What do you think?
Rate this book
The First Idea: How Symbols, Language, and Intelligence Evolved from Our Primate Ancestors to Modern Humans
In the childhood of every human being and at the dawn of human history there is an amazing and, until now, unexplained leap from simple genetically programmed behavior to language, symbolic thinking, and culture. In The First Idea, Stanley Greenspan and Stuart Shanker explore this missing link and offer brilliant new insights into two longstanding questions: how human beings first create symbols and how these abilities evolved and were transmitted across generations over millions of years. From fascinating research into the intelligence of both human infants and apes, they identify certain cultural practices that are vitally important if we are to have stable and reflective future societies.
504 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2004
64 people are currently reading
669 people want to read
About the author
Stanley I. Greenspan
71 books28 followershttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Stanley Greenspan (June 1, 1941 – April 27, 2010)[1] was an American child psychiatrist and clinical professor of Psychiatry, Behavioral Science, and Pediatrics at George Washington University Medical School. He was best known for developing the floortime approach for attempting to treat children with autistic spectrum disorders and developmental disabilities.[2]
He was Chairman of the Interdisciplinary Council on Developmental and Learning Disorders and also a Supervising Child Psychoanalyst at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Medical School,[2] Greenspan was the founding president of Zero to Three: National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families and former director of the National Institute of Mental Health's Clinical Infant Developmental Program and Mental Health Study Center.[3]
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Stanley Greenspan (June 1, 1941 – April 27, 2010)[1] was an American child psychiatrist and clinical professor of Psychiatry, Behavioral Science, and Pediatrics at George Washington University Medical School. He was best known for developing the floortime approach for attempting to treat children with autistic spectrum disorders and developmental disabilities.[2]
He was Chairman of the Interdisciplinary Council on Developmental and Learning Disorders and also a Supervising Child Psychoanalyst at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Medical School,[2] Greenspan was the founding president of Zero to Three: National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families and former director of the National Institute of Mental Health's Clinical Infant Developmental Program and Mental Health Study Center.[3]
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
December 26, 2008
This is a very, very interesting book.
How could the ability to think and have ideas evolve? What was the first idea?
Greenspan builds a very convincing thesis that ties in well with the ideas of, say, Dennett and Hofstadter.
It also resonates with the experience I have of my son who has Asperger's Syndrome.
Greenspan talks about a series of steps, interactions and abilities that the child builds through it's interaction with the environment and it's parents and siblings.
It is really quite plausible and some of the therapy work that's come out of this research seems to imply that it has some validity.
Well worth a read for anyone interested in how our minds work
How could the ability to think and have ideas evolve? What was the first idea?
Greenspan builds a very convincing thesis that ties in well with the ideas of, say, Dennett and Hofstadter.
It also resonates with the experience I have of my son who has Asperger's Syndrome.
Greenspan talks about a series of steps, interactions and abilities that the child builds through it's interaction with the environment and it's parents and siblings.
It is really quite plausible and some of the therapy work that's come out of this research seems to imply that it has some validity.
Well worth a read for anyone interested in how our minds work
April 27, 2013
Awesome, awesome, awesome book that weaves the developmental process of cognition with that of learning affect signaling and self/emotional regulation. Great introduction to social cognition and highly recommended for parents with kids with an Autism Spectrum Disorder.
July 6, 2008
It is interesting to consider the importance of emotion in the development of language, which this book eventually does. Unfortunately, for anyone who is not interested in the ever-changing terminology of developmental psychology and the pseudo-scientific jargon of sociologists, this book is very long and painful. I suggest reading Part III, which covers the theorized origins of language and a plausible account of how emotional signaling leads to different ways of building intelligence. It beats Chomsky but still confuses the hell out of me.
October 20, 2013
Dense. Overreaching. Short on research citation. Long on psychological theory based on abnormal behavior as indicative of what are universal normative biological/genetic/sociological/psychological aspects of humanity. Too much "just-so" theorizing. Western culture biased (much of the treatise) as well as sexist biased (subtly embedded, though the authors overtly take pains to designate most examples as "she").
March 14, 2026
At last, a worthy antidote to the noxious trend that explains all human consciousness and behaviour in terms of the evolution and activities of the brain alone! Cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, and neurophilosophy, while adding complexity, have embraced the assumption that life unfolds primarily on the basis of evolving, interacting genes. But this view is unbalanced at best. Greenspan and Shanker remind us that opposition to it need not imply mysticism, idealism, or anything spooky. They state the predominance of cultural learning passed on from generation to generation, its content always changing and never complete.
