Evolution, Development and the Social Production of Mind

http://cdy.sagepub.com/

Cultural Dynamics

http://cdy.sagepub.com/content/2/2/188The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/092137408900200204

1989 2: 188Cultural DynamicsChris Sinha

Evolution, Development and the Social Production of Mind

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

can be found at:Cultural DynamicsAdditional services and information for

http://cdy.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

http://cdy.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:

http://cdy.sagepub.com/content/2/2/188.refs.htmlCitations:

at LUND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES on September 8, 2010cdy.sagepub.comDownloaded from


http://cdy.sagepub.com/content/2/2/188

http://www.sagepublications.com

http://cdy.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts

http://cdy.sagepub.com/subscriptions

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

http://cdy.sagepub.com/content/2/2/188.refs.html


EVOLUTION, DEVELOPMENT AND THE SOCIALPRODUCTION OF MIND

CHRIS SINHA

Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht

Introduction

Vygotsky’s ‘cultural-historical’ approach to psychology was itself the prod-uct of a unique conjunction of historical circumstances; as Wertsch (1985a: 1)remarks, he was &dquo;one of those figures in intellectual history who might neverhave been. Had he lived in another place or time, he might never havedeveloped his theoretical approach to psychology.&dquo; (see also Sinha, in press;Wertsch, 1985b). In this paper, though, I want to start by focusing rather onthe continuities and similarities which bind Vygotsky’s work to both hispredecessors and his contemporaries, than on those aspects of his approachwhich were most original. This initial focus can help us better to understandboth the nature of the theoretical problems which Vygotsky faced, and someof the ways in which the solutions he proposed were inevitably coloured (andperhaps flawed) by his own historical situation.

In particular, I want to suggest that an important aspect of Vygotsky’sproblematic was constituted by the confrontation, still very much alive in hisday, of post-Enlightenment theories of language, thought and culture with theconsequences of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Darwinian theory both intro-duced new problems into the Western philosophy of mind, and suggested newways of solving old problems. A particularly important role was played by therecasting, in the light of the facts of biological evolution, of the concept oftime. As many historians of science, from Lovejoy (1936) onwards, haveemphasized, the comparative anthropological context within which Darwin’stheory of natural selection was first received was, in general. more’typological’ than ’historical’. The Cartesian and Enlightenment conception ofa universal human rational faculty was replaced in early evolutionary accountsby a focus on difference and a pre-occupation with ‘primitivity’. Nineteenthcentury comparative psychology and anthropology neglected or downplayedthe role of historical time in human evolution, subordinating it to a biologicaldeterminism associated with a ’progressivist’ (and Eurocentric) theory of



189

civilization.

Early twentieth century sociological, anthropological and psychologicaltheories departed from crude biologism and evolutionism, and interpretedDarwin within a framework which returned in some respects to Enlightenmentassumptions. They were faced, however, with the problem of explaining howthe ’socialization’ of the biological individual - an evolutionary product -could proceed through a medium - language and culture - which they tookto be governed by autonomous (non-biological) laws of development. It wasthis problem to which Vygotsky’s ’cultural-historical’ theory was, in general,intended to provide a solution. A central concept in Vygotsky’s theory is thatof internalization, which, in mediating between natural and cultural history,offers according to Vygotsky a resolution of the conflict between rationalismand empiricism. I shall argue, however, that Vygotsky’s break with nineteenthcentury ideas about the layering of time (embodied in what I call the ’pal-aeomorphic metaphor’) was incomplete, and I shall suggest a modification ofhis theory of internalization which is consistent with current evidence andtheories in both developmental psychology and cultural anthropology.

Civilization, Language and Human Origin: Enlightenment Theories.

The basic assumptions of the Enlightenment philosophy can be traceddirectly to Descartes’ reflections on the nature of the human faculty of Reason.As is well known, Descartes’ arguments for the duality of mind and body werecoupled with an argument for the unity of reason, at the level of both theindividual and the species. The Cogito, for Descartes, was neither to beconceived as a bundle of separate faculties, nor was it reducible to the

mechanical operations of learned associations: rather, he maintained that

knowledge, derived from reason, was fundamentally to be distinguished fromactions resulting from the mere ’dispositions of organs’. To be human, forDescartes, was to be animated, in all one’s actions and thoughts, by Reason;and Reason is the property of the human soul. As such, Reason has the force,for Descartes, of both a universal capacity and a moral injunction: all human

beings, Christian, pagan and unbeliever, are able to be led, through Reason, torecognize God, and it is just this susceptibility of their souls to Reason whichdifferentiates them from beasts.

Descartes secured the foundations of the new philosophy by his translationof the verities of faith into the field of corrigible knowledge, and by hisassertion of doubt as the principal instrument of Reason’s quest for knowledge.The social philosophers of the Enlightenment, and in particular Rousseau,added a new, and more secular, dimension to the philosophy of Reason by



190

inquiring into the origins of the actual, social and cultural inequality betweenindividuals. This question was, perhaps, already latent in Descartes’ philosoph-ical reflections, but he was precluded from posing it by his avowed acceptanceof both the divine and the secular Authorities which ordained the social stations

of individuals. Nonetheless, the Cartesian principle of the unity of reason wasfundamental to what we call the Enlightenment - the pressing of philosophyinto the service of the new Sciences of Man, under the banner of the ’psychicunity of mankind’.The philosophers of the Enlightenment, following both Descartes and Rous-

seau, maintained that beneath the variety of customs and beliefs characteristicof particular societies, the natural constitution of human beings was every-where the same. The task of the human sciences, on this view, was both todocument cultural variation and, through careful comparative research, toestablish the invariant core of human nature - a core provided by the universalgift of Reason. The transformation of the Cartesian philosophy into Enlight-enment philosophy consisted, essentially, in a transposition of the mind-bodydualism into a nature-culture dualism, in which culture and tradition mask or

suppress the essential rationality of human nature. This vision was expressedby Rousseau in his claim that ’men are bom free, but are everywhere in chains’;but it found an earlier expression in the polemics of the empiricist philosopherof science Sir Francis Bacon, who denounced the ’idols’ of the tribe and the

marketplace, representing the forces of social custom and habit which deflectscience from true perception.Enlightenment philosophers, both rationalist and empiricist, accepted the

