The first half of the nineteenth century was the age of the great geological discoveries in which the record of the past was written in layers of the earth’s crust. And this led to the populari- zation of the idea of consciousness as being in layers which. 1 Diels, Fragment 45. 2 Confessions, 9:7; 10:26 65. The origin of consciousness is one the most intractable mysteries about the human mind, because of its intrinsic conceptual and theoretical difficulties. By adopting a truly multidisciplinary approach, Graham Little tackles this problem in an original and accessible book. Bcfaf6891f SHOW ALLSimilar folklore & mythology booksthe origins and history of consciousness Download the origins and history of consciousness or read online books in PDF, EPUB, Tuebl, and Mobi Format.pdf the origins and history of consciousness (princeton,.IRead Download: The Origin of Consciousness in.Erik said: As was commonly believed when Jung and Neumann were being educated.Download and Read Origins And History Of Consciousness Origins And History Of Consciousness We may.
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The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. Search the history of over 380 billion web pages on the Internet. The Origins And History Of Consciousness Volume II. PDF download. Free timestamp server url list.
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At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, o..more
Published August 15th 2000 by Mariner Books (first published 1976)
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LiedzeitYou can enjoy Westworld without reading this. But it also does not hurt and you might enjoy Westworld just a tiny little bit more. And no, you do not…moreYou can enjoy Westworld without reading this. But it also does not hurt and you might enjoy Westworld just a tiny little bit more. And no, you do not need any technical background. It helps if you ever wondered what consciousness might be, though. It is very clearly written but you need to be willing to think about the origin of consciousness.(less)
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Recommended to Terence by: GR friend Jim's review
Shelves: science-general, science-psych-brain-science, science-evolution
I am giving Julian Jaynes’ The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (The Origin) four stars not because I’ve become a devoted follower of his theory – I haven’t – but because it reflects exactly how I feel about it – I “really liked it.” Jaynes writes in such a commanding manner that you’re helplessly swept along to the end (at which point, you can finally catch your breath and begin to assess what’s just happened). Once he’s determined the correctness of his hypothesis..more
May 17, 2007Bill rated it it was ok Shelves: pop-science
Coming in a close third after Immanuel Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward As Science and Beeban Kidron's To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar in the World's Clunkiest Title competition, TOoCitBotBM is surprisingly accessible given the amount of ground it covers. Combining analyses of psychology, archeology, and ancient literature, Jaynes comes up with an astounding hypothesis: early man's mind was nothing like the thing we carry around in o..more
Either a work of unparalleled genius, or completely out-to-lunch loopy. No one, not even Richard Dawkins, appears quite certain which description to apply.
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There are surprising resonances between Jaynes's ideas and those proposed by Feyerabend in Chapter 16 of Against Method. I was particularly struck by the following passage (italics as in original):
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There are surprising resonances between Jaynes's ideas and those proposed by Feyerabend in Chapter 16 of Against Method. I was particularly struck by the following passage (italics as in original):
The transition from [the Homeric/archaic Greek view of the world] to [the classical Greek view of the world] thu..more
Aug 15, 2019Bradley rated it it was amazing
This book is very stimulating.
That is not to say it is correct or incorrect as a theory of consciousness, but there are enough examples and provocative ideas to make me *think* it might be right. And that's the whole problem. I can't immediately discount it. It keeps creeping back into my consciousness.
Even when reading it with deep suspicions, the very meme of this core idea breaks down the wall between my right and left hemispheres and I no longer have an external agent telling me what I must..more
Sep 22, 2008Erik Graff rated it it was amazing · review of another editionThat is not to say it is correct or incorrect as a theory of consciousness, but there are enough examples and provocative ideas to make me *think* it might be right. And that's the whole problem. I can't immediately discount it. It keeps creeping back into my consciousness.
Even when reading it with deep suspicions, the very meme of this core idea breaks down the wall between my right and left hemispheres and I no longer have an external agent telling me what I must..more
Recommended to Erik by: Linda Sue Harrington
This was one of the most stimulating and important books I've ever encountered by a psychologist. Although flawed in some important respects, it is profoundly provocative, suggesting areas for further speculation and research not only in psychology, but also in the cultural anthropology of religions.
The primary flaw of Jayne's work is his literary evidence for the claim that humans didn't develop reflective consciousness until ca. 1000 BCE. He relies too much on the earlier texts of the Iliad fo..more
Jul 04, 2015Taka rated it it was amazingThe primary flaw of Jayne's work is his literary evidence for the claim that humans didn't develop reflective consciousness until ca. 1000 BCE. He relies too much on the earlier texts of the Iliad fo..more
Shelves: 2015, nonfiction, 2-nonfiction-you-must-read
Amazing--
Reading The Iliad and the Old Testament of the Bible, I've always wondered about one distinctive feature they both share: an utter lack of interiority, of introspection by the characters. I brushed it aside as the literary style of the times in which they were composed (orally and then textually), but Julian Jaynes has quite a different take: the characters—like the rest of their contemporaries—were not conscious at all.
