Growing Out of the World

Each of us comes into the world as a result of the natural processes of conception, gestation, and birth, the products of an evolutionary process spanning hundreds of millions of years — enormously exceeding the time language has existed. Our embodiment, including our neurological capacities, reflects this evolutionary heritage, imposing constraints on the sort of world we can adapt to flourish in. We are both natural and symbolically capable beings, well equipped to function in a world that is physically and intellectually demanding, but still different in important respects from the industrial world we are born into. In Edward O. Wilson’s words, “the brain evolved in a biocentric world, not a machine-regulated world. It would therefore be quite extraordinary to find that all learning relating to that world had been erased in a few thousand years”. 1 These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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