A Natural History of Human Thinking

Tomasello, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, asks the simply stated yet deceptively complex question, “what makes human thinking unique?” And while his answer, that “human thinking is fundamentally cooperative,” is straightforward, his presentation of the evidence is unfortunately not. Nevertheless, he demonstrates that “[h]uman social life is much more cooperatively organized than that of other primates,” and this cooperation, rather than competition, has led to evolutionary advantages for individuals capable of broad conspecific communication. He posits the “shared intentionality hypothesis,” which allowed communally living humans to solve complex problems and expand their range dramatically. Human thought, in Tomasello’s conception, is different from that of all other organisms because humans alone have the capacity to think about the thoughts of others, and do so collectively. Tomasello’s greatest strength is his insistence on relying on data to support his hypotheses, particularly the fascinating studies he summarizes comparing pre-linguistic children to our great ape relatives. Through these comparisons he is able to begin to estimate the capabilities of our last common ancestor and thus define what sets us apart evolutionarily from our relatives. Tomasello’s enthralling subject matter, however, is poorly served by overly complex academic writing, making this read a chore few are likely to successfully finish. 6 line illus. (Feb.)