Cartesian view that an essential quality distinguished humankind from ani-mals, while differing on the question of the origin of this quality. For rational-ists, Reason was inborn, while for the empiricists it was the result of

experience. Yet it is important to note that neither Reason, nor Experience -whether (as for Descartes and other rationalists) it awakened innate powers ofmind, or whether (as for empiricists such as Locke and Hume), it impressedideas upon a ’tabula rasa’ - were seen as, in and of themselves, guaranteeingtrue belief. The interaction between the ’powers’ of the individual (his ratio-nality or sensibility), and the contingencies of experience, was shaped bytradition, and only civilization could enable human beings to attain, or realize,the rationality immanent in their natures.

’Civilization’, or ’culture’, was an ambiguous concept for the Enlightenmenttheorists. Sometimes it was to be identified, in contrast to ’barbarism’ and

‘savagery’, as the cardinal virtue of educated individuals in Western societies.Descartes, for example, argued that &dquo;the diversity of our opinions does not

proceed from some men being more rational than others, but solely from the,



191

fact that our thoughts pass through diverse channels and the same objects arenot considered by all&dquo;. What distinguished civilized from savage thought was,for Descartes, the wealth and tradition of intellectual reflection, codified inrules for the application of reason: that is , philosophy itself. Thus, &dquo;[philoso-phy] alone is what distinguishes us from savage and barbarians... the civiliza-tion and refinement of each nation is proportionate to the superiority of itsphilosophy.&dquo;2The notion of civilization as a property of particular societies co-existed,

however, with the view that culture itself - the association of individuals in

society - is the principal force in the development of mental faculties, bothin the individual and in the species. This view was clearly expressed by thephilosopher-physician Itard, the teacher of Victor, ’L’enfant sauvaged’Aveyron’. Itard was a follower of Condillac, and he maintained that, al-though the impress of experience depended upon the ’sensibility’ of theindividual, its effccacy as instruction depended upon an education in society.

In 1801, Itard - rejecting the Rousseauesque conception of a ’state of

nature’ - wrote that

man is inferior to a large number of animals in the pure state of nature, a stateof nullity and barbarism that has been falsely painted in the most seductivecolours; a state in which the individual, deprived of the characteristic facultiesof his kind, pitifully hangs on, without intelligence and without feelings, [to]a precarious life reduced to bare animal functions... the moral superiority saidto be natural to man is only the result of civilization, which raises him aboveother animals by a great and powerful force. This force is the pre-eminentsensibility of his species, an essential characteristic from which proceed theimitative faculties and that continual urge which drives him to seek new

sensations in new needs... in the most isolated savage as in the most highlycivilized man, there exists a constant relation between ideas and needs;... the

increasing multiplicity of the latter in the most civilized people should beconsidered as a great means of developing the human mind; so that a generalproposition may be established, namely, that all causes, accidental, local orpolitical, which tend to augment or diminish the number of our desires,necessarily contribute to extending or to narrowing the sphere of our know-

ledge and the domain of science, fine arts, and social industry. (cited in Lane,1977: 129-130)

The ambiguity in the Enlightenment concept of ’civilization’ can be ex-

pressed by saying that it was conceived as simultaneously the expression andthe cause of human rational faculties. Rationalists and empiricists shared acommon intellectual framework in the field of tension generated by this

ambiguity; they differed in the weight they assigned to one or other pole of

‘expression’ and ’cause’, with rationalists tending to the former and empiricists



192

to the latter.

A parallel ambiguity, or tension, characterized Enlightenment theories oflanguage. For both Descartes and Locke, language was seen (in accordancewith a tradition reaching back to Aristotle) as the means by which ideas, orconcepts, are expressed. Thus, Locke wrote that: &dquo;That then which words arethe marks of are the ideas of the speaker: nor can anyone apply them as marks,immediately, to anything other than the ideas that he himself hath.&dquo;3As Parmentier (1985: 364) has pointed out, however, in the later empiricism

of Condillac, the signs of language themselves constitute &dquo;a realm of ’theoret-

ical cognitions’ not found in animals&dquo;; and it is the existence of such signs(which, Condillac surmised, were ’discovered’ rather than consciously in-vented) which enables human beings to acquire ideas in the first place.Condillac wrote:

Men did not think of making analyses until they observed that they had madesome. They did not think of speaking the language of gesture in order to makethemselves understood until they observed that they had been understood.Similarly, they will not have thought of speaking with articulate sounds untilafter observing that they had spoken with such sounds; and languages beganbefore men undertook to create them. Thus men were poets and orators before

they dreamt of being so. (Condillac, 1982: 392 [1792])

In his 1746 Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, Condillac (1987)argued, in a way which is reminiscent of Vygotsky’s analysis of the ’highermental functions’, that the acquisition of ’institutional signs’ enables humanbeings to consciously direct and control the operations of ’imagination’, whichlatter he considered to be shared by all higher animals. The direction ofattention by signs, he argued, forms the basis for memory and reasoning (orcontemplation). Rejecting both Descartes’ view that animals are automata, andthe view that reason is equivalent to mere instinct, Condillac wrote:

