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The Gap: The Science of What Separates Us from Other Animals, by Thomas Suddendorf
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There exists an undeniable chasm between the capacities of humans and those of animals, but what exactly is the difference between our minds and theirs? In The Gap, psychologist Thomas Suddendorf provides a definitive account of what makes human minds unique and how this disparity arose. He proposes that two innovations account for all of the ways in which our minds appear so distinct: our open-ended ability to imagine and reflect, and our insatiable drive to link our minds together. It is not language or morality that set us apart, but the ability to consider a range of scenarios, real and imagined, past and future. A provocative argument for reconsidering our place in nature, The Gap is essential reading for anyone interested in our evolutionary origins and our relationship with the rest of the animal kingdom.
- Sales Rank: #307131 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-11-12
- Released on: 2013-11-12
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Publishers Weekly
To determine what distinguishes the mental capabilities of humans from those of our closest living relatives (chimpanzees and great apes), Australian psychologist Suddendorf uses diverse data drawn from the worlds of human developmental theory, infant and child psychology, and primate ethology to walk a moderate line between €œromantic€ and €œkilljoy€ interpretations of animal €œbehavior as an indicator of mind.€ He explores six realms in which human thinking appears to be qualitatively different from that of animals—€œlanguage, mental time travel, mind reading, intelligence, culture, and morality€—and finally locates the gap in the interaction between two key mental capacities: nested scenario building and the urge to connect. His analysis of the of the gap's development is much more straightforward, as he digs into evolutionary theory, molecular evidence, and the fossil record to show interbreeding and physical signs of intermediate capacities in early hominin species, positing that we Homo sapiens widened the gap by murdering our nearest evolutionary neighbors. His musings provoke thought about humanity's place in the community of life, and he considers whether a rich or lean interpretation of the inner worlds of the creatures around us serves us best. (Nov.)
Review
A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Top 10 Fall Science Title
A BBC FOCUS Editor's Choice
“[The Gap] provides a new lens through which to see the world. Read it, and you might never look at yourself or your household pets in the same light.”
—Science Magazine
“A rewarding, thought-provoking journey.... Mr. Suddendorf cuts an entertaining swath through a thicket of research studies on primate cognition.... The author’s style is not only consistently interesting and informative but at times delightfully playful.... A welcome addition to the growing literature explaining science to the intelligent layperson.”
—Wall Street Journal
"Suddendorf is a skillful guide through 'the gap' between animal and human minds. He describes clever animal experiments and observational work with lucidity. He ends with a plea. Our ape cousins are dying out. It’s vital that we use our unique powers of foresight to prevent the gap from widening. [Five stars]"
—BBC Focus
“A compelling synthesis of the current literature on human evolution and comparative psychology to address the big questions of our species’ uniqueness. Fittingly, if the origin of human potential began with our ability for imaginative storytelling, Suddendorf’s narrative is an excellent addition to our species’ legacy.”
—Times Higher Education
“In his admirably clear and cogent first book The Gap: The Science of What Separates Us from Other Animals [Suddendorf] seeks a middle way that does justice to other species while arguing that there really are important differences between us and them.... Suddendorf’s book is a fine introduction to this fascinating field and deserves a wide audience.”
—Financial Times
“Our success as a dominant species, [Suddendorf] says, has depended on our ability to imagine and communicate. But he goes further, suggesting that the gap between humans and animals is widening, not because we are becoming smarter but because we are killing off our closest intelligent animal relatives. Suddendorf brilliantly fills in the gap with telling detail and acute analysis.”
—The Times (UK)
“Fascinating....enjoyable....would make [a] marvellous gift.”
—Nature
“This is a thought-provoking book that gives new meaning to the phrase ‘know thyself’—making it clear the endeavour should go beyond navel-gazing to ponder the larger significance of being human.”
—New Scientist
“Captivating.”
—Times Literary Supplement
“Beautifully written, well researched and thought provoking, The Gap searches for key differences between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom, and presents a balanced overview of the current status of our understanding of the mental abilities of animals. I found it fascinating and strongly recommend it to everyone who is curious as to how we have evolved to become the dominant species in the world today. Thank you, Thomas Suddendorf, for writing this book.”
—Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE, Founder, The Jane Goodall Institute, and UN Messenger of Peace
“Suddendorf takes us systematically through the ‘language, mental time travel, theory of mind, intelligence, culture, and morality’ that animals may demonstrate and compares each domain to our own. He does so in delightfully direct, even evocative language.... Provocative…This is a very important book.”
—Australian Book Review
“[A] fine new book.”
—Weekly Standard
“An excellent work which probably stands alone in its field.”
—Richard Leakey
“[A] sure-handed, fascinating book.”
—Scientific American Mind
“Thought-provoking.”
—Top 10 Science and Tech Books for November, The Guardian (UK)
“Wonderful.... Important and beautifully written.”
—Journal of the History of Biology
“Bringing together the latest research in animal behavour, child development, anthropology, psychology and neuroscience, Suddendorf makes you think about our place in nature and puts forward a provocative argument for reconsidering what makes us human.”
—The Vegetarian (UK)
“Fascinating reading.... A fine example of science made accessible for general readers, combining history, personal anecdotes, clear accounts of research and a broad picture of human evolution.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Sweeping, sharply argued, and exceptionally entertaining, The Gap tells a story that may turn out to be one of the great scientific discoveries of the century. Thomas Suddendorf is one of the world leaders in the study of the evolution of the human mind. His analysis of the ‘gap’ is brilliant, a veritable eye-opener. This book expands your mind. You can feel it as you read it. Begin with the first chapter. It alone is worth more than the price of the total opus.”
—Endel Tulving, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, University of Toronto, and author of Elements of Episodic Memory
“A provocative and entertaining gem of a book.”
—Simon Baron-Cohen, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology, Cambridge University, and author of The Science of Evil
“In this deep, illuminating investigation of the human condition, Thomas Suddendorf artfully brings the latest data from cognitive science and ethology to bear on the Greek adage: ‘know thyself.’A must-read for anyone interested in evolution and the origins of humanity.”
—Stanislas Dehaene, author of Reading in the Brain
“With the sure-handedness of a leading scientist and the love of man and of animals of a true humanist, Suddendorf takes a close look at what makes humans unique. I learned a heck of a lot from this important book, and so will you.”
—Oren Harman, Professor of the History of Science, Bar Ilan University, and author of The Price of Altruism
“The Gap brilliantly combines scholarship with accessibility, explaining often difficult ideas in plain language. This is popular science at its best—erudite, entertaining, and wonderfully informative.”
—Michael Corballis, Professor of Psychology, University of Auckland, and author of The Recursive Mind
“In this fascinating discussion of the gap between us and other species, Suddendorf poses a series of questions about what makes us uniquely human. The reader is taken on a tour of intriguing and sometimes bizarre research tales interwoven with the author’s observations of his own children and other animals. Written in a friendly, accessible style, this book is a must read for anyone interested in who we are and why—or if—we are special.”
—Niki Harr�, author of Psychology for a Better World
“This wonderful book shows that the human mind is unique in surprising ways that we should treasure more highly—but that we have a standard ape mind in many other ways that we vainly assume are exceptional. It offers a new kind of evidence-based self-esteem for our species, both humbling and ennobling. Suddendorf is a leading evolutionary psychologist and primatologist whose ground-breaking research has shown how humans are masters of building imaginary scenarios and linking our minds together socially. Here he makes his case in a fun, wise, balanced, and accessible way that any thinking human will love.”
—Geoffrey Miller, evolutionary psychologist, University of New Mexico, and author of The Mating Mind and Spent
“An engaging, well-written exploration of the multiple and diverse scientific fields of study that intersect at the question of what makes us, well—us… The Gap serves as an excellent source for thoughtful and thorough reviews of the current state of the field.”
—PsycCRITIQUES
About the Author
Thomas Suddendorf is a professor of psychology at the University of Queensland whose research has attracted honors and awards from such organizations as the American Psychological Association, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and the Association for Psychological Science. His work has been covered by the New York Times, Discover, and Science, among other outlets. Born and raised in Germany, he lives in Brisbane, Australia.
Most helpful customer reviews
51 of 55 people found the following review helpful.
The gap between the minds of men and critters
By Frank A. Lewes
This book seeks to answer the curious question of why human beings apparently have no close relatives on the evolutionary tree. After all, evolution is a painstaking slow process of incremental accumulation of genetic mutations that eventually differentiate the species. Most species have many close relations.