This claim alone was enough reason to pick this book up. His thesis..more
Reading The Iliad and the Old Testament of the Bible, I've always wondered about one distinctive feature they both share: an utter lack of interiority, of introspection by the characters. I brushed it aside as the literary style of the times in which they were composed (orally and then textually), but Julian Jaynes has quite a different take: the characters—like the rest of their contemporaries—were not conscious at all.
This claim alone was enough reason to pick this book up. His thesis..more
May 07, 2013Jan Rice rated it really liked it · review of another edition
In the process of trying to decide where to begin my review of The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds, it suddenly occurred to me that revisiting Julian Jaynes' 1976 book would be a place to start. Since this morning I've lost the thread of why I thought so, but maybe I'll remember as I go along.
I have the original 1976 hardback, but since there's a bookstore sticker on the back that says '2/28/78,' I know I didn't read it until then. The impetus was that I was a graduate stude..more
I have the original 1976 hardback, but since there's a bookstore sticker on the back that says '2/28/78,' I know I didn't read it until then. The impetus was that I was a graduate stude..more
A mind-fuck of the highest order. A work of polymathemetical genius, probably wrong on many accounts but absolutely original in its approach. Extremely readable, unpretentious prose and probings into one of life's coolest mysteries. You'll never read the Oddessey the same way again, or think about schizophrenia or Ancient Sumeria in the same way. It's speculative power has made many a head spin, I think.
Jul 18, 2012Leigh Jackson rated it it was amazing Shelves: psychology, philosophy-of-mind, evolution, epistemology, reviewed
Impressive, beautiful, amazing, and totally wrong. Rivals Leibniz for elegant incorrectness.
Shelves: poetry, science-fiction
Synopsis: 'Consciousness' is a skill wherein people create a mental world analogous to the physical world in order to attempt hypothetical solutions to novel problems. This skill was developed over thousands of years, following the collapse of an earlier system for responding creatively to unique stimuli. This system, dubbed 'the Bicameral Mind' involved the right hemisphere of the brain generating solutions and communicating them to the acting left hemisphere using language as the encoding syst..more
Dec 17, 2018Josh Friedlander rated it liked it · review of another edition Shelves: philosophy, anthropology-sociology, religion, psych-and-lifehacking
There seems to be a popular perception that this book is sort of 'crazy, but might just be true' (possibly inspired by a Richard Dawkins quip). I'm here to say: this book is crazy! But it's a fascinating read, as sort of creative nonfiction. Jaynes, a pretty respected psychologist writing in a time that was perhaps more receptive to New Age-y big picture ideas, thinks that a) schizophrenia is the natural, pre-conscious state of humans, which b) explains idolatry, ancestor worship and basically a..more
Jul 23, 2007Kate rated it it was amazing
I did read this book, or at least part of it, but really I just put it on here to impress people.
Jul 14, 2019Vladimir rated it it was amazing
This book is very strange. Julian Jaynes came out with strong thesis that our consciousnesses is the result of culture i.e. that the organization of our mind was different two millennia B.C. and started to breakdown around the first millennium B.C. Highly speculative but at the same time very well founded. The author studied thoroughly the ancient texts in order to support his view. Definitely worth of reading.
Jul 05, 2015Richard rated it really liked it
Here's an idea: what if consciousness - self-awareness, the 'I' and that private inner 'space' it seems to inhabit - is no emergent phenomenon, result of millions of years of brain evolution, but a purely cultural one derived from language, via metaphor, and which didn't appear sometime back in the Pleistocene, but recently (very recently, around 1200 BC in Julian Jaynes' estimation)?
