ABSTRACT
The origins of an understanding of mind can be sought on several different timescales. One scale is that of human development, perhaps the most accessible to empirical investigation and certainly the area of most vigorous research in recent years, as demonstrated by this volume and its ancestors (Astington, Harris, & Olson, 1988; Butterworth, Harris, Leslie, & Wellman, 1991; Frye & Moore, 1991; Whiten, 1991). At the other extreme is the evolutionary timescale. The ability to understand mind, which develops in our species, did not spring out of nowhere: it must have had more primitive evolutionary beginnings. Although many details of these origins may be lost to empirical study, comparative research, particularly on our closest primate relatives, is beginning to shed light on the roots of mindreading (Whiten, 1993). So we should be thinking about origins on at least these two very different timescales. In addition, we should remember that the two are not separate, but interactive processes. Evolutionary change is moulded through successive developmental cycles and therefore influenced by the processes and products of ontogeny (Baldwin, 1902): Conversely, developmental processes are themselves the products of evolution and their nature may therefore often be understood in functional terms—as taking the particular ontogenetic course they do for adaptive reasons. For example, it may be beneficial for the human infant initially to be focused on the reading of certain mental states, rather than others, in its caretakers (see Mitchell, this volume; Dunn, this volume).
