Thursday, April 16, 2009

Chapter 7

I thought that Tomasello was particularly clear in Chapter 7 with regard to his argument, and would like to pull a few quotes that I found helpful.

On page 201, Tomasello reiterates his argument that humans possess cognitive adaptations not shared by other primates. He states that the "species-unique cognitive adaption is...especially powerful...because it changes in fundamental ways the PROCESS of cognitive evolution." I think this is a good way to reinforce his point that traditional genetic evolution cannot account for how quickly humans covered "cognitive ground" - ergo, his theory of a different non-genetic process of cognitive adaption is well illustrated by the phrase "changes in...the process of cognitive evolution." It implies that if genetic cognitive evolution can't fast-forward (the pictorial linear-looking) process of evolution as it is traditionally conceived, traditional evolution, so to say, grew a branch that veered off to the side - hence, "the PROCESS changed."

I'm really doubtful with regard to whether or not that made sense to anyone other than me....

On page 205, Tomasello explains why the cognitive adaptation that was acheived by humans (whereby we understand one-another as conspecifics) would have occurred in any number of circumstances; "if an individual understands conspecifics as intentional beings for whatever reason - this understanding will not then evaporate when that individual interacts with conspecifics in other circumstances. In other words...communication, cooperation, and social learning are not different modules or domains of knowledge, but rather are different domains of activity, each of which would be equally profoundly transformed by a new way of understanding conspecifics, that is, a new form of social cognition."

He concludes on pages 216-217:
"The fact that culture is a product of evolution does not mean that each of its specific features has its own dedicated genetic underpinnings; there has not been enough time for that. A more plausible scenario is that all human cultural institutions rest on the biologically inherited social-cognitive ability of all human individuals to create and use social conventions and symbols."

And then he REALLY concludes with the following excerpt, which nicely ties together the three evolutionary frames he discusses in his book: biological, cultural, ontogenetic:
"Modern adult cognition of the human kind is the product not only of genetic events taking place over many millions ofyears in evolutionary time but also of cultural events taking place over many tens of thousands of years in historical time and personal events taking place over many tens of thousands of hours of ontogenetic time" (216).

QUESTION:
I find it interesting that Tomasello ends his book by casting aside binary divisions such as nature/nurture, innate/learned, genes/environment as "too static and categorical" (217). If this is in fact his view, what approach should we take with regard to education in general? In other words, although he didn't address this question directly, based on what he has written, what would he say are the implications of his conclusion - and particularly his last sentence - for education and learning in general? How should we approach it, given that binary divisions are so central in the modern schools system?

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