Sunday, June 10, 2012

Julian Jaynes and Our Bicameral Past

Traipsing along the fringe between science and pseudoscience...




The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes is an interesting if dated perspective on the emergence of human consciousness. Fascinating idea, but not one I find compelling at first read.  Was Jaynes an intellect ages ahead of his time or a nutty professor with a quirky theory?  There's something to his idea, but I can't quite make sense of it.  Another book on my reading list, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist, may help me flesh this out.