Planetary Catastrophe: Julian Jaynes & the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

[Brigit]

Arcmode says, "I am still looking into the book, but I see it as very similar to the chasing of cosmic gnomes...[L]ooking for an evolutionary process for the origin of consciousness is assuming that humans have evolved from something more primitive or less sophisticated, with a different consciousness, which has never been firmly established."

Those are very interesting comments and criticisms, absolutely. But if you look at the original post/OP, my interpretation of Julian Jaynes is that : "At the heart of this seminal work is the revolutionary idea that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but was a learned process that emerged, through cataclysm and catastrophe, from a hallucinatory mentality only three thousand years ago and that is still developing."

This thread begins with the assumption that Julian Jaynes' work is an outstanding alternative to evolutionary psychology. Others may interpret him differently and are welcome to share their views.

And here are some questions that I felt would follow, from an Electric Universe perspective :

What myths and legends describe a shift in the way the human mind works ?
What kind of planetary catastrophe might have had such an effect?
What did Immanuel Velikovsky publish on this topic?

I think that it is possible that an interplanetary electric discharge may have an effect on a much smaller population of survivors, and I want to explore the topic using myth and legend, and also neuroscience (maybe). But I only want to include legends and myths that specifically mention a shift in expression, communication, or brain function.

[Brigit]

There's a literary work I would like to put forward as a possible ancient witness to a shift in human expression and perhaps even a shift toward frontal lobe dominance in learning and in living.

It's called "The Marriage of Philology and Mercury" by Martianus Capella.

[Arcmode]

5th century seems like a late source for this question, didn't the shift occur much earlier? And isn't it more of a liberal arts handbook than a mythology? If the author drew on previous myths for a narrative framework, wouldn't it make more sense to go back to the original texts of those myths to look for evidence?

But perhaps I'm jumping to conclusions, I'll have a read of it and look forward to seeing what you find in it.

[Brigit]

Arcmode says, "5th century seems like a late source for this question, didn't the shift occur much earlier? And isn't it more of a liberal arts handbook than a mythology?"

Yes, very good catch Arcmode!

The way that I learned about Martianus Capella was through the work of a wonderful Etruscan scholar, Nancy Thomson de Grummond. Of all the books written about the Etruscans, I find her books to be outstanding, and an example of reasonable and circumspect historical treatment of people where there are no surviving written records of their own. Most historians simply confirm archaeologically whatever the Gr and Rom said. So I love her work.

Nancy Thomson de Grummond in her book Etruscan Myth, Sacred History, and Legend explores the idea that Martianus Capella's book from the 5th century AD is based on an Etruscan account.

I will go ahead and transcribe the passages from her book that led me to read "The Marriage of Philology and Mercury" and to agree with her wholeheartedly about the exciting provenance of the work.

[Brigit]

Nancy Thomson de Grummond on Martianus Capella as an Etruscan account

• "A good bit is known about the Etruscan concept of the structure of heaven and the location of the gods in the universe. It is certain that the Etruscans regarded the universe as divided into 16 regions, whereas the Romans normally divided the sky in quarters and the Greeks in eighths. Scholars have been able to figure out the relationship of the gods to the compass directions...
  
  It was important to know whre the gods were sitting in the sky, because when lightingin and thunder occurred the priests had to decide which god was creating the celestial phenomenon. The Etruscans believed that there were nine gods who could throw the lightning bolt, in contrast to the Greeks and Romans, who generally reserved the power for the chief god alone. Roman writers tell us the names of six of the [Etruscan] gods who might throw lightning, using Latin designations:
  Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Vulcan, Mars, and Saturn." Which in Etruscan are Tinia, Uni, Menrva, Sethlans, Laran, and Satre. "We do not know who the other three are."

Note: There were lost Etruscan books, two of which included a system of interpreting lightning bolts and the flights of birds. Interpreting the appearance of lightning or birds as a message from the heavens was an art which used the structure of the heavens to give meaning to the sign by noticing the directions of the birds or the lightning. You see the flight of birds mentioned in Homer's two books quite a few times, if I recall.

(cont'd)

[Brigit]

Nancy Thomson de Grummond on Martianus Capella as an Etruscan account

• "A Roman text by the late writer Martianus Capella (5th century AD) preserves a description of where all the gods resided, thought to be based on an Etruscan account. The passage comes near the beginning of a long allegorical novel known to modern scholarship as On the Marriage of Mercury and Philology. Mercury is getting married to a goddess, Philology, who personifies the love of learning, and messengers are going around the heavens to give out invitations to the gods.
  
  In contrast with our usual problems in studying Etruscans, here we havean abundance of detail. But the text has baffled scholars and is seldom studied by anyone but specialists. In reading the passage one may note a great number of different names of gods, some of whom are quite unkown elsewhere, and some of whom are mentioned only once or twice in other ancient texts. Their very rarity is of course consistent with the idea that they originate from an Etruscan source.
  
  It is interesting that we find the names of the gods who are recognizably equated with the Greek and Roman chief gods, such as Jupiter, Juno and Mars, along with personifications, such as Health, Fortune, Discord and Dissention.
  
  As is typical of the Etruscans, a number of gods occur in groups, only vaguely defined and remaining mysterious to us."

