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A Natural History of Human Thinking

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http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc...321&cn=394

EXCERPT: [...] What Michael Tomasello attempts in his new book is precisely what [Jean] Piaget deemed improbable -- a reconstruction of the prehistory of thought. As there is a natural history of the beaks of Darwin's finches, there is a natural history of the human mind, and putting it, or a version thereof, on paper should illuminate, by tracking parentage, the nature of thinking. This departure from the Piagetian cannon is in fact the current culmination of a very Piagetian project indeed. A Natural History of Human Thinking branches out from the considerable collection of research and theory professor Tomasello and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig have produced over the last decade or so. This corpus has so far been focused on what Piaget did recommend: ontogenesis, i.e. the characteristics of early childhood. Their investigations have aimed, specifically, at capturing the emergence at ever smaller ages of the rudiments of communication and cooperation. It is probably thought that this research has by now condensed into a thick enough foundation to allow for speculative projections into the distant past....




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