ABSTRACT
A critical chapter of A Short History of Awareness, when it finally appears, would be put together from information that, like the meticulous tracking of physical changes from era to era and species to species, already has some solid grounding in post–World War II fieldwork. Its subject would be the marked differences in what have been called the "awareness structures" within groups of baboons and groups of chimpanzees. When it comes to understanding what it is we actually know about awareness and the mind, we're at one of those odd betwixt-and-between moments that often occur in the early stages of studying anything. Information is flooding in about certain traits—for instance, laughter. So maybe when feelings were joined to awareness, the result was a clearer sense of which objects and actions were worth pursuing, and in what order.
