Description: A radical reconsideration of how we develop the qualities that make us human, based on decades of cutting-edge experimental work by the former director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Virtually all theories of how humans have become such a distinctive species focus on evolution. Here, Michael Tomasello proposes a complementary theory of human uniqueness, focused on development. Building on the seminal ideas of Vygotsky, his data-driven model explains how those things that make us most human are constructed during the first years of a child's life. Tomasello assembles nearly three decades of experimental work with chimpanzees, bonobos, and human children to propose a new framework for psychological growth between birth and seven years of age. He identifies eight pathways that starkly differentiate humans from their closest primate relatives: social cognition, communication, cultural learning, cooperative thinking, collaboration, prosociality, social norms, and moral identity. Becoming Human places human sociocultural activity within the framework of modern evolutionary theory, and shows how biology creates the conditions under which culture does its work.
Brief description: Michael Tomasello is the James Bonk Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University, and Emeritus Director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. His research focuses on processes of cooperation, communication, and cultural learning in human children and other great apes. His many publications include Primate Cognition, Why We Cooperate, Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny, and The Evolution of Agency.
Review Quotes: Theoretically daring, experimentally ingenious, and astonishingly generative.-- "Susan Gelman, University of Michigan"