A second theme of the book is that it supplies strong evidence that rationality and cognition are not opposed to emotion, but are in fact the fulfillment of the emotional education hopefully received by every healthy child. To think is to emote, but it is refined emotion that functions in a controlled manner. This is an antidote to the Cartesians, Freudians, and perhaps even Piagetians who have insisted that, developmentally, the rise of reason in maturity overcomes primitive or childish emotional drives.
The authors propose that such emotional learning has culturally evolved over millions of years, with reversals here and dead ends there. Each generation passes on its cultural truths primarily through interactions between infant and mother or other intimate caregivers. But each generation may also contribute in subtle ways to this body of learning or, on occasion, subtract from it. Every child is regarded as recapitulating, in a matter of years or months, the learning that culture achieved over millions of years. Language is the primary example here.
They find little evidence that things so central as language or personal memory are themselves innate, though clearly the capacity to achieve them has become genetically based. The nature-nurture debate becomes appropriately complexified. The antidote to genetic imperialism involves showing that experience determines genetics more than genetics determines experience.
Greenspan and Shanker identify 16 stages of individual f/e (functional/emotional) development, plus a timeline of 12 steps for the f/e evolution of human cognition, outdoing the three steps of Merlin Donald (1991). The neologism “meme” is thankfully not used, though they see human behaviour and the quality of conscious experience as arising from culturally transmitted learning. They cite Terrence Deacon (1997) approvingly, so presumably accept that structural brain adaptations occur along with the slow invention of formal language structures. They don't deny the brain’s influence, but see it as a dance with learning, and the lead is clearly learning.
Greenspan is an expert on infant care and autism, while Shanker, apparently a Wittgenstein scholar, specializes in studying the symbolic activities of trained apes (bonobos). Perhaps as a consequence of their particular expertise, they spend less time on the slow discovery and improvement of speech, symbolism, and thought in early humanity than they do on the rapid appearance of these capacities in individual upbringing. They appear to accept too early and gradual an origin for formal human language, not being critical enough of nonhuman communication or of early paleoanthropological finds. As a result, many ambiguous discoveries are treated as proofs of the presence of abstract ideation. It is not noted that the islands of discovery, seeming to indicate a very early emergence of symbolic interaction, are just that — islands. There is (as yet) no indication of continuity in such activities over succeeding millennia. Nor do the authors deal with early humanity’s immersion in the sacred; language is accepted as having been invented to meet functional needs and for the pleasure of communicating.
Another reservation I have is that all the juice is in the first two parts of the book. Greenspan and Shanker lay out their case in the first 184 pages, leaving the rest for sometimes excruciating exegesis or jumps into global recommendations. Indeed, they emphasize so strongly "the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world" that they have added a hopeful final chapter to guide us all toward Global Interdependency through the education of emotional response in every child's first year. Alas, we have many hurdles to overcome before every child on the planet can receive the loving, interactive attention that will lead it to the authors' highest stage of development in old age: "...true wisdom free from the self-centred and practical worries of earlier stages" (p. 91) and a peaceful world in general.
Optimistic? Sure, but this tome is still recommended for its important defence of culture and learning.
References
Deacon, Terrance (1997), The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain (New York: Norton).
Donald, Merlin (1991), Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition (Cambridge MA: Harvard UP)
A second theme of the book is that it supplies strong evidence that rationality and cognition are not opposed to emotion, but are in fact the fulfillment of the emotional education hopefully received by every healthy child. To think is to emote, but it is refined emotion that functions in a controlled manner. This is an antidote to the Cartesians, Freudians, and perhaps even Piagetians who have insisted that, developmentally, the rise of reason in maturity overcomes primitive or childish emotional drives.
The authors propose that such emotional learning has culturally evolved over millions of years, with reversals here and dead ends there. Each generation passes on its cultural truths primarily through interactions between infant and mother or other intimate caregivers. But each generation may also contribute in subtle ways to this body of learning or, on occasion, subtract from it. Every child is regarded as recapitulating, in a matter of years or months, the learning that culture achieved over millions of years. Language is the primary example here.
They find little evidence that things so central as language or personal memory are themselves innate, though clearly the capacity to achieve them has become genetically based. The nature-nurture debate becomes appropriately complexified. The antidote to genetic imperialism involves showing that experience determines genetics more than genetics determines experience.
