Anticynical #16: The Extended Mind - Part 2 - Evolution
Encore: Evolution of the Extended Mind
Hey there 👋,
Welcome to part two of the 16th edition of Anticynical! Last week, I sent out part one of the series on the extended mind, where I talked about what the extended mind is.
In short, the internal parts of our mind, along with cognitive tools (like computers and calculators) and extensions (like language and culture) together, can be called the extended mind.
Head over here if you’d like to read the first part.
For part two, let’s explore how our extended minds might have evolved over time. It’s fascinating how we went from primitive “psycho-technologies” like mimicry and imitation (apes aping apes) to written language and other symbolic systems, including computers.
Idea: The Extended Mind - Part 2 - Evolution of the Extended Mind
For the history of evolution of the extended mind, I will lean on Origins of the Modern Mind by Merlin Donald. Donald outlines a theory of cognitive evolution based on three major transitions, or stages of culture, in the way humans process and store information.
Stage 1: Mimetic Culture
The mimetic culture stage began around 1 to 2 million years ago. During this stage, Homo Sapiens and their ancestors used gestures, mimicry, and imitation for communication and to represent knowledge.
I like to imagine my great28,600 grandmother signaling towards a berry and then dramatically pretending to collapse, illustrating the berry's lethal nature. While this form of communication might appear rudimentary to our modern sensibilities, it held groundbreaking significance back then. Much like how computer programming empowers us today by extending our capabilities, these early mimetic acts were the vanguard of human communication, not yet hardwired into our neural circuitry.
The mimetic phase expanded on the basic representational skills of our great ape ancestors, allowing early hominins to develop ritual, dance, and shared social actions that are more advanced than those seen in other primates.
Thus, during this stage, the bleeding edge of our extended mind consisted of gestures, mimicry, and imitation for information representation.
Stage 2: Mythic Culture
The Mythic Culture stage began around 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. This phase is characterized by the invention of spoken language and the creation of myths and shared narratives.
Myths, produced by combining mimetic gestures and language, became central to cultural transmission. They allowed humans to create shared narratives and explanations for phenomena in the world around them.
I like to think of myths as being similar to those old, nearly full floppy disks. Weird analogy? Let me explain.
Imagine an entire city or tribe dependent on one single floppy disk to pass on wisdom to future generations. Here’s the twist: the floppy disk is already brimming with insights from the generations that came before. How do you cram all the new knowledge gained into a medium that already is chock full of cryptic wisdom from the generations that came before? You’d have to get creative with some compression, reinterpretation, and synthesizing past wisdom with new knowledge. This iterative process of encoding, refining, and layering birthed myths possessing profound depth and intricacy.
Thus, akin to these almost-bursting floppy disks, myths became vessels, preserving layers of collective insights for subsequent generations.
Stage 3: Theoretic Culture
The Theoretic Culture stage began with the invention of writing systems. The earliest known writing systems, like cuneiform in ancient Mesopotamia and hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt, emerged around 3500-3000 BCE.
However, the full blossoming of theoretic culture, with widespread literacy and the development of institutions dedicated to analytic thought (academies, libraries, and scientific societies), took longer and varied from one civilization to another. In general, though, the shift into a theoretic mode of cognition can be seen as aligning with the rise of early civilizations and their complex societal structures, roughly 5,000 years ago.
This is the stage of external symbolic storage and the analytic processing associated with it. With the advent of written language and other symbolic systems, humans began to offload much of their cognitive processing onto external storage devices (like books). This externalization of memory enabled more complex, abstract thought and underpins modern scientific reasoning and other advanced cognitive processes.
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In today's interconnected world, the tapestry of our cognitive evolution remains palpably present. Each successive cognitive stage didn't replace its predecessor; rather, it built upon it, integrating and synthesizing the capacities of earlier stages. Whether you're using a metaphor to elucidate a complicated scientific idea, employing gestures to accentuate a point, or delving into abstract theoretical constructs, you're drawing from the vast reservoir of cognitive tools honed across these evolutionary stages. The modern extended mind weaves together mimetic, mythic, and theoretic threads, creating a rich mosaic of communication and understanding.
Moreover, many aspects that might have been “outside” of our ancestors' brains — like mimicry and imitation — two million years ago have been now encoded into our DNA over years of evolution. The “external” aspects of our extended minds have also shaped our neural and physical architectures over the years. For example, early hominins likely relied more on vocalizations and gestures for communication. Over time, our facial muscles and neural networks have evolved to automatically produce and interpret a wide array of facial expressions, conveying emotions and intentions without conscious thought.
I want to thank Akshat Naik for his initial thoughts and introducing me to the term “extended mind.” Thank you Shanece Grant and
for your feedback on the draft.Question: If a fourth cognitive stage were to emerge, what might it look like?
I’ll share my thoughts on this in the next part, next week.
I'd love to hear from you…
What did you think about the three stages of cognitive evolution?
Fourth cognitive stage?
Or anything else at all. Just hit reply.