authors:
- Heyes, Cecilia
content: 'Many features of Homo sapiens have been considered as special of significant
  as the source of what makes humans different from animals. Often, the features that
  are typically discussed, e.g. sociality, language, mind-reading, and so on, are
  just assumed to be part of the genetic endowment of Homo sapiens. Cecilia Heyes
  argues that culture is much more important in the formation, maintenance and transfer
  of these features than typically assumed.


  I am in general sympathetic to Heyes thesis. Culture is a absolutely essential aspect
  of what it is to be human, and any account that does not contain that realization
  is severely flawed. But the arguments made in this book do not quite convince me.
  They are interesting and worth discussing, and she does make a number of good critical
  points about competing theories, such as Noam Chomsky''s account of language. But
  I close the book with a feeling of not having gotten a very good idea of how the
  cognitive gadgets actually work, in part because I wish there had been a more concrete
  discussion of a few examples. To be sure, she discusses several examples, such as
  language, but somehow these discussions are on a level of abstraction that does
  not quite hit home. Somehow, I am left unsatisfied.'
date: '2022-07-03'
edition:
  published: '2018'
  publisher: 'Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press'
goodreads: '36700770'
html: '<p>Many features of Homo sapiens have been considered as special of significant
  as the source of what makes humans different from animals. Often, the features that
  are typically discussed, e.g. sociality, language, mind-reading, and so on, are
  just assumed to be part of the genetic endowment of Homo sapiens. Cecilia Heyes
  argues that culture is much more important in the formation, maintenance and transfer
  of these features than typically assumed.</p>

  <p>I am in general sympathetic to Heyes thesis. Culture is a absolutely essential
  aspect of what it is to be human, and any account that does not contain that realization
  is severely flawed. But the arguments made in this book do not quite convince me.
  They are interesting and worth discussing, and she does make a number of good critical
  points about competing theories, such as Noam Chomsky''s account of language. But
  I close the book with a feeling of not having gotten a very good idea of how the
  cognitive gadgets actually work, in part because I wish there had been a more concrete
  discussion of a few examples. To be sure, she discusses several examples, such as
  language, but somehow these discussions are on a level of abstraction that does
  not quite hit home. Somehow, I am left unsatisfied.</p>

  '
isbn: '9780674980150'
language: en
lastmod: '2022-07-03'
path: /library/heyes-2018.html
published: '2018'
rating: 3
reference: Heyes 2018
reviewed: '2022-07-03'
subjects:
- human-evolution
- science
title: 'Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking'
type: book
year: 2018