just as the development of tools and machines enormously extended people's physical capacity to change material objects, so the brain developed the capacity to extend enormously the power of thought. Some philosophers have gone as far as to suggest that the human brain should now be considered simply as a functional part of its socio‐cultural context (Clark & Chalmers, 1998).