HUMAN INTELLIGENCE 261experiments isolate humans or animals from their natu ral environments
by placing them in a sealed room where interactions occur solely with
a computerized program. Th is egocentric framework is reminiscent of
the Ptolemaic geocentric frame of reference for the solar system....
Despite the central role of other individuals in shaping one’s mind,
most cognitive studies focus on pro cesses that occur within a single
individual.... We call for a shift from a single- brain to a multi- brain
frame of reference.”^5
Of course, the same thing may be said about intelligence testing and
the research and models surrounding it. In this chapter, I show for human
potential what Raymond Tallis said about consciousness in his book, Ap-
ing Mankind: It “cannot be found solely in the stand- alone brain; or even
just in brain; or even just in a brain in a body; or even in a brain interact-
ing with other brains in bodies. It participates in, and is part of, a com-
munity of minds built up by conscious human beings over hundreds of
thousand years.”^6
In other words, the splendid variation of humans only arises— people
only individuate—in the context of a culture and its history. Th rough that
framework I explain that there is no “evolutionary anomaly,” no ghostly
“sinners” in the machine, no fanciful bell- shaped curves in our genes or
our cognitive abilities. Th ere is only the continuity of a largely overlooked
evolutionary logic that has produced spectacular changes in the complex-
ities of living things.
I explain how the intense se lection for a cooperative lifestyle helped
overcome complex changeable environments by shaping a unique kind
of intelligent system— continuous with but overshadowing all others. I
discuss how this has evolved as a quite diff er ent kind of relation between
individual cognition and culture than that portrayed in other primates.
Fi nally, I discuss its implications for the creation of individual diff erences
in intelligence today.
BECOMING HUMAN IN EVOLUTIONTh e human evolutionary story goes back some seven or eight million
years, according to fossil fi ndings in Africa. Th e story remains rather
hazy, but another ratchet upward of environmental complexity and
This content downloaded from 139.184.14.159 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 13:57:55 UTC