Greenspan and Shanker identify 16 stages of individual f/e (functional/emotional) development, plus a timeline of 12 steps for the f/e evolution of human cognition, outdoing the three steps of Merlin Donald (1991). The neologism “meme” is thankfully not used, though they see human behaviour and the quality of conscious experience as arising from culturally transmitted learning. They cite Terrence Deacon (1997) approvingly, so presumably accept that structural brain adaptations occur along with the slow invention of formal language structures. They don't deny the brain’s influence, but see it as a dance with learning, and the lead is clearly learning.
Greenspan is an expert on infant care and autism, while Shanker, apparently a Wittgenstein scholar, specializes in studying the symbolic activities of trained apes (bonobos). Perhaps as a consequence of their particular expertise, they spend less time on the slow discovery and improvement of speech, symbolism, and thought in early humanity than they do on the rapid appearance of these capacities in individual upbringing. They appear to accept too early and gradual an origin for formal human language, not being critical enough of nonhuman communication or of early paleoanthropological finds. As a result, many ambiguous discoveries are treated as proofs of the presence of abstract ideation. It is not noted that the islands of discovery, seeming to indicate a very early emergence of symbolic interaction, are just that — islands. There is (as yet) no indication of continuity in such activities over succeeding millennia. Nor do the authors deal with early humanity’s immersion in the sacred; language is accepted as having been invented to meet functional needs and for the pleasure of communicating.
Another reservation I have is that all the juice is in the first two parts of the book. Greenspan and Shanker lay out their case in the first 184 pages, leaving the rest for sometimes excruciating exegesis or jumps into global recommendations. Indeed, they emphasize so strongly "the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world" that they have added a hopeful final chapter to guide us all toward Global Interdependency through the education of emotional response in every child's first year. Alas, we have many hurdles to overcome before every child on the planet can receive the loving, interactive attention that will lead it to the authors' highest stage of development in old age: "...true wisdom free from the self-centred and practical worries of earlier stages" (p. 91) and a peaceful world in general.
Optimistic? Sure, but this tome is still recommended for its important defence of culture and learning.
References
Deacon, Terrance (1997), The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain (New York: Norton).
Donald, Merlin (1991), Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition (Cambridge MA: Harvard UP)
August 18, 2023
The theory expounded is very interesting and likely a reasonable one when it comes to the evolution of intelligence. The only quibble I would have is that the conclusions became preachy - expounding their theory as one needed to save humankind from itself. Much as it may be true it seemed out of place in such a fine piece of science writing.
March 29, 2019
Kinda dry
Not as engaging as I’d hoped for
Not bad from a historical perspective
Just not what I was looking for
Not as engaging as I’d hoped for
Not bad from a historical perspective
Just not what I was looking for
March 8, 2008
This is undoubtedly the best book I have read that incorporates the necessary elements for a comprehensive theory of human nature.
Greenspan's understanding of childhood development is unparalleled and the insights he has obtained from understanding the parameters of how to treat autism gives him the ideal perspective in proposing his and Shankar's groundbreaking view on how we become human.
their basic premise is that human learning is overwhelmingly environmentally determined. that tens of thousands of years of scaffolded learned behaviors are what allow human intelligence and social awareness to exist.
Many of the behaviors that we take as being genetically determined are just from such a deep level of basic interaction between infants and adults that they are taken for granted.
The implications of their theory is quite revolutionary in that it presumes that many of the behaviors and attitudes that are considered normal are actually culturally determined. They also imply that much of waht passes for normal cultural behavior is actually indicative of serious emotional deficites in human development. And that by applying really relevant developmental approaches to child rearing we could totally transform social and interpersonal relations and basically solve most social problems that appear intractabel today.
I take issue with one key aspect of their view of human evolution. They object to the genetic "exceptional" view of Human evolution. They see little practical genetic difference between humans and our close primates. they spend a lot of time showing how primates have many characteristics that they share with humans. I am firmly in the opposite camp but for very different reasons from most other evolutionary biologists. I believe that many of the qualitative differences in human make-up l are based on our unique emotional micro architecture. the neural connections that develop from the large forebrain to the various emotional centers. It fits with all their practical and clinical results and in my view makes much more sense. That human emotional wiring is qualitatively different from other primates, but obviously is the first step in a new evolutionary direction, so that are closest relatives will have most of the precursors to our capabilities. it also leads to the possibility that there are genetic mechanisms in development that they are not understanding and that could profoundly improve their functional models of childhood development and subsequent adult maturity.
