Michael Tomasello, A Natural History of Human Thinking (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass., 2014)
Michael Tomasello is Co-Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. This book is a prequel to The Cultural Origin of Human Cognition (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass., 1999), but this latter book has a different focus. Whereas the 1999 title asked, what makes human cognition unique?, this latest title asks what makes human thinking unique? Both answers are similar: human cognition and human thinking are cooperative. Based on the research provided in this title, it seems to be the case that humans not only understand others as intentional agents but also combine their thinking with others in acts of shared intentionality. Once our ancestors learned to collaborate with others to pursue shared goals, humankind was on an evolutionary path all its own.
Tomasello argues that our prehuman ancestors, like today’s great apes, were social beings who could solve problems by thinking. As ecological changes forced them into more cooperative living arrangements, early humans had to coordinate their actions and communicate their thoughts with collaborative partners. In order to maintain themselves, humans had to learn to see the world from multiple social perspectives, to draw socially adaptable inferences, and to monitor their own thinking via the normative standards of the group. Even language and culture arose from the preexisting need to work together.
Tomasello argues that human thinking is unique because it is cooperative. He posits that environmental upheavals, particularly two, forced early humans to channel their thinking towards collective aims through evolutionary innovations: collaboration while foraging, and the rise of culture as population and competition burgeoned. Tomasello convincingly shows how ‘shared intentionality’ sets us apart.