The Evolution Of Human Thought: An Extremely Brief Guide
Terribly deep stuff for people who walk into doors
Having your senses about you when navigating a busy crossroads is something different from being sensible about the speed at which you drive your car. In the one situation the idea is to pay attention to the immediate physical world as events unfold — in the other the idea is to use rational thought in relation to decisions and actions.
The spread of meanings for the concept of sense and its linguistic derivatives exceeds most concepts. For example, saying someone is talking sense, does not refer to any activities of their sensory apparatus — just as to get sensible typically indicates some idea of taking a reasoned approach to matters, as opposed to using an observational approach. In the same vein, nonsense usually has little to do with anything that anyone does or does not sense: it is usually used to indicate that something is illogical or at odds with reality.
Language associated with each of our senses has been similarly bastardised to create meanings that are not literal. If told to look out, this is as likely to implore us to think through our actions as to use our eyes. I hear what you are saying is pretty synonymous with I understand your point, and has nothing to do with aural input. To smell a rat almost never refers to the rodent’s odour. Even the whole concept of human feelings has little to do with touch.
The etymology of the word etymology provides an odd clue as regards how such a broad sense of sense might have come about. One entry refers to the study of the true sense (of a word), suggesting that the whole area of words and language use was once understood differently from the way it is in modern culture. It is not hard to imagine that early language use was seen primarily as a form of behaviour to be observed by the senses, whereas today it is thought of more in terms of concepts, logic and abstract meanings.
This bridge between older ideas of sense and more modern ones can perhaps be seen in phrases such as I sense antagonism, or there was a sense of well-being — phrases that can value actual sensory information as some sort of indicator of whatever conditions result — often from the use of language. And it should be noted in this respect that, despite modern culture putting great emphasis on cognition, we can access neither language nor the ideas of others without using our sense of sight or hearing. The ancients were maybe not so sophisticated that they overlooked this fundamental aspect of language and cognition in the way we easily do in today’s cultures.
Whereas the modern mind takes language and the thoughts and ideas that are formed by language utterly for granted, it would not always have been so, and it should be remembered that homo sapiens appears to be the only species that has such a well-developed abstract form of encoding information and communicating it with others.
However, the development of language and abstract thought can nonetheless be seen as as something akin to the development of the internet — albeit incredibly slow in comparison. Ideas of what such inventions are, as well as notions of how they should be used, are things that evolve over time.
Language use presumably evolved from very primitive beginnings, and was probably once recognised as just one among many options in terms of dealing with life’s challenges — whereas today we seem almost unable to think or act without language. In the process, language use has become reflexive rather than something we choose. It can even be seen as compulsive. Try switching off language-based thought for even just one minute to see just how true this is.
As a result of this evolutionary transition, the broad use of the concept of sense can be seen as an explicable artefact of our cultural evolution: a go-between that marries the more animal-like aspect of primitive man with the more cognitive orientations of modern man. In the jungle, as it were, sharp sensory awareness is important — whereas the modern urbanised jungle is more about sensibly planning a route through a set of non-immediate threats and opportunities. The strategy in one situation is to have your wits about you — the strategy in the other involves a lot of abstract thinking, and seems uniquely human and modern.
Hence the evolution of thinking, and especially of abstract thought, can be seen as something fairly recent and ongoing in the overall scale of evolutionary development. This is of course not to say that there was no thinking prior to the appearance of language: it is more to consider that the abstract aspect of human thought is a recent add-on in evolutionary terms. Other species obviously memorise where food and water can be found, but they seem incapable of recording this in, for example, map form, or as a set of verbal instructions.
Notably, this view of our development is backed up by research indicating that it is the parts of the human brain associated with language and abstract cognition that have expanded most in our recent evolution.
Over the course of that evolution, it appears our species has generally moved its attention away from the immediate here-and-now, and focussed increasingly on the abstract planning of future outcomes within an ever-more-technological existence. And for better or worse, this modern tendency to think everything through has all but become a necessity. Modern societies are hugely complex and convoluted, making many demands on the individual that were simply not there for our hunter-gatherer ancestors. To live as they did is not a realistic option today, short of taking off to some unspoiled hidden corner of the world, should any still exist. Very few among today’s populations would know how to eke out a life in such an alien environment anyway.
Of course the overwhelming view of all this is that human evolution has been for the benefit of all: there are no queues for a return to that hunter-gatherer lifestyle. But reluctance to change is a natural trait, and so a passive coalescence with modernity does not constitute any endorsement of things as they are. And things as they are is actually a state in which people seem increasingly troubled about the course of human civilisation — at the same time as a general air of doom and gloom is palpable regarding a host of new problems ranging from climate chaos to runaway global inequality and a crumbling biosphere.
It is in fact perfectly arguable that our obsession with thinking, planning and managing our many forms of technology, rather than dealing with what is right before our eyes, is now proving the eventual undoing of homo sapiens. In a situation in which an increasing number of scientists as well as ordinary people talk openly and calmly about an impending anthropogenic sixth mass-extinction event which it seems no one really knows how to stop, it is also arguable that the real problem confronting us is that we have quite literally lost our senses.
