Encyclopedia > The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976) is a controversial work of popular psychology by Julian Jaynes in which he proposes that consciousness emerged relatively recently in human history. The Origin of Consciousness was financially successful, and has been reprinted several times. The book was originally published in 1976 (ISBN 0395207290) and was nominated for the National Book Award in 1978. It has since been reissued (ISBN 0618057072). This is a list of controversial non-fiction books aimed at the general reader which discuss controversial issues, or are (or were at the time of writing) controversial for other reasons. ...
Psychology (Classical Greek: psyche = soul or mind, logos = study of) is an academic and applied field involving the study of behavior, mind and thought and the neurological bases of behavior. ...
Julian Jaynes (1920 - 1997) was an American psychologist, best known for his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976), in which he argues that ancient peoples were not conscious as we consider the term today, and that the change of human thinking occurred over...
Consciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and ones environment. ...
1976 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ...
The National Book Awards is the most important literary prize in the United States, presented annually for the best books by living U.S. citizens published in the U.S. The awards have been presented since 1950 in at least one category, and is presently awarded in each of four...
A new edition, with an afterword that addressed some criticisms and restated the main themes, was published in the US in 1990. This version was published in the UK by Penguin Books in 1993 (ISBN 0140174915).
Summary
Jaynes asserts that until the times written about in Homer's Iliad, humans did not have the "interior monologue" that is characteristic of consciousness as most people experience it today. Instead, he argues that something like schizophrenia was the typical human mental state as recently as 3000 years ago. Bust of Homer in the British Museum For other uses, see Homer (disambiguation). ...
The Iliad (Greek Ιλιάς, Ilias) tells part of the story of the siege of the city of Ilium, i. ...
Jaynes describes this state as a bicameral mind by analogy with bicameral legislatures and parliaments. Jaynes argues that preconscious humans effectively had a "split brain" which allowed one part of the brain to appear to be "speaking" to another part that listened and obeyed, and that commands that at some point were believed to be issued by "gods" — so often recorded in ancient myths, legends and historical accounts — were in fact emmanating from individuals' own minds. Specifically, he hypothesises that these commands were being issued by a now usually dormant area in the right hemisphere of the brain that corresponds to the location of Wernicke's area in the left which is believed to be involved in understanding speech. He says, with neurosurgery, these commands can be recreated with electrical stimulation of the area. In psychology, bicameralism refers to a controversial theory asserting that the human brain once assumed a state known as a bicameral mind in which cognitive functions are divided between one part of the brain which appears to be speaking and a second part that listens and obeys. ...
In government, bicameralism is the practice of having two legislative or parliamentary chambers. ...
Chamber of the Estates-General, the Dutch legislature. ...
An aerial view of Parliament of India at New Delhi. ...
In the anatomy of animals, the brain, or encephalon, is the supervisory center of the nervous system. ...
The term God is capitalized in the English language as a proper noun when used to refer to a specific monotheistic concept of a Supreme Being in accordance with Christian, Jewish (sometimes as G-d - cf. ...
Wernickes area is a part of the human brain which forms part of the cortex, on the left posterior section of the superior temporal gyrus, posterior to the primary auditory cortex, on the temporo-parietal junction (part of the brain where the temporal lobe and parietal lobe meet). ...
Jaynes builds a case for this theory by citing evidence from many diverse sources including historical literature. For example, he asserts that, in The Iliad and sections of the Old Testament in The Bible that no mention is made of any kind of cognitive processes such as introspection and that there is no apparent indication that the writers were self-aware. He asserts that some later books of the Old Testament (such as Ecclesiastes) as well as later works such as The Odyssey show indications of a profoundly different kind of mentality which he believes is indicative of consciousness. The Iliad is, with The Odyssey, one of the two major Greek epic poems traditionally attributed to Homer, a blind Ionian poet. ...
The Old Testament or the Hebrew Scriptures (also called the Hebrew Bible) constitutes the first major part of the Bible according to Christianity. ...
The Bible (From Greek βιβλια—biblia, meaning books, which in turn is derived from βυβλος—byblos meaning papyrus, from the ancient Phoenician city of Byblos which exported papyrus) is the sacred scripture of Christianity. ...
Ecclesiastes, Kohelet in Hebrew, is a book of the Hebrew Bible. ...
The Odyssey is the second of the two great Greek epic poems ascribed to Homer, the first being the Iliad. ...
