The First Idea by Stanley I. Greenspan and Stuart G. Shanker, Da Capo Press/Perseus, $25/拢18.99, ISBN 0738206806
THE idea that your development from single-celled egg through tailed and gilled embryo to chatty mammal reflects the stages of our evolution as a species, that 鈥渙ntogeny recapitulates phylogeny鈥�, is neat and appealing. In The First Idea Stanley Greenspan and Stuart Shanker propose an extension: the stages your intelligence went through as it developed recapitulate the evolution of society and the modern mind.
Before opening the book, I wondered why its authors advertised their qualifications on the cover. They are both specialists in child development, and write about this subject with authority and insight. They describe 16 stages of 鈥渇unctional emotional development鈥� from birth to old age. These start with 鈥渟hared attention鈥�, and include 鈥渢wo-way intentional emotional signalling鈥�, from 4 to 8 months old, the creation of representations, symbols and ideas from 18 months, and multi-causal, logical and reflective thinking from 2 years old.
Advertisement
So far so good 鈥� up to about page 88 of the 501. And then not so good, and in some places quite awful. The authors argue that those same 16 stages can be identified as the evolutionary steps through which our prehuman and then human ancestors have passed.
So Homo erectus achieved 鈥渃o-regulated affective signalling鈥� 2 million years ago, and by the ice age Magdalenian people had managed multi-causal thinking. It was only with the ancient Greeks, the authors say, that humans achieved reflective thinking and an expanded concept of the self.
This starkly recapitulationist version of human evolution repeatedly falls foul of the Victorian idea that ancient humans had, and indeed non-western people today still have, childlike minds. To my mind, it shows a peculiar combination of a severely overgenerous interpretation of ape behaviour and an equally ungenerous interpretation of that by our human ancestors.
The authors emphasise the significance of cultural learning over genetic determination of behaviour or intelligence. But they do this by setting up a straw man to argue against.
I very much welcome the authors鈥� emphasis on the significance of care-giving and emotion for the development of intellect and language in children. Along with childhood itself, these have indeed been neglected in studies of human evolution and history. But the resulting theory is inadequate; Greenspan MD and Shanker D.Phil have strayed too far from their area of expertise. Not only do they need to engage in more reflective thinking about the nature of human evolution, they should also test their ideas against the fossil and archaeological evidence. They, too, will find their theory wanting.