When I started with Yuval Noah Hararis Homo Deus,I expected to jog along with a fun and clever assessment of human history and its near future as a cyborg-like merger of human and computer.
But I had trouble early on.
Dr. Harari repeatedly throws out a flurry of proclamations, often sweeping claims as arguments, then follows them with his intended conclusion, sometimes sweeping, head scratching and not always adding up. Then there are terms about which he seems to have a slightly skewed understanding.
I collided with his usage of Cognitive Revolution almost from the start. According to Harari, the "Cognitive Revolution" occurred 70,000 years ago causing the homo sapiens mind to shift, turning the species from an insignificant African ape into modern humans as ruler of the world. I looked for supportive context or attribution in the text, but it wasnt there. Nor was there any footnote for the claim.
I knew the term from a different context entirely. I Googled to be sure. "Cognitive Revolution" was the name of a 1950's multidisciplinary movement (now cognitive science) studying the mind and its workings. Noam Chomsky was one of the pioneers of the field.
I could find no reference about Hararis usage until I added Harari or Homo Deus to the search terms. Then I got hits on Homo Deus and "Sapiens" (his previous book, where The Cognitive Revolution is the title of the very first section of Sapiens). This is where Harari sets out his theory of sapiens cognition as a basis for the next brain change.
In Homo DeusHarari states, this revolution resulted from a few small changes in the Sapiens DNA and a slight rewiring of the Sapiens brains. another rewiring of our brain will suffice to launch a second cognitive revolution. Using, he continues, genetic engineering, nanotechnology and brain-computer interfaces.
I looked for further source information on Hararis claim. The best I came up with was an arguable theory about a population bottleneck some 70,000 to 60,000 years ago caused by an extinction when a volcano in Indonesia, Toba, erupted 74,000 years ago.
The theory, now mostly refuted, was that Tobas eruption lowered temperatures around the world wiping out many species, dropping the human population drastically.
Recent studies looking at sediment cores around the world for 100 years before and 200 years after Toba erupted, showed no signs of species die offs. Any effect was mild enough that it did not show up in the sediment layers.
Depending on the source, Homo Sapiens is believed to have emerged about 300,000 years ago (or even 400,000 years ago) and was in Europe at least by 200,000 years ago. A skull found in Greece was just dated to 210,000 years ago. Throw in speculation about big chills at 195,000 and 150,000 years ago and a possibility that humans dropped to as little as 40 people, or 600 people or a few thousand people or were always not that plentiful or came from a small group which left Africa at some time or other.
In East Asia, human remains in China have been dated to 100,000 years ago. In Japan, there is evidence of watercraft 84,000 years ago, in Honshu. Those early East-Asia dates argue against Hararis theory.
Harari doesnt tell us where he got the term. Did he hear it somewhere and misunderstand it, making assumptions? Could he have stumbled on Cognitive Revolution on his own? Fact checking at the publisher should have revealed this term in prior use. Nor could I find any reference by Harari referencing the 1950s movement of that name in either Sapiens or Homo Deus or elsewhere, including numerous videos.
The same doubt goes for assumptions about brain changes 70,000 years ago. What we have of skulls doesnt show a change in brain dimensions. Harari uses the brain-change at 70,000 years ago version of pre-history to bolster the viability of humans making the next change in our species.
There is very little we can say with certainty about our origins. That makes doubtful Hararis prediction that we are about to re-design our own species by attaching computing devices to our brains.
The real Cognitive Revolution:https://courses.lumenlearning.com/waymaker-psychology/chapter/reading-the-cognitive-revolution-and-multicultural-psychology/
A nice, brief synopsis of Homo Sapiens:https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn/science/human-evolution/homo-sapiens-modern-humans/
Revisiting and refuting a theory about an extinction at 74,000 years ago:https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-humans-weathered-toba-supervolcano-just-fine-180968479/
Concept of Behavioral Modernityhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity
Read more:
Radio Readers BookByte: Cognitive Revolution - HPPR
Recommendation and review posted by G. Smith
