Evolution Of Human Consciousness Essay

Within the course the History of the Evolution of Human Consciousness we have been focused on what exactly it means to be human and how humans have affected and come to understand their environment. As a class, we have been discovering ourselves. Humans have an insatiable desire to understand and conceptualize the environment we live in and that has manifested itself in social constructs. Over time, humans have developed ways to recognize their agency over their environment and used that pursuit to shape what it means to be human. In order to create our infographic, we created word clouds out of the concepts that we thought were important in some of the books we read in class. For the planets, we used Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Decartes’ …show more content…
These intelligentsia and their findings shape our societies and views of ourselves in the modern age. The philosopher Plato discusses his mentor Socrates’ ideas in “The Allegory of the Cave” a man who emerges from the darkness of the cave into the light of true knowledge, or enlightenment. This knowledge forever changes his view of the cave and others within it. This metaphor parallels with Plato’s views on virtue and knowledge. For Plato, in order to achieve virtue one must learn and practice it. Therefore, the intellectual is the most likely to find the good. Knowledge is the pursuit of truth and truth is a tool we use to illuminate our lives and …show more content…
For instance, actor network theory, or the theory that states animate, organic objects can have intentionality, and the desire to transform the world. An early example of this theory in action could be the Acheulean hand tools which are both a product of their time and significantly shaped their time. In effect, tools have social roles. Tools led to the use of animals for both food and clothing. This use of the environment led to the domestication of plants and animals and eventually the Agricultural Revolution. Much like hand tools had an effect on earlier times, the cell phone has an enormous effect on modern humans. The cell phone, a staple of modern life, connects us to our social network, supports a global and urbanized lifestyle, and provides a gateway to a multitude of resources
The cell phone is a tool we use to connect ourselves to our social network, but our brain evolved to have social capability long before cell phones were even a possibility. The social brain is characterized by what Émile Durkheim coins as effervescence or, the “buzz that social life creates…the collective spirit of association.” This feeling which social life creates, provoked a co-evolution of brain size and social structures. Culture helps keep social structures in flux. Our brain development was led