So why is there only one species of human beings extant, and no other species even comes close to what we’ve accomplished in the way of obtaining dominion over the Earth?
The traditional theoretical answers are:
1. (Religious) Man is a divine creation who was DESIGNED to be different from every other species.
2. There WERE until recently (a few tens of thousands of years ago) several species of hominids but homo sapiens eliminated them by:
A) Interbreeding with them.
B) Exterminating them
C) Gently outcompeting them so that over a period of hundreds of thousands of years we gradually became the dominant hominid
D) All of the above.
3. Perhaps we do have closely related species (apes and orangutans) who look more different to us than they really are. An alien from another planet might consider them to be just another subspecies of hominid. Recent observations of apes in captivity and the wild have revealed cooperative behaviors all to similar to the “politicking” that goes on all the time in human societies.
These theories have been discussed so often in recent years that I was a bit reluctant to buy this book.
However after previewing it in Kindle, Author Thomas Suddendorf’s logic is so well stated and his writing is so entertainingly lucid that I could not resist purchasing the book and making time to read it at a leisurely pace so as to comprehend it fully. It turned out to be an enjoyable and informative read from cover to cover.
Suddendorf begins by pointing out the obvious --- that the “gap” between man and all other creatures is in the brain and the mind. He provides a good account of recent research that has identified the specific biological differences in the neuron structure of human brains vs. our mammalian cousins. He then explores the psychological differences between the way that human beings and the lower primates appear to think.
Suddendorf warns us not to jump to any quick conclusions about the gap between the thinking process in humans and animals. We barely understand how human beings cogitate (conscious vs. unconscious), so let’s not imagine that we can be certain how animals comprehend their world. With that caveat in mind he relates many experiments with the higher primates that APPEAR to show cognitive abilities in animals. He comes close to pinpointing the dimensions of the gap that exist between the more intelligent animals (horses, dogs, apes, and dolphins) and human beings.
The gap appears to be both smaller and larger than one may have suspected. In the social sense the gap appears small. Suddendorf points out that chimpanzees have developed highly politicized societies whereby individuals are preoccupied with their social standing. They appear able to "model the minds" of others in their group and thereby know how to advance their social standing by appeasing or deceiving them. Several individuals may cooperate together to advance their common interests, such as by conspiring to kill the dominant alpha male and replacing him with a new hierarchy.
Some societies of chimps act exactly like human gangs, terrorizing rivals with torture and murder who intrude on their turf. Other societies of chimps appear to be “hippies” who’d rather make love rather than war.
In their capacity to form social hierarchies the gap between these animals and us seems quite small. But in terms of abstract thinking --- the ability to theorize about how to improve on their environments through artificial constructs, the gap is large.
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CONSIDER ONE OF THE MOST fundamental aspects of our human mind: we can imagine things other than what is available to the senses. We can picture past, future, and entirely fictional worlds and think about them. William James noted that it is the capacity to conceive of alternatives that allows us to question why things are the way they are. Humans ask big questions like: what are we, where do we come from, and where are we going? Most cultures have elaborate creation myths that children are told when they start raising these questions.
Questioning and finding meaning are essential to the human mind. (Why else are you reading this?) But what about animals? Do they ponder past, future, or fictional events? Do they search for the meaning of life? Can they conjure up worlds beyond what they can perceive here and now? Do they have even the most basic imagination? How could we find out?
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The book accomplishes its goal of defining what the gap is between human and animal intelligence. It also provides a “101” education about the evolution of human intelligence during the past 10 million years. And it has some fun with projecting where evolution might take our intelligence in the future.
The writing style is enables a layperson to obtain a good general understanding of what’s current in science of human evolution and the specific brain structures and cognitive differences that gives Man the dominion of the earth.
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
The Gap: Between Two Legs and a Crotch
By Andrew Smart
There aren’t many questions bigger than: ‘What makes our minds so different to other animals? According to some pundits, more information has been produced in this century than has accrued in all the millennia before and it’s expected to go on exploding. So how do you make sense of the deluge? One way is to find people, who you trust to have the deepest, wisest, latest stuff worth weaving into your own big picture. Thomas Suddendorf brings established facts from a range of fields, such as palaeoanthropology, linguistics and genetics to his own fields of evolutionary psychology and child development to craft a powerfully persuasive argument for the evolutionary course of what he refers to as ‘The Gap’ – the mental gap between our closest relatives, the great apes, and us.