The resemblance between animals and ourselves proves that they have minds,and the difference between them and us proves that their minds are inferior toours... the mental operations of animals are limited to perception, consciou-sness, attention, reminiscence, and imagination not under their control, whileours include other operations whose origin I am about to make clear... Ifcontemplation consists in preserving perceptions, then before the use ofinstitutional signs, it is merely outside our control; but if it consists in

preserving the signs themselves, it has no function at all. So long as imagina-tion, contemplation and memory are unused, or as long as imagination andcontemplation operate outside our control, we cannot direct our attention aswe please... But when someone begins attaching ideas to signs of his ownchoosing, we see his memory begin to form. With the memory he begins togive his imagination direction and training. For with the help of signs that may



193

be recalled at will, he revives, or is at least often capable of reviving, the ideasconnected with it. Later, he acquires much greater control over his imaginationas he invents more signs, for he has many more ways of using it. (Condillac.1987: 459)

. In Condillac’s theory, the use and acquisition of signs is the precondition forthe emergence in human beings of reflective intelligence, which consists inessence of the subordination of imagination and memory to voluntary control.Condillac not only takes a socio-genetic and semiotic approach to the founda-tions of human intelligence, but he does so, furthermore, in an explicitlydevelopmental fashion:

A single arbitrary sign is enough to revive an idea. That is certainly the firstand least degree of memory and of the control we acquire over our imagination.The power it gives us to direct our attention is the weakest possible one. Butsuch as it is, it begins to make us realize the value of signs, and so it is

appropriate for enabling us to exploit opportunities for inventing new signswhere useful or necessary. Then reflection also is increased, and by reacting .

back on the imagination and memory that produced it, reflection will in turnget new exercise. Thus, with the mutual help that these operations provide,they reciprocally contribute to each other’s development. (Condillac, 1987:461)

The theories of Condillac, and his disciples such as Itard, prefigured in manyimportant respects the later ideas of theorists such as Herder and von Hum-boldt, who maintained that languages, rather than reflecting universal proper-ties of the mind, could be seen as an expression of the ’genius’ or ’mentality’of particular peoples. Indeed, Condillac wrote that &dquo;As government influencesthe character of a people, so the character of the people influences that of alanguage&dquo;. Condillac’s account of the primacy of the sign over direct, sensualexperience also clearly anticipated the importance which ‘semiotic mediation’assumed in Vygotsky’s cultural-historical psychology, as well as the funda-mental orientation shared by many later theorists (including Vygotsky) to

questions of origin and genesis - or, as it would later be expressed, evolutionand development. Despite, however, the demor.strable continuity existingbetween late Enlightenment theories and Vygotsky’s cultural-historical psy-chology, we should also realize that an immense gulf separates the intellectualworlds inhabited by Condillac and Vygotsky. This gulf can be simply summa-rized by reference to a theory and its creator: Charles Darwin’s theory ofevolution through natural selection.

,



194

Darwin and the Splitting of Time

The question of origins, for Enlightenment theorists, was not an evolutionaryone in the sense that we would understand that today, since it was based upona conception of an unchanging order of nature, reflecting the intentions of thedivine Creator. Nevertheless, the idea that the progress of human history,through the stages of barbarism to civilization, represented a movement to-wards human perfection, was fundamental to Enlightenment philosophy. Thisconception was mirrored in a widely-held vision of nature itself as embodyinga ’scale of perfection’. The scala naturae, or ’Great Chain of Being’ as Lovejoy(1936) called it, is an idea which can be traced back as far as Plato, but it wa.scentral to the thinking of many Enlightenment philosophers. Locke, for exam-ple, maintained that:

when we consider the infinite power and wisdom of the Maker, we have reasonto think, that it is suitable to the magnificent harmony of the universe, and thegreat design and infinite goodness of the architect, that the species of creaturesshould also, by gentle degrees, ascend upwards from us towards His infiniteperfection, as we see they gradually descend from us downwards. (cited inReynolds, 1981: 6)

The idea that civilizations could be ordered according to their perfectioncould, of course, easily be superimposed upon the scala naturae to yield atheory in which, unlike that of Descartes in which a radical dualism supportsan absolute (or saltatory) distinction between humans and animals, differentgroups of human beings are considered to be at different stages of civilization,as a consequence of difference in their nature. Indeed, it was empiricists suchas David Hume, rather than rationalists, who first advanced the view (omi-nously portending the later development of ’scientific’ racism and SocialDarwinism) that a ’lack’ of civilization is due to racial nature.

It is a matter of debate to what extent the expressions of white racistsuprematism by Hume and others are attributable primarily to the earlier andfaster development of British than French imperialism, or to inherently con-servative and anti-egalitarian aspects of empiricist philosophy when comparedwith rationalism (see Bracken, 1984). What is clear, at any rate, is that

nineteenth century European anthropology enthusiastically assimilatedDarwin’s theories to a ’temporalized’ version of the ’Great Chain’. Accordingto this account, not merely was ’savagery’ a stage in evolution, but contempo-rary ’savage’ societies betrayed the evolutionary (innate) ’backwardness’ ofthe non-European peoples. Darwin’s theory of natural selection, rather than,as now, being understood in terms of common descent, was seen as a theory of

gradual ascent towards a state whose peak of perfection was, of course,



195

represented by the social systems of nineteenth century Europe. These assump-tions provided the background for speculative anthropological reconstructionsof ’missing links’ in the evolutionary chain, obsessions with racial differenceand purity, and the construction of what I have elsewhere (Sinha, 1988) calledthe ’phylocultural complex’ - an intellectual system supporting the posing ofa wide range of psychological issues in terms of comparisons between child-hood and primitivity (see also Scribner, 1985).The attempt to reduce socio-cultural to biological evolution, though period-

ically revived - as, for example, in some recent sociobiological writings(Wilson, 1975) - was challenged in the early twentieth century by the rise ofstructural-functional anthropology and sociology, with their adherence to theDurkheimian view that the socio-cultural and the biological spheres are en-tirely distinct. Differences between cultures ceased to be viewed as symptomsof stages in biological evolution, and the emphasis on progress gave way oncemore to a conception (clearly expressed by, for example, Levi-Strauss) ofcultural differences concealing deeper structural commonalities between allhuman societies. The human sciences, in the twentieth century, returned to the

