How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement - Hardcover

Lambros Malafouris

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262019191 ISBN 13: 9780262019194

Publisher: MIT Press, 2013

Synopsis

An increasingly influential school of thought in cognitive science views the mind as embodied, extended, and distributed rather than brain-bound or "all in the head." This shift in perspective raises important questions about the relationship between cognition and material culture, posing major challenges for philosophy, cognitive science, archaeology, and anthropology. In How Things Shape the Mind, Lambros Malafouris proposes a cross-disciplinary analytical framework for investigating the ways in which things have become cognitive extensions of the human body. Using a variety of examples and case studies, he considers how those ways might have changed from earliest prehistory to the present. Malafouris's Material Engagement Theory definitively adds materiality -- the world of things, artifacts, and material signs -- into the cognitive equation. His account not only questions conventional intuitions about the boundaries and location of the human mind but also suggests that we rethink classical archaeological assumptions about human cognitive evolution.

About this title

Review:

"How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement" is a lucid and well presented account of the state-of-the-art in connecting an archaeology of mind with the study of material culture to develop a deeper understanding of relational ontology and the importance of mediation for human thinking and cognition more generally...a compelling ally to further challenge the orthodox models of representation as already developed in the philosophies of among other Bergson or Whitehead and further on by Deleuze and Guattari...--Martha Blassnigg "Leonardo Reviews "

"How Things Shape the Mind" is an important book. Not since "Human Evolution, Language, and Mind: A Psychological and Archaeological Inquiry" (Noble and Davidson 1996) has an authored book taken a significant critical view of the epistemology grounding cognitive archaeology. Its challenge will not be easy to meet -- our Cartesian view of mind is just so very comfortable -- but it may well provide a means for making true progress in the archaeology of mind.--Thomas Wynn "Current Anthropology "

This is an informed and readable treatise detailing how material culture engages with humanity in a unique way, especially because of its physicality. Part psychology, part philosophy, and a good, heavy dose of archaeology, this is a challenging book, and Malafouris clearly intends it to be so.... For those wishing to ponder this considerable challenge, Malafouris's book will be a great place to start.--Stephen J. Lycett "American Antiquity "

As Malafouris has so wonderfully explicated throughout his book, 'The mind is more than a brain, ' (p. 227), and I am now forever transfixed upon the much grander meaning of kites and the people who fly them.--Frederick L. Coolidge "Brain "

How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement is a lucid and well presented account of the state-of-the-art in connecting an archaeology of mind with the study of material culture to develop a deeper understanding of relational ontology and the importance of mediation for human thinking and cognition more generally...a compelling ally to further challenge the orthodox models of representation as already developed in the philosophies of among other Bergson or Whitehead and further on by Deleuze and Guattari...

--Martha Blassnigg "Leonardo Reviews "

How Things Shape the Mind is an important book. Not since Human Evolution, Language, and Mind: A Psychological and Archaeological Inquiry (Noble and Davidson 1996) has an authored book taken a significant critical view of the epistemology grounding cognitive archaeology. Its challenge will not be easy to meet -- our Cartesian view of mind is just so very comfortable -- but it may well provide a means for making true progress in the archaeology of mind.

--Thomas Wynn "Current Anthropology "

This is an informed and readable treatise detailing how material culture engages with humanity in a unique way, especially because of its physicality. Part psychology, part philosophy, and a good, heavy dose of archaeology, this is a challenging book, and Malafouris clearly intends it to be so.... For those wishing to ponder this considerable challenge, Malafouris's book will be a great place to start.

--Stephen J. Lycett "American Antiquity "

As Malafouris has so wonderfully explicated throughout his book, 'The mind is more than a brain, ' (p. 227), and I am now forever transfixed upon the much grander meaning of kites and the people who fly them.

--Frederick L. Coolidge "Brain "

About the Author:

Lambros Malafouris is Creativity Research Fellow and Research Fellow and Tutor in Archaeology, Anthropology, and Human Evolution at Keble College, University of Oxford.

About this edition

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0262019191
• ISBN 13: 9780262019194
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304