Central to his quest is the identification of the building blocks of the mind, which he broadly defines as the ability to think of things which are beyond our immediate perception. To establish the base of the gap he applies tests developed by famed child psychologist Piaget to chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas and finds that they are able to meet the tasks of Piaget’s last object permanence task (called 6b!). ‘Like human two-year-olds, but unlike other primates, adult great apes have demonstrated that they can think about things they did not perceive.’ They pass the test of a mind by inferring a probable place for an object they can no longer perceive. Having gauged the lower limits of ‘The Gap’ he probes for the upper limits: ‘key uniquely human attributes that may have led to a profound shift in human behaviour’. He divides human behaviour into six domains: language, mental time travel, mind reading, intelligence, culture, and morality’
However, his exploration of the domains of ‘The Gap’ reveals another gap – a gap in the mental apparatus of humans that has diverged over the last eight million years or so. As the inner gap divided and widened in our ancestors, like two legs of a mental system evolving in tandem, it opened ‘The Gap’ between us and our nearest relatives. Along one leg there is an increasing complexity of scenarios which our ancestors could hold as ‘pretend perceptions’. Along the other leg there is a complimentary drive to influence the contents of the mind of others - most evidently in the evolution of language and its group phenomenon called culture. In between he stirs up a pot of intriguing quandaries…
Here are a couple of examples that stirred my thinking. ‘Great apes… have been shown to delay gratification’ and ‘for a reward forty times larger than the immediate reward option, chimpanzees may wait up to eight minutes.’ It seems that while most other animals use the past to influence the present – great apes also use the past to influence the future. So if a two year old child already has a mental mechanism similar in sophistication to an adult chimpanzee – yet has perhaps another thirty years to go, (a recent study he refers to indicates that some parts of our brains don’t complete development till mid-thirties) then have we the intelligence to unravel such an intricate development of intelligence? And, then, looking at the bigger picture, why were our ancestors so driven by nature to break completely the bonds of time and space – to imagine anything they wanted? He notes where this rapid selection has occurred in the brain: ‘For example, brain imaging studies have found that when participants are asked to recall past events and imagine future scenarios, the same areas of the brain … are involved.‘ How stable is such a recent realignment of cognitive abilities? How vulnerable is our new-fangled imagination apparatus to mass delusion and exploitation? Do we have the intelligence to untangle the truth of us?
In an example from the domain of morality Suddendorf notes that ‘evolution works only on how memory influences fitness, not for how accurately memory reflects the past per se.’ Later he quotes Darwin: ‘The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognise that we ought to control our thoughts.’ But Darwin was writing nearly 150 years ago, when knowledge was still mostly gained through experience and private reading. Hasn’t the nature of the source and hence the control of knowledge changed dramatically since then? Are we discussing the fitness of a morality made by individuals to a culture that is as naked as nature intended for over tens of millions of years? Or are we swept along in a ‘blue pill’ morality, our natures tailored, enculturated, deformed by institutions for the fitness of the modern state in its Darwinian struggle for political domination of this planet?
There are many other mind stretchers but the crux at the ‘crotch’ of Suddendorf’s ‘The Gap’ is: will it narrow, stay the same or widen? He goes for a wider gap – for two possible reasons – the extinction of our great ape relatives and so the gap extends to monkeys or/and we extend those legs and get to increase our intelligence. He cites the Flynn effect. But there is another prospect – ironically built on the baby like belief – out of mind, out of sight, the ‘unmentionable gap’, the forbidden thought -that humans have speciated since they began escaping Africa. At the end of this mindless gap is the final scenario - the spectre of the last man to know ‘The Gap’.
