Es una teoria fascinante, aunque no crea que la evidencia actual la sostenga.

What’s so compelling about Jayne’s theory is that it is just crazy enough to work. Rather than writing off psychological phenomena as anomaly or religious fervor as naivety, we approach such realities head on, looking for a comprehensive explanation, with an appreciation for each in their chronology and geography. The explanation offered here is that consciousness, distinct from perception, stimulation and response, and host of other qualifications, is a recent development in human history. It has come about as a recent reorganization of our mental faculties, in response to new challenges, silencing the bicameral mind.

The physical body of the bicameral mind was directed primarily by auditory hallucinations. There was no deliberation on whether or not to obey the hallucinated voice. It spoke and we acted.

As humans began writing things down, ideas became more concrete. The hallucinated voices could now be in disagreement with previously established facts. Even the concept of “previous”, the placing of events in sequence of others, was a new adaptation of the brain. These trusted auditory hallucinations could now be challenged by facts. The brain responded with a narrativizing of these facts into a consistent story, and eventual questioning of these (literally) set in stone facts. The ability to distinguish between potential authorities came about because of the new need to distinguish between potential authorities.

In a far too succinct summary, the development of human consciousness is the result of a constant search for authorization. We search for justification of the actions we take. When a new fact is introduced, we form a more nuanced view or develop previously non-existent capabilities that incorporates the previous authority, reconciling it with the new facts. When they are found irreconcilable, the old facts may be thrown out for the new, but the overarching search for authorization remains the same. Whether it be the voices we hear, our feelings, our religious belief, our political organization, an air-tight scientific explanation... it’s all the search for an authority to authorize our existence, and the expressions within it.

Even the theory of the bicameral mind is itself a narrativizing trying to reconcile the wide range of experiences that Jaynes has encountered. Whether you find it compelling or nonsense, this work will challenge intellectually, and you’ll leave with a few nuanced ideas that will help in critiquing philosophy, history, poetry, literature, and your own day to day motivations.

Very speculative, and sometimes interesting (the first 1/3, before it becomes sleep-inducing). But the whole concept is ultimately thin and unproveable, to date.

Verdict: Unrateable, but worth a read if you are into psychology.

The book starts off kind of mindblowing, then gets a bit dull toward the end. I don't love agreeing with Richard Dawkins but he sums it up pretty well: "It is one of those books that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius."

It's been what, a decade or nearly so, since I last read this, so this review (I thought I had done one, but guess not) is from memory.

That said, I first read it in the early 1990s, when finishing up a graduate divinity degree and transitioning into a secularist.

Academics largely savaged the book at the time, but it's made somewhat of a comeback with them as well as the general public since then. In the world of philosophy, Jaynes' ideas somewhat parallel Dennett's subselves. Similar ideas have taken further root in psychology.

But, the biggie? Jaynes remains less than fully convincing in the when and why of how consciousness originated, both on general anthropology and on philosophy of religion.

The idea that god(s) might originally have been inner voices? Yes, not a totally unreasonable hypothesis.

But, why did these voices become "god(s)" when, as more and more cave paintings showed, some sort of religious experience may well have paralleled, not followed, the development of human language? Not really answered.

Also not really answered is why they STOPPED being internalized and instead became externalized.

Finally, although Jaynes doesn't go heavily into New Agey left brain/right brain stuff, he does drift a bit that way.

At the same time, the book remains provocative enough to get four stars, not three.

at some point in the introduction of this book, jaynes describes cutting a worm in half and the tail end (the end not containing the brain) wiggling in agony bc it got disconnected from the brain end and then he says something like “the agony of the tail end is our agony, not the worm's” presumably because like the tail end of the worm, we are not in touch with our consciousness??? (i might have misinterpreted this) (and later in a footnote, jaynes claimed both ends of the worms would regenerate supposedly into two new worms which i'm pretty sure is not what happens — the head part might regenerate, the tail part most definitely does not)
anywho, this whole worm example/metaphor felt like my experience attempting to read this book; for the most part, i was the tail end (not wiggling in agony but maybe just wiggling in great confusion/skepticism) because the theory was pretty unconvincing for me as this is definitely one of those popular science books where there's some research but it's primarily just jaynes rambling about his own theories and other theories he doesn't buy into and history that seemingly supports his theories and contemporary (for the time this was written) examples that might suggest his theories, but then sometimes i was the brain end in terms of the rambling kind of made sense and i can rationalize why jaynes felt the need to write a whole book on this theory which is interesting to think about whether it's true or not and the perspectives on history that he had were kind of enlightening but also kind of crazy. but overall it's still that the worm got cut in half and there's a gross brainless wiggly tail part and the head part that is likely functioning fine but still missing the severed tail part, and it's hard to ignore the wiggly tail part and worms are just not that great in general so i don't think i would recommend the full experience of reading this book the same way i wouldn't recommend cutting a worm in half.

While it wasn't the sexy crime thriller that its title promised, 'Origin' is a book which, for once, earns the description of "mind-blowing". I've wanted to read Jaynes' hypothesis ever since it I found it mentioned casually in Steven Pinker's 'How The Mind Works': until about 3000 years ago, human beings were virtually unconscious and had no concept of an "I" or self. Conscious-type thoughts and volition traveled from the right hemisphere of the brain to the left as full-blown auditory hallucinations that ordered our ancestors around, hence the gods of the Iliad and the Old Testament and Gilgamesh. When cultures collided around the 2nd millennium BC we 'learned' our way to our present consciousness and we've been haunted by this loss of our god-voices ever since. I think that he was on to something - it's wild but not THAT wild, and Jaynes was no crackpot.

The book is divided into 3 sections - in the first, Jaynes defines what consciousness is and isn't, and introduces his theory of the bicameral mind. In the 2nd, he pores over archaeological and literary evidence. This is the weakest section, because of the inherent dangers of making conclusions based on drawings and on texts that have been translated countless times. There's a lot of sentences like "this CLEARLY is because of the bicameral mind and nothing else", when that's really not the case. Most of the focus is on Mesopotamia with a little of Meso-America (that's where most of the ancient relics have survived), but Asia barely gets a passing glance. In the 3rd section, Jaynes studies contemporary phenomena like hypnosis and schizophrenia, regressions to the bicameral mind.

Jaynes is magnificent writer, with a sense of lyricism that is rare among academics. The final passage is particularly stunning, with its palpable sense of loss. 'Origin' has science, psychology, world history, poetry, spirituality, and philosophy. I'd recommend it if you're interested in even one of these categories - it has the power to change the way you look at world history, even if you don't buy into every suggestion.

A famous reviewer said about this: "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."

Indeed, it is an absolutely amazing read, one that will have you thinking -- Jaynes hypothesis is that what we conceive as *consciousness* (a tricky, nebulous concept in itself, as he details in early chapters) developed in humankind over past ~3K years and that prior, human beings were more like automatons, lacking consciousness as we reckon it and were governed by a "bicameral mind" -- with mental and/or behavior more akin to what we would term schizophrenic today.

Wut?

Sounds insane, but not until you start thinking about it. Jaynes covers human physiology that still contains remnants of this condition. In later chapters he looks at how language and writing precipitated the "breakdown of them bicameral mind" and this is evidence contained within ancient writings like the Iliad and the Hebrew Bible -- juxtaposing older texts against newer texts and noting the differences with this in mind.

Definitely landed in my reread pile -- checked out from the library but will be purchasing a hardcopy for certain.