A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness

Merlin Donald

W W Norton, £22.95, pp 371

ISBN 0 393 04950 7

Rating:

There has been tremendous progress over the past few decades in understanding the nature and functioning of human consciousness. Although this knowledge has not yet settled into an explicit consensus, and details are lacking, nevertheless all the necessary elements are in place. A theory of human consciousness is here or hereabouts.

From the evidence of this book, Donald is one of those who substantially understand consciousness—which is to say that he can give a coherent and broadly valid account of the evolved function of consciousness and its main modes of operation. A Mind So Rare can therefore be added to a list that would include Francis Crick's The Astonishing Hypothesis (1994), and Antonio R Damasio's Descartes' Error (1994) and The Feeling of What Happens (1999).

Although the book ranges widely, Donald's particular contribution seems to be his understanding of cultural evolution. Twenty thousand years ago, human social organisation was qualitatively similar to that of great apes such as chimpanzees and bonobos—all humans were probably nomadic hunter gatherers. Since this time, and despite the fact that there has been no significant biological evolution of the human brain, there have been numerous waves of cultural change that transformed human life. These depend on information exchange, and Donald is tremendously enlightening on the subtle interaction between the human brain and these “objective” forms of information that are embodied in social organisation, practices, and written language and numbers. The new relation of brain and culture has produced no less than a qualitative transformation in the scope of human consciousness.

But there are problems: the book has significant stylistic flaws. Early chapters, especially, seethe with irritation directed at other researchers whose views are variously ridiculed as incoherent and characterised as immoral. The high prevalence of bad temper makes for unenjoyable reading.

More fundamentally, I found the book to be well written and yet at the same time difficult to understand. Donald largely succeeds in engaging the reader, but substantially fails to communicate his key concepts (at least, on first reading). Maybe the book is trying to do too much (for example, to settle scores with old adversaries, to impress the general reader with cultural references) to be able to concentrate on lucid exposition.

Consciousness studies are in a transitional phase and A Mind So Rare reflects this. Eventually terminology will settle down, and a definitive account will emerge. My belief is that human consciousness is simpler and more comprehensible than Merlin Donald implies. But the ramifications and implications of even a simple theory of consciousness will probably take centuries to elucidate.