Premium
THE EXTRAORGANIC
Author(s) -
GREENMAN E. F.
Publication year - 1948
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1525/aa.1948.50.2.02a00010
Subject(s) - citation , anthropology , classics , george (robot) , history , sociology , art history , library science , computer science
WO years ago the American Anthropologist published a n article by me' in T which some far-reaching statements were made concerning the relationship of the organic and the cultural. The chief thesis of that paper was that the manufacture and use of tools by the proto-human ancestors of man resulted in the evolutionary improvement of both brain and extraorganic implement in a recipro-causal manner. A closer examination since then of the literature on the evolution and development of the vertebrate nervous system has brought to my knowledge a process which provides a better factual basis for t ha t conclusion than was given in that paper? The phenomenon of neurobiotaxis, with which the name of C. U. Ariens Kappers is closely associated, is a physiological process by which the manufacture and use of extraorganic devices could have affected the primate brain in evolution. Neurobiotaxis is described as follows:a