JULIAN JAYNE’S BOOK `THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS
”It is one of those books that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing in between! Probably the former, but I’m hedging my bets.” Richard Dawkins
A book left the bookstore shelves 1977 and hasn’t since been out of print. The intellectual world didn’t know what to make of it. It went against the notion of common sense on how our consciousness came about. Even well studied scholars were not free from being ingrained in preconceived opinion, perhaps more they than others, so many rejected the ideas in the book, but some were enthusiastic about it. Although laudering revews from respected critics it never gained momentum to be accepted by a wider strata as an equal theory among others.
The book had a lengthy heavy title: ”The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind.”
Written by a psychologist studing and teaching at Yale and Princton. Jaynes claimed that humans had no self consciousness at all before 1-2000 CA, surprisingly it arosed out of our language.
The theory is complex at first hand, consciousness out of language presupposes several additional theories necessary to underpin the main claim, consciousness as a result of our language.
Jaynes’s theories touches on many disciplines, including neuroscience, linguistics, psychology, archeology, history, religion and analysis of ancient texts.
To be continued..