The First Idea: How Symbols, Language, and Intelligence Evolved from Our Primate Ancestors to Modern Humans

by Stanley I. Greenspan and Stuart Shanker

Book Overview

In this highly original work, one of the world's most distinguished child psychiatrists together with a philosopher at the forefront of ape and child language research present a startling hypothesis-that the development of our higher-level symbolic thinking, language, and social skills cannot be explained by genes and natural selection, but depend on cultural practices learned anew by each generation over millions of years, dating back to primate and prehuman cultures. Furthermore, for the first time, they present their remarkable research revealing the steps leading to symbolic thinking in the life of each new human infant and show that contrary to now-prevailing theories of Pinker, Chomsky, and others, there is no biological explanation that can account for these distinctly human abilities.Drawing from their own original work with human infants and apes, and meticulous examination of the fossil record, Greenspan and Shanker trace how each new species of nonhuman primates, prehumans, and early humans mastered and taught to their offspring in successively greater degrees the steps leading to symbolic thinking. Their revolutionary theory and compelling evidence reveal the true origins of our most advanced human qualities and set a radical new direction for evolutionary theory, psychology, and philosophy.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0738206806
• ISBN13: 9780738206806
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Length: 512 Pages
• Weight: 1.83 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A Book of the Century

This book should rank as one of the most important books published in the decade if not the century. Stanley Greenspan has studied the emotional development of children for twenty years and has developed insights about the development of mental processing in children. He has tested these insights by applying them to developing strategies for helping children diagnosed with autism. These strategies have brought a majority of such children close to or into the normal range of mental functioning. It seems to me to be "a cure for autism"! Now, in this book, he and coauthor Shanker show how emotional interactions with children-playing with them, especially in long chains of back and forth connections that are fun for both adult and child-leads the child to the steps required for cognitive development. Emotions are not inferior to thinking, they are the foundation of the development of thinking. The authors cite MRI data on the creation of synaptic connections in the brain associated with emotional experiences and relate that to Greenspan's work to hypothesize that human cognitive development has been accelerated by the accretion of gains made in one generation of children onto the next generation through the enhanced emotional and cognitive advances resulting from caregiving practices, generation after generation. In other words, they are positing the evolution of the human mind not through genetic change but through coevolving caregiving practices. This hypothesis solves one of the most puzzling matters of human evolution-how did human beings surge in cognitive development in the last 8 or 10 thousand years, much too fast for genetic change. The authors' answer is that there was not genetic change, but there was the capacity for cognitive enhancement during the early growth of individuals through interaction with caregivers. And as the interactive patterns of caregivers with infants and children developed, so also did the number and complexity of synaptic connections in the brains of the children individually and, over time, cumulatively and collectively. The implications of this insight are astounding. They provide a foundational basis for all human sciences that can lead to ways of diagnosing cognitive, behavioral and emotional difficulties on the basis of core causes rather than mere observational data as is currently the case with DSM IV. And arising from that, clinical work with such people can become at least as scientifically informed as physical medicine. But there are larger implications for public policy and education. This approach provides a basis for saying reactive behavior and narrow frames of reference are not just individual ways of being, but are examples of developmental delays and should be dealt with as such, with compassion, indeed, but also with clarity regarding what they are. The book is not as easy read, especially the later chapters, but there are few books ever written that more deserve to be read and understood

Emotions plus a desire to interact plus evolution = language

When asked to cite what he believed but couldn't prove, Dan Dennett responded by saying that language was required for consciousness. Interestingly Dennett's view easily harmonizes with strong trends in contemporary wisdom. The larger view is that there is something particular and special about humans and their capacity for language that is materially different than what evolutionarily has preceded them. This book is a breath of fresh air for its helpful insight that humans are not materially different from what preceded them just more articulated in their thought processes and means of communicating them. In seriatim the book traces infant development for the capacity of spoken language and compares that developing capacity with different species of animals within the animal kingdom. In a way, it's kind of reminiscent of the old medical school "ontogeny recapitulates philogeny." For those lucky enough not to have experienced medical school, the famous saying refers to the similarity between developmental stages of an unborn fetus and the various lifeforms in the animal kingdom. For example, the fertilized zygote resembles a one celled organism. The early developing fetus resembles a fishlike creature and so on. In this book, needless to say, the more articulated the comparison being made between the infant's developing speech capacity, the more the authors will be inclined to use a more evolutionarily complicated life form. Significantly the authors use the similarities between humans and other animals to highlight their basic likenesses which according to the authors subsist in their mutual emotive acquisition of knowledge. In this sense, this book is like Read Montague's Why Choose this Book wherein Montague merged Alan Turing mechanistic reasoning with emotive values to create an up to date model of cognition. Again, these features are all welcome. Where I think the authors falter is later in the book when they try to apply their theories to group dynamics. But even so the book remains healthy food for thought and welcome insight if only for the knowledge that when we visit the zoo, the animals looking back at us are really not that much different at all but certainly not lacking consciousness just because they don't speak out language.

Seminal Book Connects Speech, Cognition, and Autism

Since the research that supports the theory proposed by these authors is so thoroughly documented, it may prove too technical for the average reader. Still, the insights are stupendous and easily verifiable by anyone with good parenting skills. The fact that, when applied to people with autism, the results are outstanding and highly unusual, tends to validate their theory. I found the book easy to skim and love the diverse perspectives of each author and contributor. Now I wish someone would put all this together with another book, somewhat related: Nicholas Ostler's _Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World_. In this book, the author summarizes how various languages spread, supercede others, dominate, or suppress other languages, how they are learned, how creole and pidgin languages develop, the structure of various languages, etc. Perhaps if all these authors got together with someone else, they could explain how various languages shape cognition and even, perhaps, perception, framing the world as each person sees it, and maybe how various cultures tend to see reality, based on the language in which they think. In some languages, the verb comes first and in others, last. In some languages, adjectives come before nouns and in others, after. In some languages, nouns can be feminine, masculine, or neuter. In others, there is no neuter. All of this must shape how humans see things and think--at least as much as emotions do, if the theory these authors propose is accurate. I heard a report on public radio about how, when people who speak Japanese view a picture of a tiger in a jungle, the parts of their brains that get stimulated are the parts that are viewing the jungle. When English speakers view the same picture, the parts of their brains that get stimulated are the the parts that are viewing the tiger. I don't know how they measured this and I don't know if language has anything to do with it, but it certainly seems to be a nurture, not nature thing. The world is evolving and there is so much more to be understood about where we came from that may have implications about where we're going. This book helps move us forward on that journey. - Norma T. Bauer [...] Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World

A new theory of human development

How did symbols, language and information evolve from primates to modern humans? In The First Idea: How Symbols, Language, And Intelligence Evolved From Our Primate Ancestors To Modern Humans, collaborative co-authors Stanley I. Greenspan and Stuart G. Shanker move beyond the nature/nurture debate to provide a new theory of human development: that the critical step in symbol formation, language and thinking isn't genetic, but a learned capacity dependent on nurturing interactions and cultural practices passed down between generations. Evidence from their own research and collaborations with others provide the backbone of a fascinating discourse.

Firmly down on the nurture side.

No one knows what caused the evolutionary giant leap from the apes to humans. There have been all kinds of theories from the opposable thumb to walking upright. In this book two eminent psychologists propose a theory that symbols, particularly language tought from one generation to the next drove the development of intelligence. As such, they come down firmly on the nurture rather than nature side of the argument. From watching children, they are both specialists in child development, they persuasively argue that children are taught symbolic thinking. From here they use evidence from the fossil record and neuroscience to develop their theory. Fascinating reading.