Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny Audiobook (Free)

A radical reconsideration of how we develop the characteristics that make us human, based on decades of cutting-edge experimental function by the former director of the Maximum Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Practically all theories of how humans have grown to be such a distinctive species focus on evolution. Here, Michael Tomasello proposes a complementary theory of individual uniqueness, centered on development. Building around the seminal suggestions of Vygotsky, his data-driven model clarifies how those things that make us most human being are constructed during the first years of a child’s life.

Tomasello assembles nearly three decades of experimental use chimpanzees, bonobos, and human children to propose a new framework for psychological growth between birth and seven years. He recognizes eight pathways that starkly differentiate human beings from their closest primate family members: public cognition, communication, ethnic learning, cooperative thinking, collaboration, prosociality, social norms, and moral identification.

Becoming Human spots human being sociocultural activity inside the framework of modern evolutionary theory, and shows how biology creates the conditions under which culture will its work.