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ISBN: PB: 9780226526782

University of Chicago Press

November 2017

400 pp.

22.8x15.2 cm

6 halftones, 18 line drawings, 2 tables

PB:
£24,00
QTY:

Dark Matter of the Mind

The Culturally Articulated Unconscious

Is it in our nature to be altruistic, or evil, to make art, use tools, or create language? Is it in our nature to think in any particular way? For Daniel L. Everett, the answer is a resounding no: it isn't in our nature to do any of these things because human nature does not exist – at least not as we usually think of it. Flying in the face of major trends in Evolutionary Psychology and related fields, he offers a provocative and compelling argument in this book that the only thing humans are hardwired for is freedom: freedom from evolutionary instinct and freedom to adapt to a variety of environmental and cultural contexts. Everett sketches a blank-slate picture of human cognition that focuses not on what is in the mind but, rather, what the mind is in – namely, culture. He draws on years of field research among the Amazonian people of the Piraha in order to carefully scrutinize various theories of cognitive instinct, including Noam Chomsky's foundational concept of universal grammar, Freud's notions of unconscious forces, Adolf Bastian's psychic unity of mankind, and works on massive modularity by evolutionary psychologists such as Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, Jerry Fodor, and Steven Pinker. Illuminating unique characteristics of the Piraha language, he demonstrates just how differently various cultures can make us think and how vital culture is to our cognitive flexibility. Outlining the ways culture and individual psychology operate symbiotically, he posits a Buddhist-like conception of the cultural self as a set of experiences united by various apperceptions, episodic memories, ranked values, knowledge structures, and social roles – and not, in any shape or form, biological instinct. The result is fascinating portrait of the "dark matter of the mind", one that shows that our greatest evolutionary adaptation is adaptability itself.

About the Author

Daniel L. Everett is the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He is the author of many books, including "Don't Sleep", "There Are Snakes"; "Language: The Cultural Tool"; and "Linguistic Fieldwork: A Student Guide". His life and work is also the subject of a documentary film, "The Grammar of Happiness".

Reviews

"Everett draws on his own deep insights gained from living and working in non-Western cultures in order to make a powerful argument for the influence of culture on unconscious forces that underlie human behavior and the individual's sense of self. After decades of a field derailed by ethnocentric, instinct-based views of language and the mind, the cognitive sciences need the sort of informed analyses his book offers of the relationships among culture, cognition, and language as they are embodied in speech and gesture" – Elena Levy, University of Connecticut

"In 'Dark Matter of the Mind', Everett defends two ideas that were once highly heterodox but which he has helped push toward the mainstream. One is a radical antinativism. Informed by his rich and challenging background as a linguist and anthropologist, Everett sees the human mind as profoundly shaped and organized by learning and culture. As he sees it, there is nothing like a language acquisition device or theory of mind module to be found in the architecture of the mind. The second is an emphasis on implicit information: hunches, know-how, and skill. That is the 'dark matter', thought that moves us in action and decision without our being able to articulate it, sometimes beyond awareness. The work is rich with example and argument; it is a reflection of many years of thought and experience" – Kim Sterelny, author of "The Evolved Apprentice"

"A hit and the biggest wallop in the breadbasket Noam Chomsky's hegemony had ever suffered" – Tom Wolfe, Harper's, on "Don't Sleep There are Snakes"