Mental Evolution in Man
Origin of Human Faculty

Following on from Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals, this study of human psychological evolution was originally published in 1888.

George John Romanes (Author)

9781108037976, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 October 2011

472 pages, 1 table
21.6 x 14 x 2.7 cm, 0.6 kg

George John Romanes (1848–94) was considered by The Times to be 'the biological investigator upon whom in England the mantle of Mr. Darwin has most conspicuously descended'. Incorporating some of Darwin's unpublished notes, this book explores the question of whether human intelligence evolved. In a stance still often considered controversial at the time of its first printing in 1888, the first half establishes a link between humans and animals, and introduces some of the most important issues of nineteenth-century evolutionary psychology: the impact of relative brain sizes of humans and primates, the origin of self-consciousness and the possible reasons behind the apparent mental stasis of what Romanes terms 'savage man'. Following the argument that one of the main factors to be considered is language, the second half focuses on philology. Romanes' earlier work, Mental Evolution in Animals (1883), is also reissued in this series.

Preface
1. Man and brute
2. Ideas
3. Logic of recepts
4. Logic of concepts
5. Language
6. Tone and gesture
7. Articulation
8. Relation of tone and gesture to words
9. Speech
10. Self-consciousness
11. The transition in the individual
12. Comparative philology
13. Roots of language
14. The witness of philology
15. The witness of philology continued
16. The transition in the race
17. General summary and concluding remarks
Index.

Subject Areas: Evolution [PSAJ]