’psychic unity’ view of the Enlightenment.Yet the problems posed by Darwinian theory were too profound to admit of

a simple return to the culture-nature dualism of the Enlightenment. Theseproblems can best be typified in relation to the concept of time. Whereas, aswe have seen, earlier interpretations of evolution could be seen as a simplevalorization of the ’Great Chain of Being’ with a temporal dimension, the trueimplications of Darwinian theory were much more profound and revolutionary.To explain how Darwin revolutionized the European conception of time, it

is useful to employ the term ’duree’, employed by the Annales-school historianBraudel (1974) to denote a scale or periodicity within which time plays adistinct role in human life. Human history, for Braudel, is composed of theinterplay between three distinct duries: the ’longue durée’ within whichgeographical, climatic, ecological and cultural evolution are situated; the durieof social and institutional history; and the durée of day-to-day events. Timeand history, in Braudel’s approach, are not uniformly governed by a single’arrow’ with a single velocity; rather, they are shaped by the motions ofstructures at different levels. The relations between the levels - duries - are

complex and sometimes contradictory, but none of the levels is entirelyautonomous from the others.

Darwinian theory can similarly be seen to have ’split’ time, multiplying thescales by which it may be measured and the durees through which it makesitself manifest. Before Darwin, European ideas of time were dominated by the

theological concept of a First Event, or Cause, which originated the single span



196

of secular time whose Final Cause was the return (in the Final Event) toeternity, and the abolition of time itself. Darwin’s theory undermined the ideaof the universe as being designed, and as manifesting in its every microcosma teleological purpose. No longer could time be seen as originating at themoment of creation; and, if there was no longer a single First Cause, there wasalso no longer a single First Event. With the demise of the reciprocal notionsof Origin and Finality, it fell to evolutionary theorists to attempt some accountof the relations between the time scales - earth historical, human historical,and psychogenetic - which might also illuminate the course of humanevolution itself.

The Palaeomorphic Metaphor and the Concept of Internalization

One of the earliest and most widely accepted such attempts was Haeckel’s srecapitulationist theory (Haeckel,1874). Haeckel expressed his theory in termsof a ’biogenetic law’ according to which the developmental (ontogenetic)history of the individual organism, from embryo to maturity, repeats orrecapitulates, in an abbreviated time span, the entire evolutionary (phyloge-r.etic) history of the species or ’race’ of which it is a member. The humanembryo, foetus and infant, for example, was said by Haeckel to pass succes-sively through fish-like, amphibian, reptilian and mammalian stages, recapit-ulating the evolutionary stages preceding the emergence of the human race.Haeckel’s law was eagerly seized upon by many psychologists as the key tounlock the secrets of ’mental evolution’, including the evolution of languageand symbolization. By understanding the mind of the child, psychologistshoped to gain insight into the ’childhood of the race’, and to formulate generallaws of mental and cultural development. Recapitulationism was a crucialingredient of the psychobiologies of both Spencer and Freud - notably inrelation to the concept of ’regression’; and the intellectual influence of bothHaeckel and Lamarck - whose theory of the inheritance of acquired charac-teristics co-existed with natural selection even in Darwin’s own thought -

persisted well into the twentieth century. In particular, the notion that differentcommon logics of development govern changes in different duries was oflasting significance in the formulations of the genetic (evolutionary-develop-mental) psychologies of both Piaget and Vygotsky.Although no simplistic follower of Haeckel, Piaget too wrote at length on

the relations between ontogeny and phylogeny (e.g. Piaget 1979), and was a

highly original evolutionary thinker, seeking to provide a principled scientificbasis for his Lamarckian views in the concept of epigenesis. Paradoxically,however, in view of his self-designation as a genetic epistemologist, Piaget



197

neglected time and temporality in most of his writings. Time, for Piaget, isreducible to the invariances of sequence which are inbuilt in the relationsbetween the logico-mathematical structures characterising the developmentalstages of the cognitive or epistemic subject.

It is by now a common criticism of Piaget’s developmental psychobiologythat it neglects the social, interpersonal and communicative dimensions ofhuman development. Piaget’s relative neglect of the social was manifested alsoin his failure to address the scale of temporality specific to society: that is, ofhuman history. This is in direct contrast to Vygotsky (e.g. Vygotsky, 1978;Vygotsky 1986), whose work hinged on the notion of the ’internalization’ ofthe cultural and the historical by the individual. Vygotsky’s own attempt toformulate a theory of internalization was, however, as I shall suggest below,limited by his acceptance of the same ’palaeomorphic’ model of the temporal-ities that inspired Haeckel’s recapitulationist theory.The problem of time also has a somewhat contradictory status in twentieth

century linguistic and social theory. In one sense, it is central to the structuralistproject founded in the early years of the century by Saussure (see Saussure,1966); the time-referring concepts of synchrony and diachrony underlay thelangue-parole distinction which he took to constitute the very possibility of ascience of language. On the other hand, as writers from the Prague LinguisticCircle of the 1930’s (see Jakobson and Tynjanov, 1985) to the present day(Bailey and Harris, 1985) have noted, the structuralist focus on synchrony,langue, and abstract universal competence, has tended to obscure the impor-tance both of language change and development, and of the particularities ofsocio-cultural process.The structuralist tradition, following in the footsteps of the Enlightenment

philosophers, has viewed language as that which sets humanity off from otherspecies, enabling the development of culture and rationality. Inevitably, suchan approach tends, first, to treat ’language’ and ’culture’ as universal terms,and, second, to view the problem of ontogenesis in terms of a transition of theinfant from an animal/biological to a human/social state. This basic notion of‘socialization’ is common to such diverse thinkers as Freud, Piaget andVygotsky, whatever their other differences. For all of these theorists, lan-

guage/culture/symbolization stands as the sine-qua-non of the human condi-tion itself - and thus of human history; and history/society/culture as the

sine-qua-non of the socialization of the individual.If the opposition between ’nature’ and ’culture’ can be seen as having its

roots in the work of the Enlightenment philosophers, the idea that time itselfis ’layered’ is of more recent origin; being principally inspired by Darwin’srevolutionary re-assessment of the implications of the geological and pal-



