Instinct and Revelation: Reflections on the Origins of Numinous Perception

by Alondra Oubre

Overview

Instinct and Revelation revolves around the hypothesis that ritual behavior and imaginative awareness in early hominids may have helped to spawn the evolution of the human brain and human consciousness. Using an integral perspective comparable with systems theory, the book carefully interweaves fact and theory from physical and cultural anthropology, psychobiology and the brain sciences, psychology, and to a lesser degree, eastern philosophy. This book breaks from tradition by discussing from a primarily anthropological perspective the origin of human consciousness within a philosophical framework that embraces precepts from human evolution, evolutionary psychology, the neurosciences, biocultural anthropology, and cultural symbolic anthropology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781134384815
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/11/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Alondra Oubre

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1: The Dawn of Consciousness, Culture, and the Numinous Mind; 2: The Hominid Journey: An Odyssey Through Human Evolution; 3: The Hominid Brain: The Emergence of the “Two Pound Universe”; 4: The Numinous Mind in Evolutionary Perspective; 5: The Nectar of Chant: The Vocal Path to Encephalization

Editorial Reviews

Wading into the perennial dispute between nature and nurture, biology and culture, medical anthropologist Oubr<'e> seeks not to choose between them, but to integrate them to understand the biocultural origins of human consciousness. She offers a new perspective on hominid evolution and the relationship between the biological evolution of the physical brain and the psychocultural evolution of consciousness. Her final chapter proposes chanting as a vocal path to encephalization, but her glossary, containing no indication of pronunciation, is presumably for people who took other paths. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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