Description
Book SynopsisVolume 2 of The Genes of Culture continues Christine Nystrom's exploration into the ecology of symbol systems and the evolution of media, mind and culture. Part One, Human Symbolic Evolution, delivers nothing less than a grand unified theory of humankind. For Nystrom, the prehistoric creative explosion that gave rise to language -- a metaphorical Big Bang -- explains our species' survival. A felicitous if somewhat ignoble story, it begins with "The Incompetent Ape" who would never have made the evolutionary cut without developing the social capabilities made possible through symbolic language. And human communication, an inevitable source of problems, is the driving force behind this most peculiar of adventures: the birth of self-consciousness, tools and technologies, pratfalls of memory, awareness of our own mortality, art, knowledge, civilization, discontent, and so on. And so on, that is, if we don't bring our story to an end.
In Part Two, a series of astute a
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments – Introduction – Prologue – Language: The Monkeys’ Tale – The Children’s Tale – From Signal to Speech – Language and the Birth of Self – Narrative – Metaphor, Explanation, and Tales of the Self – Connections: Tribal Tales – Transitions and Transformations: The City, the Self, and the Sacred – Sounds of Silence: The Evolution of Writing – Kings, Consciousness, and Intimations of Immortality – Selected Bibliography – On Narrative – On Technopoly – Alternative Narratives – Final Tidbit: Nystrom’s Nuggets of Wisdom – Reading List – Addendum: Remembrances.