198

aeontological investigations of Lyell and others. J would suggest, in fact, thatthe importance of palaeontology in establishing Darwinian evolutionary theoryled to the appropriation by many evolutionists of palaeontology as a funda-mental metaphor, not just for changes within a durée, but for relations betweendurées. What underlies this ‘palaeomorphic’ model, or metaphor, is a hierarchyof temporalities: evolutionary-biological time (itself embedded within geolo-gical time) is presupposed by social-historical time, which is presupposed byontogenetic-developmental time. Within the terms of the model, one maypostulate parallelisms of sequence or mechanism, as did Freud and Piaget withthe respective concepts of recapitulation and epigenesis; and one can argueover the relative influences of more ’fundamental’ levels over more

‘superficial’ ones, as in Vygotsky’s insistence upon the equivalent importanceof the social and the biological in individual development. What remainsunchallenged, however, is the basic metaphor of time itself as stratified, each’layer’ - geological, evolutionary, historical, individual - being sedimentedupon the previous one (see Fig. 1).

Figure 1. The &dquo;Paleomorphic Methaphor&dquo; for the Time-Scales

The ’palaeomorphic metaphor’, as I shall term it, was explicitly stated inrelationship to behavioural development by Vygotsky, in the following terms:

One of the most fruitful theoretical ideas genetic psychology has adopted is .

that the structure of behavioural development to some degree resembles the



199

geological structure of the earth’s core. Research has established the presenceof genetically differentiated layers in human behaviour. In this sense thegeology of human behaviour is undoubtedly a reflection of &dquo;geological&dquo;descent and brain development. If we turn to the history of brain development,we see what Kretschmer calls the law of stratification in the history ofdevelopment... lower centres are retained as subordinated structures in thedevelopment of higher ones and... brain development proceeds in accordancewith the laws of stratification, or construction of new levels on old ones...Instinct is not destroyed, but &dquo;copied&dquo; in conditioned reflexes, as a functionof the ancient brain which is now to be found in the new one. Similarly, theconditioned reflex is &dquo;copied&dquo; in intellectual action... the behaviour of themodem, cultural, adult human can be understood only &dquo;geologically&dquo;, sincevarious genetic layers, which reflect all the stages through which humans havetravelled in their psychological development, are reflected in it. (Vygotsky,1981: 1 sus-156)

In the same article, Vygotsky proposes that the development of ’highermental functions’ be viewed as representing a ’completely new level ofdevelopment’, in which &dquo;any higher mental function was [once] external,because it was social, at some point before becoming an internal, truly mentalfunction. It was first a social relation between two people.&dquo; Vygotsky presentsthis as a

general genetic law of cultural development: any function in the child’scultural development appears twice, or on two planes. First it appears on thesocial plane, and then on the psychological plane... higher functions are notdeveloped in biology [phylogenesis]. Rather, the very mechanism underlyinghigher mental functions is a copy from social interaction; all higher mentalfunctions are internalized social relationships.

Vygotsky’s profound originality, in his own historical context, consisted inhis recognition that a new synthesis was required in the human sciences, andin particular psychology. This new synthesis would integrate the cultural-ev-olutionary perspective of language theorists from Condillac onwards, with theevolutionary biological perspective initiated by Darwin and continued inpre-revolutionary Russia in the work of Sechenov (Sechenov, 1935). Such a

synthesis would restore ’psychic unity’ to human mental processes; but thistime within as well as between individuals. Rather than endlessly cyclingbetween reductionist variants of materialism, and idealist interpretations ofculture as an autonomous sphere unrelated to natural processes, a dialecticalmaterialist psychology would attempt an account of the specific transforma-tions wrought by the emergence of culture upon the biological evolutionaryprocess itself. The key concept employed by Vygotsky to describe and accountfor this dynamic and developmental process was that of internalization.



200

Now, while Vygotsky’s diagnosis of the basic ’problem’ of psychology, andthe general thrust of his solution to it, remain arguably unsurpassed to this day,the specific mechanism of ’internalization’ which he postulated suffers froma serious logical problem. If the individual cognitive subject is seen as beingan internalized product of social life and organization, and not a product ofbiology, then what is the nature of the subject (or proto-subject) which isinitially responsible for the act(s) of internalization? To say that this is itselfbiological is simply to push the problem down a level, for the capacity tobecome ’fully human’ is also a uniquely human characteristic. An equivalentdilemma is faced by theories which, in a Vygotskian fashion, attempt to solvethe problem by appeal to the intersubjective structuration of early actions andinteractions (Trevarthen and Hubley, 1978; Lock, 1980). Granted the impor-tance of attributions of intentionality to infants by adults, and of adult’scaffolding’ (Bruner, 1983) of early interactions, these again presuppose asubject capable of ’copying’ the interpersonal attributions and transactionsonto the ’inner-psychological’ plane.

I shall return below to the role of interpersonal transactions in humanevolution and development. For now, I want to note that, despite its interaction-ist and dialectical impulses, the Vygotskian theory of internalization repro-duces in its internal logic the very divisions between the natural and thecultural, and the individual and the social, which it strives to overcome.

