ABSTRACT
This chapter considers thinking from an evolutionary perspective by looking at evidence of thought in the animal kingdom. There is a view that some animals show evidence of a theory of mind (an ability to infer the mental states of others including humans). It relates the idea of brain size to intelligence and, therefore, the ability of humans to think in qualitatively more sophisticated ways than other animals. It goes on to examine some of the kinds of thinking that are ‘biologically primary’ – folk psychology, folk physics, folk biology – versus biologically secondary thinking which involves assimilating culturally important information that sometimes contradicts the results of biologically primary thinking. Two metaphors have been put forward to describe thinking: the Swiss army knife refers to the evolution of specific mental modules for specific purposes including ‘universal reasoning circuits’. The hand metaphor emphasizes the generalist aspect of mind rejecting modularity. The chapter moves on to the development of thinking in children by looking at the development stages proposed by Piaget and subsequent views.
