The Lopsided Ape: Evolution of the Generative Mind

By Michael C. Corballis

Book Overview

How great is the evolutionary distance between humans and apes, and what is it that creates that gulf? Philosophers and scientists have debated the question for centuries, but Michael Corballis finds the mystery revealed in our right hands. For humans are the only primates who are predominantly right handed, a sign of the specialization of the left hemisphere of the brain for language. And that specialization, he tells us, makes a massive distance indeed, as he describes what exactly it means to be the lopsided ape.
In The Lopsided Ape, Corballis takes us on a fascinating tour of the origins and implications of the specialization of the two halves of the brain--known as laterality--in human evolution. He begins by surveying current views of evolution, ranging from the molecular level--the role of viruses, for instance, in transporting genes between species--to the tremendous implications of such physical changes as walking on two feet. Walking upright freed our ancestors' arms for such things as tool-making and gesturing (a critical part of early language). Corballis argues that the evolution of the brain--and language--was intimately tied up with these changes: The proliferation of objects made by early hominids, in an increasingly artificial environment marked by social cooperation, demanded greater flexibility in communication and even in thinking itself. These evolutionary pressures spurred the development of laterality in the brain. He goes on to look at the structure of language, following the work of Noam Chomsky and others, showing how grammar allows us to create an infinite variety of messages. In examining communication between animals and attempts to teach apes and dolphins language, he demonstrates that only humans have this unlimited ability for expression--an ability that he traces back through hominid evolution. After this engrossing account of what we know about evolution, language, and the human brain, Corballis suggests that the left hemisphere has evolved a Generative Assembling Device, a biological mechanism that allows us to manipulate open-ended forms of representation and provides the basis for mathematics, reasoning, music, art, and play as well as language and manufacture. It is this device, he writes, that truly sets us off from the apes.
Both a detailed account of human language and evolution and a convincing argument for a new view of the brain, The Lopsided Ape provides fascinating insight into our origins and the nature of human thought itself.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195066758
• ISBN13: 9780195066753
• Release Date: June 1991
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Right-handedness and language

Most people are right-handed, though with a substantial minority of left-handers: this is such a familiar feature of human existence that we rarely think about it at all (especially if we are right-handed), and now that schools no longer try to force left-handers to write with the right hand, the psychological and emotional problems that this once produced have become a distant memory. Michael Corballis, however, thinks about handedness a great deal, and has devoted a large part of his career as a professor of psychology to studying it. Because we don't think about it much at all, we don't usually notice that bias towards right-handness is a specifically human characteristic. Although animals may prefer to do some actions with one foot rather than the other, they show no consistent bias. To find a comparable case we need to go as far afield as to parrots, which generally prefer to pick up bits of food with their left feet, while standing on their right. I usually regard discussion left-brain and right-brain specialization as the sort of science that belongs in popular magazines, to be read, perhaps, while waiting for a dental appointment, but otherwise to be treated with the same disdain as signs of the zodiac. Unlike signs of the zodiac, however, lateral specialization of the brain has a perfectly serious aspect, and Corballis makes a strong case that strong handedness in humans is related to an apparently quite different special characteristic of humans, their capacity for language.

Why people have right/left hemisphere preferences.

This is a wonderful book and a really stimulating read. It's beautifully written and researched ( hundreds of references) and tells the story of the evolution of language from the time of its appearance among the earliest humans.It shows how the overwhelming importance of speech has moulded the brain and it draws on evidence from the fossil record, DNA analysis, phases of reaching maturity, anatomy, experimental evidence and the greater or lesser role that genes play with respect to culture and learning.The book has changed my way of looking at these things.