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In this highly original work, one of the world's most distinguished child psychiatrists together with a philosopher at the forefront of ape and child language research present a startling hypothesis-that the development of our higher-level symbolic thinking, language, and social skills cannot be explained by genes and natural selection, but depend on cultural practices learned anew by each generation over millions of years, dating back to primate and prehuman cultures. Furthermore, for the first time, they present their remarkable research revealing the steps leading to symbolic thinking in the life of each new human infant and show that contrary to now-prevailing theories of Pinker, Chomsky, and others, there is no biological explanation that can account for these distinctly human abilities.Drawing from their own original work with human infants and apes, and meticulous examination of the fossil record, Greenspan and Shanker trace how each new species of nonhuman primates, prehumans, and early humans mastered and taught to their offspring in successively greater degrees the steps leading to symbolic thinking. Their revolutionary theory and compelling evidence reveal the true origins of our most advanced human qualities and set a radical new direction for evolutionary theory, psychology, and philosophy.
| Ch. 1 | Origin of symbols | 17 |
| Ch. 2 | Intellectual growth and transformations of emotions during the course of life | 41 |
| Ch. 3 | The early stages of emotional regulation, engagement, and signaling : nonhuman primates and the earliest hominids | 103 |
| Ch. 4 | Problem-solving collaborations : chimpanzees and early humans | 132 |
| Ch. 5 | Symbols, words, and ideas : Archaic Homo sapiens and early moderns | 147 |
| Ch. 6 | Representation and the beginning of logic : Homo sapiens sapiens | 167 |
| Ch. 7 | The engine of evolution | 181 |
| Ch. 8 | The origins of language | 187 |
| Ch. 9 | The role of emotions in language development | 208 |
| Ch. 10 | Emotions and the development of intelligence | 232 |
| Ch. 11 | How emotional signaling links emotion and cognition and the brain's subsymbolic and symbolic cortical systems : implications for neuroscience and Piaget's cognitive psychology | 250 |
| Ch. 12 | Emotional development derailed : pathways to and from autism | 295 |
| Ch. 13 | The developmental levels of groups, societies, and cultures | 321 |
| Ch. 14 | A new history of History | 375 |
| Ch. 15 | Future evolution : toward a psychology of global interdependency | 424 |
Overview
In this highly original work, one of the world's most distinguished child psychiatrists together with a philosopher at the forefront of ape and child language research present a startling hypothesis-that the development of our higher-level symbolic thinking, language, and social skills cannot be explained by genes and natural selection, but depend on cultural practices learned anew by each generation over millions of years, dating back to primate and prehuman cultures. Furthermore, for the first time, they present their remarkable research revealing the steps leading to symbolic thinking in the life of each new human infant and show that contrary to now-prevailing theories of Pinker, ...