Orynx and Crake
Greenspan's understanding of childhood development is unparalleled and the insights he has obtained from understanding the parameters of how to treat autism gives him the ideal perspective in proposing his and Shankar's groundbreaking view on how we become human.
their basic premise is that human learning is overwhelmingly environmentally determined. that tens of thousands of years of scaffolded learned behaviors are what allow human intelligence and social awareness to exist.
Many of the behaviors that we take as being genetically determined are just from such a deep level of basic interaction between infants and adults that they are taken for granted.
The implications of their theory is quite revolutionary in that it presumes that many of the behaviors and attitudes that are considered normal are actually culturally determined. They also imply that much of waht passes for normal cultural behavior is actually indicative of serious emotional deficites in human development. And that by applying really relevant developmental approaches to child rearing we could totally transform social and interpersonal relations and basically solve most social problems that appear intractabel today.
I take issue with one key aspect of their view of human evolution. They object to the genetic "exceptional" view of Human evolution. They see little practical genetic difference between humans and our close primates. they spend a lot of time showing how primates have many characteristics that they share with humans. I am firmly in the opposite camp but for very different reasons from most other evolutionary biologists. I believe that many of the qualitative differences in human make-up l are based on our unique emotional micro architecture. the neural connections that develop from the large forebrain to the various emotional centers. It fits with all their practical and clinical results and in my view makes much more sense. That human emotional wiring is qualitatively different from other primates, but obviously is the first step in a new evolutionary direction, so that are closest relatives will have most of the precursors to our capabilities. it also leads to the possibility that there are genetic mechanisms in development that they are not understanding and that could profoundly improve their functional models of childhood development and subsequent adult maturity.
Orynx and Crake
February 22, 2009
I enjoyed this book for many reasons.
It helped me understand how the mind works with visuals, sounds, memory, and human contact. It all works hand in hand to form our actions and reactions to the world around us. It also describe how we grow to understand the world around us from infancy into adulthood.
As an administrative support professional in advertising, it helped me understand why people are drawn to symbols and how they are created. All senses must be accounted for when creating a quality commercial or print ad.
I feel this book will help me with my photography because it shows how people visually connect with the world around them. It breaks down the way the mind captures memories and what causes reactions in people. Emotion influences the content of our thoughts. Images without emotion or meaning create memories without meaning.
Lastly this book helped me become more informed about child autism. Human contact, visual, and vocal communication are crucial for development of a child with autism. It gave me ideas and tips on how to engage a child's sensory perception and build a stronger memories.
I recommend this book to anyone in a creative field and parents.
It helped me understand how the mind works with visuals, sounds, memory, and human contact. It all works hand in hand to form our actions and reactions to the world around us. It also describe how we grow to understand the world around us from infancy into adulthood.
As an administrative support professional in advertising, it helped me understand why people are drawn to symbols and how they are created. All senses must be accounted for when creating a quality commercial or print ad.
I feel this book will help me with my photography because it shows how people visually connect with the world around them. It breaks down the way the mind captures memories and what causes reactions in people. Emotion influences the content of our thoughts. Images without emotion or meaning create memories without meaning.
Lastly this book helped me become more informed about child autism. Human contact, visual, and vocal communication are crucial for development of a child with autism. It gave me ideas and tips on how to engage a child's sensory perception and build a stronger memories.
I recommend this book to anyone in a creative field and parents.
November 21, 2007
This fascinating book, written by an autism researcher, turns Chomsky's theory that language is "built into" the brain on it's ear. Greenspan exposes the similarities between us and primates, including the emotional link we establish with our children, and how this motivates our babies to learn language - enabling them to think in advanced ways. Ways that surpass what other primates are capable of.
May 8, 2008
The most compelling part of this book for me was the idea that emotions drove the acquisition of language by the human race, and it is a disconnect between emotion and action as cause and effect that is the primary disability present in autistic children.
June 8, 2009
Wonderfully insightful book. Just completed Dr. Greenspan's DIR/Floortime On-line course and was inspired to read this from one of the lectures he shared.
November 7, 2011
A must read for those rational enough to recognize the socially encompassing responsibilities of parenthood.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews