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A review by matthewcpeck
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
4.0
While it wasn't the sexy crime thriller that its title promised, 'Origin' is a book which, for once, earns the description of "mind-blowing". I've wanted to read Jaynes' hypothesis ever since it I found it mentioned casually in Steven Pinker's 'How The Mind Works': until about 3000 years ago, human beings were virtually unconscious and had no concept of an "I" or self. Conscious-type thoughts and volition traveled from the right hemisphere of the brain to the left as full-blown auditory hallucinations that ordered our ancestors around, hence the gods of the Iliad and the Old Testament and Gilgamesh. When cultures collided around the 2nd millennium BC we 'learned' our way to our present consciousness and we've been haunted by this loss of our god-voices ever since. I think that he was on to something - it's wild but not THAT wild, and Jaynes was no crackpot.
The book is divided into 3 sections - in the first, Jaynes defines what consciousness is and isn't, and introduces his theory of the bicameral mind. In the 2nd, he pores over archaeological and literary evidence. This is the weakest section, because of the inherent dangers of making conclusions based on drawings and on texts that have been translated countless times. There's a lot of sentences like "this CLEARLY is because of the bicameral mind and nothing else", when that's really not the case. Most of the focus is on Mesopotamia with a little of Meso-America (that's where most of the ancient relics have survived), but Asia barely gets a passing glance. In the 3rd section, Jaynes studies contemporary phenomena like hypnosis and schizophrenia, regressions to the bicameral mind.
Jaynes is magnificent writer, with a sense of lyricism that is rare among academics. The final passage is particularly stunning, with its palpable sense of loss. 'Origin' has science, psychology, world history, poetry, spirituality, and philosophy. I'd recommend it if you're interested in even one of these categories - it has the power to change the way you look at world history, even if you don't buy into every suggestion.
The book is divided into 3 sections - in the first, Jaynes defines what consciousness is and isn't, and introduces his theory of the bicameral mind. In the 2nd, he pores over archaeological and literary evidence. This is the weakest section, because of the inherent dangers of making conclusions based on drawings and on texts that have been translated countless times. There's a lot of sentences like "this CLEARLY is because of the bicameral mind and nothing else", when that's really not the case. Most of the focus is on Mesopotamia with a little of Meso-America (that's where most of the ancient relics have survived), but Asia barely gets a passing glance. In the 3rd section, Jaynes studies contemporary phenomena like hypnosis and schizophrenia, regressions to the bicameral mind.
Jaynes is magnificent writer, with a sense of lyricism that is rare among academics. The final passage is particularly stunning, with its palpable sense of loss. 'Origin' has science, psychology, world history, poetry, spirituality, and philosophy. I'd recommend it if you're interested in even one of these categories - it has the power to change the way you look at world history, even if you don't buy into every suggestion.