Springer The Symbolic Species Evolved: 6 (Biosemiotics, 6)

This anthology is a compilation of the best contributions from Symbolic Species Conferences I, II (which took place in 2006, 2007). In 1997 the American anthropologist Terrence Deacon published The Symbolic Species: The Coevolution of Language and the Brain. The book is widely considered a seminal work in the subject of evolutionary cognition. However, Deacons book was the first step – further steps have had to be taken. The proposed anthology is such an important associate. The contributions are written by a wide variety of scholars each with a unique view on evolutionary cognition and the questions raised by Terrence Deacon - emergence in evolution, the origin of language, the semiotic 'missing link', Peirce's semiotics in evolution and biology, biosemiotics, evolutionary cognition, Baldwinian evolution, the neuroscience of linguistic capacities as well as phylogeny of the homo species, primatology, embodied cognition and knowledge types. From the Back Cover Scientific considerations about the origin of humanity might not be entirely new. However, the articles in this volume present a spectrum/variety of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives which no doubt calls attention and dares to present the span of the problem. The reader is inspired to continuously push and re-think ways of thinking about the themes, instead of fixing and unequivocalizing and is forced to acknowledge a diversity of angles and the need of merging different approaches to achieve further insights on the central theme. The volume succinctly distils frontline research within different subfields by compiling contributions from widely acknowledged academics.