Further, the palaeomorphic model of layering and sedimentation of neurolog-ical and psychological function, corresponding to the layering of temporalities(ontogenetic upon socio-cultural upon phylogenetic), reproduces the classicaldivision between ’instinctual’ and ’learned’ behaviour; leaving the Vygotskianaccount open to the criticism that (like Condillac’s theory of signs and cogni-tion) it remains embedded within empiricism, with all the concomitant

weaknesses associated with that philosophical tradition (Fodor, 1972).This is particularly unfortunate at the present time, since much current work

in cognitive science is being conducted within a neo-rationalist theoreticalframework in which innate ’mental faculties’, of a computational nature, areheld responsible for what Vygotsky called the ’higher mental functions’. Themodel of mind assumed by the neo-rationalists (e.g. Chomsky, 1980; Fodor,1983) is one which is modular in nature: rather than Vygotsky’s pal-aeomorphic, vertical sedimentation model of mental function, a horizontally-specified set of processing modules is proposed, each of which operates withrespect to a different cognitive domain. Such a model can be criticized for itslack of attention to evolutionary and biological processes, and its (idealistic)over-reliance on the computational metaphor. In many ways, the Vygotskiancultural-historical approach, and certain related neo-Piagetian approaches, are



201

the only serious contenders, since the demise of behaviourism, against theneo-rationalist account. If, as I suggest, the Vygotskian account is flawed byits problematic reliance on the palaeomorphic metaphor, then it is importantto develop a Vygotskian-inspired alternative. That is what I attempt in theremainder of this paper.

Ontogeny, Phylogeny and the Evolution of Culture .

To begin with, there is an obvious truth in the palaeomorphic model. Bothindividual development and social life do indeed depend upon an evolutionarybiological process which for the greatest part pre-dates the emergence of ourspecies, and whose durée is of an entirely different order from that of even thelongest historical span. We may, for example, suppose that if a newborn

Neolithic infant were somehow transposed with one from a present-day deliv-ery room, the subsequent physical, psychological and social development ofthe changeling would be commensurable with those of its new-found peers.Thus, both what is constant in human development and what is variable acrosscultures are equally supported by a genetically transmitted biological ’core’.This much is unquestionable, as is the relevance of genetic transmission forvariation between individuals within cultures.

What is open to question, in my view, is the assumption that the biological’core’ of individual development - the organismic ‘support’ necessary for thegrowth of human subjectivity - is itself a product solely of biological evolu-tion. This proposition, stated negatively - ’biology is not a product solely ofbiology’ - has a paradoxical ring to it, and so is perhaps better stated in thefollowing terms, as a positive hypothesis: &dquo;the biology of human developmentis a product of the interaction of biological and cultural evolution at the specificsite of ontogenesis&dquo;.What I am proposing, then, is that rather than seeing cultural evolution as

’taking off’ from a terminal point of biological evolution, we should rather seeevolutionary biological processes as having been, as it were, ’captured’ by anemergent cultural process, with ontogenetic processes - especially thoseinvolving representation, symbolization and communication - as a crucialcatalyst and product of the co-evolution of culture and biology. As Vygotsky,and many others including his colleagues Luria and Leontiev have emphasised,the emergence of human symbolic and representational capacities, in bothontogenesis and phylogenesis, is intimately connected with the emergence ofcultural transmission and tool use. However, merely to state this is in a way tostate the obvious; and, since neither tool use nor cultural transmission are

unique to the human species, without further specification such a theory lacks



202

explanatory power. -

The theoretical position which I wish to advocate begins with a re-assess- .

ment of the notion of representation, with particular emphasis on the materi-ality of representation, and the representational environment. The humanenvironment, for any concrete individual, has always-and-already been inten-tionally shaped by previous generations of human agents into a materialculture. Of course, biology - and in particular neurobiology - is an indis-pensable precondition or support for symbolic representation. However, acrucial aspect of the human environment is that it involves representationalsystems, which extend beyond the boundaries of the individual organism.Representation, on this account, is not simply a distinctively human cognitiveand cultural capacity, but a constitutive property of the material surround intowhich the human infant is bom, and which, like all environments, supports andconstrains the activities of the developing organism.As Leontiev (Leontiev, 1981: 134) put it: ’’Before the individual entering

upon life is not Heidegger’s ’nothing’, but the objective world transformed bythe activity of generations&dquo;. To this we might add that the ’objects’ in the worldencountered by the child are neither simply Newtonian particles obeyinguniversal physical laws, nor are the actions in which they are embedded simplyexemplifications of abstract logico-mathematical operations, as a reading ofPiaget might suggest.

In the first place, as many authors have noted (Trevarthen and Hubley, 1978),the infant early encounters ’social’ or ’personal’ objects - simply, otherpeople - whose qualities are different from those of impersonal objects. Inthe second place, however, impersonal objects encountered by the infant arealso social, in a different sense, in that they are encountered within a contextof particular social practices and social relations. Furthermore, in the case ofartefacts in general, as for tools in particular, the context-of-use of the objectcommonly achieves a representational status in the structure of the object itself.It is in this highly specific sense that we may speak of the materiality ofrepresentation.Most artefacts are designed to fulfil a certain purpose, which we may

designate the canonical (or socially standard) function of the object, and thiscanonical function (containment, cutting etc.) in part determines the form ofthe object (possession of a cavity or blade etc.). Such relations betweenfunctions and forms may be termed, in general, design rules, and any artefact

may be seen as a material representation of a subset of the design rules currentin a culture. Such rules are not strictly deterministic, since although they areconstrained by physical laws, such constraint is weak. A particular function

may be subserved by many different forms: for example, the function ’key’



203

may be subserved by a hand- or machine-engineered implement, a mechanicalcombination lock sequence, or a sequence of characters entered on an elec-

tronic keyboard. In general, we may say that the range of available instantia-tions of a specified function will increase with increasing knowledge andtechnique, as will the range of actually available functions. Furthermore,certain instantiations may become obsolete, so that design rules are subject tohistorical change.

Nevertheless, although design rules are underdetermined by function, theyare not arbitrary, since they embody constraints of nature and of social practice,habit and sometimes aesthetic value. Further, a certain core of design rules,governing the use of artefacts common to all cultures - implements forcontaining, supporting, cutting, pounding, tying etc. - remain relativelyspeaking invariant across space and time, and it is this subset of invariantdesign rules, correlating canonical (that is, socially standard) functions andcanonical forms, which may be designated as canonical rules. My proposal isthat such canonical rules act as a material, representational core to object usage,and possess a privileged status in both ontogenetic and phylogenetic cognitiveand symbolic development.There is experimental evidence that the ontogenetically earliest conceptual

representations of objects appear to implicate a rudimentary grasp of canonicalrules (Freeman, Lloyd and Sinha, 1980), and that canonicality is a centralaspect of the early organization of actions and interpretive strategies forlanguage (Sinha, 1982; 1988). My suggestion therefore is that the child’s earlyaccommodations to, and assimilations of, objects are partially predeterminedby the social and intentional shaping of these objects to represent, in theirstructural properties, canonical rules. In this respect, the object provides anexternal epigenetic pathway (Waddington, 1977) for what Leontiev ( 1981)calls the ’appropriation’ of knowledge and culture by the developing humanorganism. -

The canalisation of cognitive growth by the object is reinforced by the tuition

provided by adult co-participants in joint and routine interpersonal and com-municative activities. To quote Leontiev (1981: 135) again, &dquo;the individual,the child, is not simply thrown into the world; it is introduced into this world

by the people around it, and they guide it in that world&dquo;. The extraordinarilyhigh degree of sensitivity displayed by the human infant and young child tothe cues provided, directly through interpersonal communication channels, and

indirectly through context-setting, by adult interlocutors has been documented

by many developmental psychologists in recent years, as has the dyadicstructure of early tutorial and pedagogical relationships (Wood, Bruner and

Ross, 1976).



204

Representational and symbolic development do not, however, end with theconsolidation of knowledge of canonical rules: rather, such rules form the basisfor subsequent developments in which the child systematically violates canon-ical rules, in symbolic and substitutional pretend play routines, and in construc-tional goal-oriented activities. The ability to de-couple canonicalfunction-form relations is, of course, crucial to language development, partic-ularly the acquisition of syntax; and in general to the generation of novelmeans-ends relations. This fundamentally creative or innovative capacity is asmuch, or indeed more, a specifically human cognitive capacity as the abilityto produce enduring tools and artefacts; furthermore, the ability to go ’beyondthe information given’ (Bruner, 1974) is combined, in the human species, withthe emergence of constructional activities which involve the co-ordination ofdifferent by complementary roles in the social organisation of the task (Reyn-olds, 1982).

Thus, if the grasp or appropriation of canonical rules may be seen as afundamental mechanism for the social transmission of the core invariants of

culture, symbolic play and co-operative action provide ontogenetic mecha-nisms for the generation of complex substitutional and combinatorial systems,and ultimately for the appropriation of the generative and combinatorial rules(language, kinship systems etc.) which are specific to particular cultures. Whatimplications do these ontogenetic processes hold for possible mechanisms ofthe phylogenetic evolution of cognition and symbolization?My proposal is that the emergence of culture and symbolization, in its human

form, was made possible by the evolution of infancy itself as a specific niche,whose adaptive parameters were set by the prior emergence of hominid artefactmanufacture and use. Ontogenesis, then, was the specific evolutionary adap-tation permitting the inter-generational transmission through appropriation ofthe earliest cultural artefacts, those instantiating canonical rules. According tothis hypothesis, it was not tool use per se which was responsible for theemergence of human cognitive and symbolic capacities, but the enduringproducts of such tool use in the form of artefacts (including tools themselves).As Leontiev has emphasized, the process of appropriation is not simply one

of adaptation to a given reality, but of the active mastery of the transformativeprocedures which tools and artefacts represent and potentiate; furthermore, theprocess of appropriation is fundamentally social, in two distinct but relatedsenses. First, in that the procedures mastered and reproduced through appro-priation are inseparable from the social order as a whole, and second in thatthe guidance of adults is an intrinsic part of the developmental process.Therefore, it is not the case that infancy is adapted to took and artefact use perse, and I am not arguing that tool use is ’innate’ in the conventional sense.



205

Rather, the biological adaptations necessary for human evolution wereselected by the requirements of appropriation as an ontogenetic mechanism.Thus, the evolution of infancy was the biological mechanism through whichthe potential for inter-generational cultural transmission created by tool usewas optimized, and appropriation was the specific social and ontogeneticprocess in response to which the niche of infancy envolved. In this respect, theevolution of infancy was not so much a terminal point of biological evolution,as the crucial inaugural moment in the socialization of biology (Riley, 1978).Such an evolutionary process, I suggest, would lead to a rapidly expanding

endogenous spiral of change and adaptation. Those aspects of infant psychol-ogy facilitating appropriation processes, such as social-contextual sensitivity,representational and symbolic control of sensori-motor processes, and’dedicated’ perceptuo-motor mechanisms for processing speech and gesture,are also those which are most clearly implicated in the crucial features of aspecifically human form of life: symbolic and representational systems, tech-nological innovation, complex classificatory systems and so forth.