His Faustian spirit shines through his big picture (or is it meta scenario) with observations made with love, curiosity and a willingness to go wherever hard reality takes him. His research and his collaborations around the world – and his real life adventures – bring the frontier of neuroscience to the independent thinker. A few books are worth the extra time of a deep read. This is one of them. Because he takes our view of us and animals to the frontier; a frontier from where we might see far enough to change the fate of … ‘The Gap’.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Us vs. All of Them
By Taylor McNeil
How special are we human beings—we homo sapiens? We take a look around at the other animals—first even recognizing that we are animals, in particular primates, is sometimes difficult—and say to ourselves that we are indeed pretty darn special, clearly many cuts above the rest of the animal kingdom. We speak, write, create art, build iPhones, and heck, are lords of all we see. On the other hand, how about other animals that seem pretty smart, like our cousins the great apes (orangutans, gorillas, and chimpanzees) and in whom we see some, well, familiar faces and traits. And aren’t dogs and cats pretty clever sometimes, not to mention some birds that have even been known to wield tool-like objects?
Thomas Suddendorf, a psychologist born in Germany and now teaching in Australia, systematically lays out the issues in his remarkable book, The Gap: The Science of What Separates Us from Other Animals. To know what separates us, we have to know what’s special about us and what makes us tick. Suddendorf takes us on a fascinating tour of what it means to be human, and then systematically looks at attempts to find traces of those same traits in other animals.
Above all what sets us physically apart are our brains. Suddendorf has a chart that shows graphically the average excess amount of brains in weight over and above what would be expected based on body size for a number of species. The one outlier? Humans. Far behind are the great apes, and several steps below them are various monkeys—just as they are steps away from us on the evolutionary tree.
Suddendorf lays out the arguments using different qualities that seem to set us apart from all other animals. As Suddendorf writes: “Consider one of the most fundamental aspects of our human mind: we can imagine things other than what is available to our senses. We can picture past, future, and entirely fictional worlds and think about them.” He notes that there is little evidence, despite attempts to produce it, that any other animals have this quality, especially by experiments using “out of sight, out of mind” as the test. Children at a young age are able to keep an object in mind after it is hidden, but other animals rarely have this ability. Mirror recognition, too, is rare, though some of the great apes recognize themselves in mirrors, though monkeys cannot.
Language is another line of demarcation. “The most fundamental feature of language is that it allows us to exchange thoughts,” he writes. There are also many different languages—more than 6,000—and types, such as sign language and Braille. Human language is breathtakingly diverse and rich; our use of metaphor is one example of the ways it can be stretched willy-nilly. Experiments teaching language to great apes have yielded some comprehension, but nothing like the complexity of human language ability. Suddendorf gives masterful explanations of these issues involving language, just as he does with all these topics—his writing is clear and cogent, and conveys complex information with ease.
Planning for the future is another of the attributes that humans seem to have a monopoly on. As Suddendorf quotes Richard Dawkins, “Long-term planning … is something utterly new on the planet, even alien. It exists only in human brains. The future is a new invention of evolution.”
Suddendorf explains research done on very young children, and compares it with similar work done with great apes like chimpanzees. Our primate cousins seem to perform at the level of about two-year-old children—but never progress beyond that. And that is Suddendorf’s main point: an odd species here and there might show some level of understanding and communication skills, but none rises beyond a low level that humans quickly surpass.
Is there more to learn about other animals’ cognitive abilities? Certainly, and Suddendorf is careful to point out repeatedly what he’s detailing is the level of knowledge we have now about other animals’ cognitive abilities. But he’s also pretty confident—and convincing—when he says there is a gap, and that the gap is growing—not because we’re getting smarter; we’re simply eliminating our near relatives through extinction.
In fact, the gap is wider than it might otherwise have been, for the simple reason that our closest relatives are now extinct: the Neanderthals, the Denisovans (another hominid group found in Siberia)—and possibly even others that have eluded our attention, but whose genetic fingerprints we may soon find. The Neanderthals and the Denisovans left Africa before our ancestors did, setting north and creating their own paths. They even mingled with us—some 1-3 percent of our genes come from Neanderthals—except for current-day Africans, who have none of the genetic mixing.
The Neanderthals became extinct some 30,000 years ago, but if they were still around, the odds are the gap between them and us would be much smaller than between us and the great apes. What led to the Neanderthals’ collapse isn’t known.
But what will lead to the extinction of gorillas—another close relative—is clear: us. Through habitat destruction and simple predation, we will destroy them. Later generations of humans will perhaps marvel that the gap between humans and monkeys—distinctly more distant cousins of ours than the great apes, with much lesser cognitive abilities—is so large. Would that we perhaps weren’t quite as smart—and thus effectively destructive—as we are.
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