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“If animals are not mindless stimulus-response machines, what are they? Charles Darwin knew his theory of evolution depended on the answer. The radical idea proposed in Michael Tomasello’s groundbreaking book is that animals are agents—their psychology evolved to allow control of their choices. One of the most accomplished psychologists of our time builds an overwhelming case that all psychology evolved to give freedom of choice to solve life’s most unpredictable problems. As accessible as it is persuasive, this instant classic will drive scientific agendas and will be read by students of human nature for generations to come.”
—Brian Hare, New York Times bestselling author of The Genius of Dogs
“In this impressive and engaging book, Michael Tomasello provides a compelling account of the nature of agency and the forms of its expression in living things, from humble ‘filter feeders,’ through reptiles, mammals, and great apes, to human beings. Tomasello thus charts the evolution of agency from simple forms of goal-directed activity to complex, culturally mediated intentional action that is enabled and constrained by socially established objective norms. This is psychology as it should be done—in unity with evolutionary theory, biology, anthropology, philosophy, and whatever other disciplinary perspectives are needed to bring the phenomena into view. The result is a book that, though short and accessible, abounds with transformative insights, not least of all that the first principle of psychology should be not mind or behavior, but agency itself. Bravo.”
—David Bakhurst, George Whalley Distinguished University Professor, Queen’s University, Canada
—Brian Hare, New York Times bestselling author of The Genius of Dogs
“In this impressive and engaging book, Michael Tomasello provides a compelling account of the nature of agency and the forms of its expression in living things, from humble ‘filter feeders,’ through reptiles, mammals, and great apes, to human beings. Tomasello thus charts the evolution of agency from simple forms of goal-directed activity to complex, culturally mediated intentional action that is enabled and constrained by socially established objective norms. This is psychology as it should be done—in unity with evolutionary theory, biology, anthropology, philosophy, and whatever other disciplinary perspectives are needed to bring the phenomena into view. The result is a book that, though short and accessible, abounds with transformative insights, not least of all that the first principle of psychology should be not mind or behavior, but agency itself. Bravo.”
—David Bakhurst, George Whalley Distinguished University Professor, Queen’s University, Canada
About the Author
Michael Tomasello is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University and Emeritus Director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. His recent books include Becoming Human, A Natural History of Human Morality, A Natural History of Human Thinking, Origins of Human Communication, and Why We Cooperate (the last two published by the MIT Press).
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4.7 out of 5
93.33% of customers are satisfied
5.0 out of 5 stars the book strikes the right balance for both professionals and laymen
Mike’s interview on the Sean Carroll’s podcast brought me to this book. I highly recommend it, it helped me to see the picture of our agency, our conscious mind as a toolbox of tools for planning, controlling and analyzing our actions, clearer.
4.0 out of 5 stars Worthwhile contribution
Michael Tomasello writes well about broad topics such as thinking. This brief monograph collects his recent ideas about intentionality, which he takes to be a psychological phenomenon. Specifically, he argues that intentionality has an evolutionary dimension, building on earlier work that suggests thinking has an evolutionary rather than merely cultural dimension. His monograph is part of an enquiry that will be with us for some time to come, supposing the planet manages to house humans for some time to come. Tomasello's thoughts are, in short, part of the early game, thus far from definitive. Yet the quality of his thinking, in my opinion, recommends this book to anyone interested in the subject.
For evolution intelligence counts only as much as it leads to intelligent actions.
In his new book, “The Evolution of Agency“, Michael Tomasello tries to look at biological evolution from the point of view of psychology- psychology defined not as the science of mind or consciousness but as the science of agency. In the following I sketch what it is about and why I give 5 stars.Tomasello's starting point is “that organisms are able to flexibly direct and control their actions if, and only if, their underlying psychology is organized agentively, in the manner of a feedback control system. …. The first organisms on planet Earth were not psychological agents- they didn't need to be… They were unicellular organisms that simply moved around with open mouth “, a kind of behavior that is not yet agency because it goes on more or less automatically.(Psychological) agency came into existence in response to certain unpredictabilities caused by other organisms (predators, prey, conspecifics). Tomasello distinguishes 4 types and treats them in evolutionary order: First evolved the goal-directed agency of ancient vertebrates then the intentional agency of ancient mammals followed by the rational agency of apes and finally the normative agency of early humans. As representatives of these 4 types he chooses: lizards, squirrels, chimpanzees and homo heidelbergensis. In the following I will confine myself to the last 2 types.That apes can think rationally is defined more concretely “that they understand something of the underlying causal structure of events in the physical world and underlying intentional structure of actions in the social world.” Whether they really do is not clear but is supported by many experiments. For instance, it was observed that great apes can choose an appropriate tool (e.g., a stick that is long and rigid and not short or soft, (Manrique et alt., 2010, freely available in the internet)). Another experiment was made 4 years ago at the Wolfgang Köhler Primate Research Center, Leipzig Germany (Tennie et alt 2019, freely available in the internet): Some chimpanzees observed a human (experimenter) pressing a button under two different conditions: either she pressed the “before-button” which was followed by the immediate delivery of juice or she pressed the “after-button” after the delivery of the juice. When given the opportunity to produce the juice themselves, most chimpanzees pressed the before-button already on their first trial. ….. From those experiments Tomasello concludes that great apes learn not only from the results of their own actions but also from the causal relations among external entities.Now: “If great apes are already rational agents, what further form of agency could possibly be open to humans that would account for the many species-unique products- complex technologies, complex symbol systems – that enable them to completely dominate the large mammal-niche on planet Earth?”In short terms Tomasello's answer goes as follows: To survive early humans had to learn to cooperate and for that their rational-decision making apparatus had to be furtherly extended. In other words: a cooperatively rational agency evolved. It comprises 3 parts that Tomasello labelled “I”, “we”, and “me”. If e.g. "I" am a chaser and want to cooperate with a spearer to hunt together an antelope, then "we" are hunting together. In this cooperation everybody has his role. The chaser that's "me". “Thus” , Tomasello writes, “early human individuals operated with what we may call a cooperative rationality … and this required them to juggle simultaneously the operations and cooperations of three distinct but interrelated modes of agency…… “And “Individuals who were not skilled at collaboration (not able to communicate, not cooperatively motivated) were not chosen as partners.” This, I think, is clear, but something is lacking: my partner should also be competent. It is not of much value (for me as a chaser) if he is good in communication but bad in spearing.I hope this is enough to give a first idea of Tomasello's writing style and what his book is about. But I have to make two further remarks:- “The Evolution of Agency” contains (on only 134 pages) a wealth of interesting ideas that invite the reader to think about: mammals have conscience, apes can think rationally, the evolutionary emergence of new forms of behavioral organization involves “hierarchical modularity”, there is something like “genetic assimilation”, apes are perhaps making animistic attributions to physical events, agentive action is not just an object of natural selection but also a causal force in the process of evolutionary change... and much more. (The last two ideas were inspired by Jean Piaget.)- The 4 types of agency are illustrated in “highly simplified” but because of this very under-standable diagrams.I conclude: Tomasello's new book is certainly a must read for all experts in evolutionary psychology- alone for this: 5 stars. But it is also quite accessible for interested non-experts like me. But warning: this is not a novel, it has to be worked through.
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The Evolution of Agency: Behavioral Organization from Lizards to Humans
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