Premium
The Original Sin of Cognitive Science
Author(s) -
Levinson Stephen C.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
topics in cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.191
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1756-8765
pISSN - 1756-8757
DOI - 10.1111/j.1756-8765.2012.01195.x
Subject(s) - premise , cognition , anthropological linguistics , cognitive science , biological anthropology , evolutionary anthropology , anthropology , ecological anthropology , diversification (marketing strategy) , cultural anthropology , sociology , biological sciences , epistemology , linguistics , psychology , philosophy , applied linguistics , history , biology , clinical linguistics , anthropology of art , art history , contemporary art , marketing , neuroscience , performance art , computational biology , business
Classical cognitive science was launched on the premise that the architecture of human cognition is uniform and universal across the species. This premise is biologically impossible and is being actively undermined by, for example, imaging genomics. Anthropology (including archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistics, and cultural anthropology) is, in contrast, largely concerned with the diversification of human culture, language, and biology across time and space—it belongs fundamentally to the evolutionary sciences. The new cognitive sciences that will emerge from the interactions with the biological sciences will focus on variation and diversity, opening the door for rapprochement with anthropology.