name:
The First Idea: The First Idea: How Symbols, Language, and Intelligence Evolved from Our Primate Ancestors to Modern Humans ,
review:
Interesting idea, dense and limited views. The authors and consequently the book is very much rooted in Psychology and Anthropology as opposed to what I was hoping would be a more broader view of Biology and Philosophy. It spends too much time on anecdotal stories about babies and their abilities to communicate - which while very interesting, does not satisfy the question of how did we evolve to think symbols and languages. The title should have warned me - this book is only about primates, and nothing before that, but I suppose I was too excited to notice. For instance, communication is the basis for an idea - which the book makes clear, but utterly fails to consider any notion of communication in non-primates as being of relevance other than a few related mammalian instances. Birds, bees, insects, even plans all communicate. Do they have a language? Undoubtedly yes. Do they have symbols? Probably. Do they have Ideas? I don't know! By not considering this, the book fails at the premise of answering its own question. And identifying a larger one at that - whether the notion of ideas and symbols has been evolutionary only within us or we merely at the tail of a long chain of developments in nature.,