The other day an e-mail arrived from a list devoted to Marcel Proust. The writer emerged from a long period of lurking to say that he had neglected to thank certain members of the list for various services. One such service was a book recommendation: Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Break-down of the Bicameral Mind. A hell of a title, one must admit. This book, said the poster (the opposite, I would think, of imposter), had strongly influenced his life.
Well, I thought. What's this? I had never heard of Jaynes. Not that I have a great store of knowledge, but I'm a generally well informed chap. I have two advanced degrees, a Ph.D. and an M.S.L.S., and I tend to read widely and often But somehow Julian Jaynes (1920-1997) had slipped by me, carrying out his Princeton career and writing his controversial tome without my notice. Hmm.
Since I'm a fan of consciousness and a person who mopes about thinking about it a great deal, I was intrigued. As I consulted the Wikipedia I became even more intrigued, since Jaynes apparently had made the startling (to me) assertion that consciousness arose rather late in human evolution. Very late, actually. And that this view could explain or at least differently illuminate certain religious practices. Double hmm.
My questions have been things like: why did it take us so bleeping long to figure out electricity? And steam? And why do so many humans insist on believing in things that clearly are not there? (These questions, I've always thought, are related.)
So Jaynes began to interest me. Of course, my local library didn't have the book. But in twenty-four hours, I managed to visit a library that did and leave the premises with it's spartan cover in my hand. I've begun to read it, and, so far, I'm having fun. Stay tuned.
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