When We Were Nicer: History Seen as Neurochemistry
Steven Mithen, 24 January 2008
Students of history will in future need to know the names of a new set of impersonal actors: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin
Steven Mithen
Steven Mithen teaches at Reading.
Pieces about Steven Mithen in the LRB
Rocket Science for Monkeys: Sounds before Words
Francis Gooding, 23 April 2026
So far as we know, true symbolic language is unique to the human species. The question of how we alone came to be blessed – or cursed – with words is not to be lightly dismissed. But it does come with...
Give me that juicy bit over there
Jerry Fodor, 6 October 2005
I’m in a pout about this book; I’m conflicted. On the one hand, there are several respects in which it seems to me to be very good. Mithen knows a great deal and he writes well by the...
Archaeology is Rubbish: The Last 20,000 Years
Richard Fortey, 18 December 2003
An excavation made in 1975, behind the town of Vedbaek in Denmark, revealed the body of a tiny child laid to rest in the embrace of a swan’s wing. Next to the skeleton was the grave of the...
It’s the thought that counts
Jerry Fodor, 28 November 1996
What’s your favourite metaphor for minds? If you’re an empiricist, or an associationist, or a connectionist, you probably favour webs, networks, switchboards, or the sort of urban...
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