- Paperback: 376 pages
- Publisher: OUP USA; New Ed edition (13 Oct 1994)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0195083520
- ISBN-13: 978-0195083521
- Product Dimensions: 23.5 x 15.7 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,280,951 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
The Lopsided Ape: Evolution of the Generative Mind
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Product Description
Review
wide-ranging and erudite . . . An excellent read, enlivened by many anecdotes, historical details and jokes (Nature )
A remarkable blend of erudition, clarity, and humour . . . This book is compulsive reading Times Higher Educational Supplement
A remarkable blend of erudition, clarity, and humour . . . This book is compulsive reading Times Higher Educational Supplement
Product Description
What is it that allows human beings to think the way we do? What enables us to communicate with one another through the use of speech? Is the difference between Homo sapiens and other apes simply a matter of degree or are we unique and discontinuous from other species? Michael C. Corballis argues that this century-old debate lies in the fact that humans are the only primates that are predominantly right-handed, a sign of the specialization of the left hemisphere of the brain for language. Surveying the current views of evolution using evidence from archaeology, linguistics, neurology, and genetics, Corballis takes us on a fascinating tour of the origins and implications of the structure of the human brain, accounting for the dominance of humanity over all species.
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What a piece of work is a man! Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
What a piece of work is a man! Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Why people have right/left hemisphere preferences.
2 April 1999
Format:Paperback
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.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Right-handedness and language
31 Jan 2005
Format:Paperback
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.
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.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Human Cerebral Asymmetry
22 Dec 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Corballis is an esteemed researcher AND an engaging writer which makes his research palatable to both the scientific community and to the lay public at large. If you're interested in developmental psychobiology and cognitive neuroscince - or if you ~think~ you might be - you can't go wrong with this publication.
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