As ideas go, it's a corker. By that date we were already tilling fields and founding the first cities, the Pyrami..more
Sep 10, 2010Kristina rated it it was amazingAs ideas go, it's a corker. By that date we were already tilling fields and founding the first cities, the Pyrami..more
Shelves: psychology, loved-em, my-book, social-sciences, non-fiction, religion-and-philosophy, library-book
O, what a world of unseen visions and heard silences, this insubstantial country of the mind! What ineffable essences, these touchless rememberings and unshowable reveries! And the privacy of it all! A secret theater of speechless monologues and prevenient counsel, an invisible mansion of all moods, musings, and mysteries, an infinite resort of disappointment and discoveries. A whole kingdom where each of us reigns exclusively alone, questioning what we will, commanding what we can. A hidden her..more
Sep 09, 2014Alex Lee rated it it was amazing
What's particularly hard to swallow about this book is that Jaynes goes far to argue for undermining not only how we know ourselves but also how we are to account for what we are doing. One of the basic rubrics of science and philosophy is our concept of consciousness, as a container for our individuality and our ability to comprehend/experience. To question consciousness itself in the form that we believe it comes in, in the method by which we determine ourselves is to question the very possibl..more
As an argument that Jaynes' thesis actually is true, severely disappointing. I can only assume that the people rating this as 5 stars are impressed by Jaynes' bold and outlandish theory, and not the actual argument that Jaynes sets out for it, which is quite clearly shoddy reasoning with the occasional lyrical flourish to smooth over the logical leaps. Some examples:
- Jaynes establishes that what he calls consciousness -- a sort of mind-scape -- depends on metaphor. He points out that language a..more
Oct 17, 2014Gary Beauregard Bottomley rated it did not like it
His theory is really way out there. I prefer to think that Homer was just made up and not real as all religious books are. Will Durant's 'Life of Greece, Story of Civilization, Vol II' irritated me to no end because the first 8 hours or so assumed Homer was based directly on real history. Now there is some truth in Homer, but I figure one can say there is some truth in the bible, but most of it is not historical. Hollywood movies are just as fake and I won't develop a theory based on reality fro..more
This book is actually comprised of three books. Jaynes had intended on writing four separate books, but wound up putting three of them together into one. He was to write the fourth book later, but never got around to it before passing away, which is a shame since I think he's onto something.
Book 1: 'The Mind of Man'.
Originally published in 1976 and quite controversial, Jaynes posited that human consciousness is a relatively recent trait of humans occurring around 3000 to 3500 years ago. Origin..more
Book 1: 'The Mind of Man'.
Originally published in 1976 and quite controversial, Jaynes posited that human consciousness is a relatively recent trait of humans occurring around 3000 to 3500 years ago. Origin..more
I'm giving this one five stars not because I agree with it, but because it is so unique and remarkable. It's important to understand that 'consciousness' to Jaynes is nothing like perception, but strictly a type of subjective deliberation that we associate with reasonableness, debate, and so on, the stuff that makes modern life: the ability to enter into agreements, law versus appeal to authority, and so on. His contention is that mankind's idea of thought was a different beast three thousand ye..more
Jan 07, 2013Keith Swenson rated it really liked it
I must fall back on description of the book given by someone else: it is 'either complete rubbish or the work of a consummate genius .. nothing in between.'
Gave the book 4 stars because it is one of those books that really makes you think about everything.
What Jaynes does do is to look at the periods of history and identify a pattern of psychological differences over time by analyzing the writing left to us by those people. He sees a rather distinct change happen about 1000 BCE in the middle e..more
Gave the book 4 stars because it is one of those books that really makes you think about everything.
What Jaynes does do is to look at the periods of history and identify a pattern of psychological differences over time by analyzing the writing left to us by those people. He sees a rather distinct change happen about 1000 BCE in the middle e..more
Dec 07, 2011Bethany rated it liked it
A remarkable book, even if it's crazy. It's already been reviewed and critiqued in far more detail then I shall. Instead I'll summarize the book with a passage therefrom:
'I have endeavored in these two chapters to examine the record of a huge time span to reveal the plausibility that man and his early civilizations had a profoundly different mentality than our own, that in fact men and women are not conscious as are we, were not responsible for their actions, and therefore cannot be given the c..more
'I have endeavored in these two chapters to examine the record of a huge time span to reveal the plausibility that man and his early civilizations had a profoundly different mentality than our own, that in fact men and women are not conscious as are we, were not responsible for their actions, and therefore cannot be given the c..more
May 23, 2009Cassandra Kay Silva rated it it was amazing
I am giving this a five not because I buy into what Jaynes is saying, actually if anything I finished the book still a 100% skeptical about his ideas, but because his approach, his idea and his presentation was actually extremely good. Whether this proves true or not it was still vastly interesting and at least a new way at looking at the evolution of man. I mean when we look at evolution as it is we have to determine SOME point in time where man gained this thing we call consciousness. Some poi..more
Jul 19, 2007Jrobertus rated it it was amazing
I have read this book several times. His hypothesis about the acquisition of modern linguistic consciousness is controversial and probably wrong in detail. However, it is very thought provoking, gorgeously written, and is the clearest statement of the uniqueness of the human mind that I have read. Jaynes is (was) a true scholar. He taught himself Greek so he could investigate the nuanced differences in temperament between the Iliad and the Odyssey as part of his analysis of the evolution of mode..more
Not for the faint of heart. I had to read it three times (and it's a very big book) in order to grasp the fundamentals of what the author was saying. I actually used this book a lot in writing my Atlantis series where I explored the untapped power of the subconscious mind. If you want to grasp how our brain developed, I highly recommend this book. It's hard to find, but it is out there.