Conclusion

The hypothesis that I have presented brings ontogenetic processes once againto the fore in theories of human symbolic, cognitive and cultural evolution,while departing significantly from the assumptions of the ’palaeomorphicmetaphor’. Specifically, this hypothesis suggests that certain features of thebiology of human infancy and early childhood - those associated withappropriation procedures - are evolutionary adaptations which postdate theemergence in hominid societies of artefact use, but predate and potentiate theemergence of complex categorization and social-technological capacities. Thisaccount preserves the insight of Vygotsky that an adequate, developmentallyoriented psychology must transcend the ‘nature-culture’-duality, while recog-nizing the crucial relevance of biology for human mental processes. It is alsoin accord with the suggestions of Geertz (1973) in his programme for therenewal of cultural anthropology, where he also proposes that we should view’human nature’ as a partial product of cultural evolution, rather than as a mere’basis’ for it. It differs from both accounts, however, in offering a specificmechanism - the evolution of infancy - to explain the emergence of

‘culturalized’ features of human biology, and a specification of some of theprincipal psychological features operated on by this mechanism- 4



206

NOTES

1 Discourse on Method, in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, transl. E.S. Haldaneand G.R.T. Ross, Cambridge University Press, Vol. 1, pp. 81-82.

2 op. cit., p. 204.3 An Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690, book III, chap. II, section 2).4 This paper is a revised and extended version of material first published in Sinha (1988,

Ch. 3).

REFERENCES

Bailey, CJ. and Harris, R.1985 Developmental Mechanisms of Language. London: Pergamon.

Bracken, H.1984 Mind and Language: Essays on Descartes and Chomsky. Dordrecht: Floris.

Braudel, F.1974 The Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. New York: Harper and Row.

Bruner, J.1974 Beyond the Information Given: Studies in the Psychology of Knowing. London:

Allen & Unwin.

1983 Child’s Talk. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chomsky, N.1980 "Rules and Representations." Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3, 1-15.

Condillac, Etienne Bonnot, Abbé de1982 Philosophical Writings Vol. 1, transl. F. Philip. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawren-

ce Earlbaum.

1987 Philosophical Writings Vol. 2, transl. F. Philip. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawren-ce Earlbaum.

Fodor, J.1972 "Some Reflections on L.S. Vygotsky’s Thought and Language." Cognition, 1,

83-96.

1983 The Modularity of Mind. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Freeman, N., S. Lloyd and C. Sinha1980 "Infant Search Tasks Reveal Early Concepts of Containment and Canonical

Usage of Objects." Cognition, 8, 243-262.Geertz, C.1973 The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.

Haeckel, E.1874 The Evolution of Man: a Popular Exposition of the Principal Points of Human

Ontogeny and Phylogeny. New York: International Science Library.Jakobson, R. and J. Tynjanov1985 "Problems in the Study of Language and Literature." In Pomorska, K. and



207

Rudy, S. (Eds.), Roman Jakobson: Verbal Art, Verbal Sign, Verbal Time.Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Lane, H.1977 The Wild Boy of Aveyron. London: Allen & Unwin.

Leontiev, A.1981 Problems of the Development of the Mind. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Lock, A.1980 The Guided Reinvention of Language. London: Academic Press.

Lovejoy, A.1936 The Great Chain of Being. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University

Press.

Pannentier, R.1985 "Semiotic Mediation: Ancestral Genealogy and Final Interpretant." In Mertz,

E. and Parmentier, R. (Eds.), Semiotic Mediation: Socio-Cultural and Psycho-logical Perspectives. Orlando: Academic Press.

Piaget, J.1979 Behaviour and Evolution. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Reynolds, P.1981 On the Evolution of Human Behaviour: the Argument from Animals to Man.

Berkeley: University of Califomia Press.1982 "The Primate Constructional System: The Theory and Description of Instru-

mental Object Use in Humans and Chimpanzees." In Cranach, M. von andHarré, R. (Eds.), The Analysis of Action. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Riley, D.1978 "Developmental Psychology, Biology and Marxism." Ideology and Consciou-

sness, 4, 73-91.

Saussure, F. de1966 Cours de Linguistique Générale. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Scribner, S.1985 "Vygotsky’s Uses of History." In Wertsch, J. (Ed.) Culture, Communication

and Cognition: Vygotskian Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Sechenov, I.1935 Selected Works. Moscow-Leningrad: State Publishing House for Biological

and Medical Literature.

Sinha, C.1982 "Representational Development and the Structure of Action." In Butterworth,

G. and Light, P. (Eds.), Social Cognition: Studies of the Development ofUnderstanding. Brighton: Harvester.

1988 Language and Representation: A Socio-naturalistic Approach to Human De-velopment. London and New York: Harvester-Wheatsheaf and New YorkUniversity Press.

in press "Reading Vygotsky." History of the Human Sciences.



208

Trevarthen, C. and Hubley, P.1978 "Secondary Intersubjectivity: Confidence, Confiding and Acts of Meaning in

the First Year." In Lock, A. (Ed.), Action, Gesture and Symbol: the Emergenceof Language. London: Academic Press.

Vygotsky, L.S.1978 Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Mental Processes. Cambridge,

Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.1981 "The Genesis of Higher Mental Functions." In Wertsch, J. (Ed.) The Concept

of Activity in Soviet Psychology. New York: M.E. Sharpe.1986 Thought and Language. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Waddington, C.1977 Tools for Thought. St. Albans: Paladin.

Wertsch, J. (Ed.)1985a Culture, Communication and Cognition: Vygotskian Perspectives. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.1985b Vygotsky and the Social Formation of Mind. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Har-

vard University Press.

Wilson, E.O.1975 Sociobiology: the New Synthesis. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Wood, D., Bruner, J. and Ross, G.1976 "The Role of Tutoring in Problem Solving." Journal of Child Psychology and

Psychiatry, 17, 89-100.



Evolution, Development and the Social Production of Mind

Documents