According to Jaynes, this bicameral mentality began malfunctioning or "breaking down." He speculates that was due to increased societal complexity making more education a matter of necessity; resulting in the dominance of the conscious hemisphere. The mind began exercising conscious thought almost exclusively, for the first time, to enable the continued survival and success of the species or the individual. Jaynes further argues that divination arose during this breakdown period, in an attempt to summon commands that had previously been interpreted as emanating from "gods." His hypothesis is bolstered by a period of time in this transition where children who had contact with the "gods" were prized by their community, but as their education progressed they lost their abilities. This man in Rhumsiki, Cameroon, tells the future by interpreting the changes in position of various objects as caused by a fresh-water crab. ...
Response Jaynes's hypothesis found little acceptance among mainstream academics. This was partly due to the perception that Jaynes' was pandering to the general public, and because he did not offer The Origin of Consciousness for peer review. A hypothesis (assumption in ancient Greek) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. ...
Plato is credited with the inception of academia: the body of knowledge, its development and transmission across generations. ...
Peer review (known as refereeing in some academic fields) is a scholarly process used in the publication of manuscripts and in the awarding of funding for research. ...
His proposals generated great controversy when first published, and provided impetus for many other scientists and philosophers to investigate the matters it discussed in detail in order to attempt to refute its arguments.
Some authorities, however, consider Jaynes's hypothesis worthy and offered conditional support, arguing the notion deserves further study. Some scholars suggest that Jaynes' theory describes a real event, but dates it wrong. One theory about pre-historic cave paintings, for example, is that they offer us a window into a time when consciousness was emerging, perhaps through the breakdown of bicameralism. Cave, or rock, paintings are paintings painted on cave or rock walls and ceilings, usually dating to pre_historic times. ...
Similar ideas Friedrich Nietzsche's explanations of human ethics and moral consciousness in Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals posit a similar developmental path. The first humans followed a "noble" ethic, but their consciousness was shallow and limited at best. When the Judeo-Christian tradition turned the will in on itself, as Nietzsche claims, the human soul became complex and intelligent, although it lost the "noble" ethic, which was replaced by an ethic of "resentiment." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) was a profoundly influential German philosopher, psychologist, and classical philologist. ...
Ethics is the branch of axiology – one of the four major branches of philosophy, alongside metaphysics, epistemology, and logic – which attempts to understand the nature of morality; to define that which is right from that which is wrong. ...
Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (Jenseits von Gut und Böse) is a major 19th Century philosophical work by Friedrich Nietzsche. ...
On the Genealogy of Morals (translation of Zur Genealogie der Moral, sometimes translated On the Geneology of Morality), is a polemic written by the 19th century German philosopher and philologist Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche in 1887. ...
Noble is the guitarist of British Sea Power. ...
Judeo-Christian (also spelled Judaeo-Christian) is a term used to describe the body of concepts and values which are thought to be held in common by Christianity and Judaism, and typically considered a fundamental basis for Western legal codes and moral values. ...
The soul according to many religious and philosophical traditions, is the ethereal substance — spirit (Hebrew:rooah or nefesh) — particular to a unique living being. ...
Although their ideas are similar, there is no evidence that Jaynes was influenced by Nietzsche.
Influence It has also been great fodder for cyberpunk authors; Neal Stephenson's first several books (The Big U, Zodiac, Snow Crash, The Diamond Age) involve the bicameral mind theory, as does Bruce Sterling's Distraction. The book has been highly influential in a neo-objectivist philosophy called Neo-Tech, and Jaynes' theory is referenced at least in passing in the cyberpunk comic Transmetropolitan. Cyberpunk (a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk) is a genre of science fiction which focuses on computers or information technology, usually coupled with some degree of breakdown in social order. ...
Neal Stephenson (b. ...
Spoiler warning: The Big U (1984) is Neal Stephensons first published novel, a satire of campus life. ...
Zodiac (1988) is Neal Stephensons second novel, which tells the story of an environmentalist uncovering a conspiracy involving industrialist pollutors and bicameral minded Satanists in the Boston Harbor. ...
Snow Crash cover shot, illustrated by Bruce Jensen. ...
The Diamond Age, or A Young Ladys Illustrated Primer is a 1995 cyberpunk or postcyberpunk novel by Neal Stephenson taking place in a world where nanotechnology is ubiquitous. ...
Bruce Sterling at the Ars Electronica Festival Bruce Sterling (born April 14, 1954) is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his seminal work on the Mirrorshades anthology, which defined the cyberpunk genre. ...
Neo-Tech is a philosophy that expressly promotes the elimination of mysticism from the human thought process as its central focus, by means of fully-integrated honesty. ...
Transmetropolitan was a postcyberpunk comic book series written by Warren Ellis with art by Darick Robertson. ...
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