'It is one of those books that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing in between!'
Richard Dawkins
Nov 11, 2014Teo 2050 rated it it was amazingRichard Dawkins
Shelves: history, misc_analogy-metaphor, _audio, by_psychologists, consciousness, neuro, _contents, sensation-perception, anthropology, _nonfiction
8h @ 2x. This book presents the theory/hypothesis of bicameralism according to which 'the human mind once assumed a state in which cognitive functions were divided between one part of the brain which appears to be 'speaking', and a second part which listens and obeys—a bicameral mind.' This was to me new & interesting & I'll have to read more before deciding what to make of it. At the very least the book was structured so pleasantly that I warmly recommend it as entertaining food for tho..more
Mar 24, 2019Angelina rated it really liked it Shelves: books-referenced-in-grad-school, non-fiction
If ever an author needed a friend to say, 'That's a terrible title, don't use it,' this is it. Jaynes' book should have been called something like 'We Were All Schizophrenics.'
This is an academic look at where consciousness comes from and how consciousness is different from what came before--what Jaynes terms the bicameral mind. The book explores archaeological as well as literary evidence for what brains worked like a long time ago, and my simple sum up is that the language center of our brains..more
This is an academic look at where consciousness comes from and how consciousness is different from what came before--what Jaynes terms the bicameral mind. The book explores archaeological as well as literary evidence for what brains worked like a long time ago, and my simple sum up is that the language center of our brains..more
Consciousness Book Pdf
Sep 22, 2018Ryan Alsaihaty rated it liked it · review of another edition
In this 1976 book, the author discusses his theory on the origin of consciousness and its relation to what he calls the bicameral mind. The main ideas of this theory are:
1) Before consciousness, human nature was split in two, an executive part called bicameral god, and a follower part called a bicameral man. Together they constitute the bicameral mind.
The bicameral god is auditory voices/hallucinations that guide and direct the bicameral man. The bicameral man follows these directions strictly..more
1) Before consciousness, human nature was split in two, an executive part called bicameral god, and a follower part called a bicameral man. Together they constitute the bicameral mind.
The bicameral god is auditory voices/hallucinations that guide and direct the bicameral man. The bicameral man follows these directions strictly..more
Feb 25, 2013JJVid rated it it was ok
In short, Jaynes' theory is highly speculative at best, and intentionally misleading at worst. Jaynes believes that three plus millennia ago humans were, overall, non-conscious automatons similar to Descartes' mechanical animals. There was rationality, there was language (and communication), there was a distinction between 'others' and 'self', but none of this amounted to what we would call 'consciousness'. Consciousness, in Jaynes' opinion, did not come about until around the second century B.C..more
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Julian Jaynes was an American psychologist, best known for his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976), in which he argued that ancient peoples were not conscious.
Jaynes defines 'consciousness' more narrowly than some philosophers. Jaynes' definition of consciousness is synonymous with what philosophers now call 'meta-consciousness' or 'meta-awareness' i.e. a..more
Jaynes defines 'consciousness' more narrowly than some philosophers. Jaynes' definition of consciousness is synonymous with what philosophers now call 'meta-consciousness' or 'meta-awareness' i.e. a..more
Evolution Of Consciousness Pdf
“O, what a world of unseen visions and heard silences, this insubstantial country of the mind! What ineffable essences, these touchless rememberings and unshowable reveries! And the privacy of it all! A secret theater of speechless monologue and prevenient counsel, an invisible mansion of all moods, musings, and mysteries, an infinite resort of disappointments and discoveries. A whole kingdom where each of us reigns reclusively alone, questioning what we will, commanding what we can. A hidden hermitage where we may study out the troubled book of what we have done and yet may do. An introcosm that is more myself than anything I can find in a mirror. This consciousness that is myself of selves, that is everything, and yet is nothing at all - what is it?
And where did it come from?
And why?” — 28 likes
And where did it come from?
And why?”
The Origins And History Of Consciousness Pdf
“Our sense of justice depends on our sense of time. Justice is a phenomenon only of consciousness, because time spread out in a spatial succession is its very essence. And this is possible only in a spatial metaphor of time.” — 18 likes