[Brigit]

Nancy Thomson de Grummond on Martianus Capella as an Etruscan account

--At this point she gives a translation of the section of the text in which the gods are invited from 16 regions of the sky. It is quite beautiful and I may transcribe that too.

But notice that the first half of the book by Martianus Capella is an "allegorical novel" while the second half is made up of seven chapters on the learning of the seven liberal arts, Grammar, Dialectic, Rhetoric, Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy and Harmony.





PS I recall that the Romans actually originally went up to Etruria for an education, and had a holiday based on that tradition (ref needed).

[Brigit]

Nancy Thomson de Grummond on Martianus Capella as an Etruscan account

• "We can compare this amazing passage in Martianus Capella with an even more surprising document about Etruscan gods, the artifact known as the Piacenza Liver. This is a bronze model of the liver of a sheep, of the actual size, marked out with cells or houses for the various Etruscan dieties. ...The margin of the upper side of the liver is divided into 16 cells, which probably correspond to the 16 zones of the heavens. There are several striking similarities between the Piacenza Liver and the passage in Martianus..." {Table III}

https://vuka.altervista.org/wp-content/ ... _n-2-6.jpg
Fig 2.1 Piacenza Liver

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... acenza.jpg
Fig 2.2 Piacenza Liver

[Brigit]

So Arcmode asked, "And isn't it more of a liberal arts handbook than a mythology? If the author drew on previous myths for a narrative framework, wouldn't it make more sense to go back to the original texts of those myths to look for evidence?"

The very structure of the work contains both types of expression: there is the first half, which is entirely symbolic and allegorical and tells the story of a marriage between a god and an "embodiment of the love of learning", while the second half is a description of an organized, verbal and methodical approach to describing the world through learning and study.

I think that the structure of Marriage of Mercury and Philology actually provides an Etruscan account of a shift away from allegorical and symbolic expression to the methods of study, rational arguments and proofs.

But this does not mean that the previous state of mind was inferior to the later mindset, which uses mainly learning and scholarship to describe reality. After all, we all speak symbolically all of the time, every night when we dream, and when we use the media of cinema. Only movies that have rich and satisfying symbolism are really good -- although most people cannot articulate what the symbolism was, they appreciate it, and miss it if it is not there.

[tholden]

What Julian Jaynes stumbledupon was the remnants of the antediluvian communication system.

https://youtu.be/XYv5rB62qHk

[nick c]

What Julian Jaynes stumbledupon was the remnants of the antediluvian communication system.

True. However, Jaynes (who used conventional chronology) theorized that consciousness arose circa 1500 BC, well after Noah's flood.

[Brigit]

tholden says, "What Julian Jaynes stumbled upon was the remnants of the antediluvian communication system."

Thank you for the link. It is nice to see a presentation that questions the common assumptions about language evolution and categories.

[Brigit]

Velikovsky wrote about the time of the confusion in his unpublished work, In the Beginning. He considered that the cataclysm described was a traumatic electromagnetic effect, or some type of an electromagnetic disturbance to the brains of all humans alive at the time.

• IN THE BEGINNING
  by
  Immanuel Velikovsky
  
  
  The Confusion of Languages
  https://www.varchive.org/itb/confus.htm
  
  "...In the ancient Mexican traditions it is told that those who survived the catastrophe of the “sun of wind” lost “their reason and speech.” (19)
  
  The characteristic of this catastrophe was its influence upon the mental, or mnemonic, capacity of the peoples. The description of it, as told by many tribes and peoples, if it contains authentic features, arouses the surmise that the earth underwent an electromagnetic disturbance, and that the human race experienced something that in modern terms seems like a consequence of a deep electrical shock.
  
  The application of electrical current to the head of a human being often results in a partial loss of memory; also a loss of speech may be induced by the application of electrodes to specific areas of the brain.(20)"
  
  Mercury
  https://www.varchive.org/itb/merkur.htm

"...It can be assumed with a fair amount of probability that the planet that caused the disturbances described above was the planet Mercury, the Greek Hermes, the Babylonian Nebo...."

[Brigit]

I think that it is significant that Velikovsky suspected a close encounter between the planet Mercury and the planet earth, and that the Etruscan work The Marriage of Mercury and Philology is about the planet Mercury.

I also think that this might involve effects similar to the new type of treatments given for clinical depression, which do not use a direct shock to the brain. Instead, they use a rapidly oscillating electromagnetic field to temporarily dislodge the-- the bad wiring, I would call it. It's much more gentle.

But in the case of two planets it seems possible to work on a model in which their magnetospheres touch, and they induce an oscillating field effect that lasts long enough to affect everyone alive.

[allynh]

Here is a list of books that came out of the Jaynes book. I was able to get all but one in ebook. I need to read them again.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009MBTRHA

Gods, Voices, and the Bicameral Mind: The Theories of Julian Jaynes
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MKPL1DF

The "Other" Psychology of Julian Jaynes: Ancient Languages, Sacred Visions, and Forgotten Mentalities
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BFDFBFV

The Julian Jaynes Collection
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07NP5GXH8

I have this in paperback from 2009:

Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes's Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0979074401

This is the 2nd edition from 2024:

Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes's Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1737305550

I'll need to get a copy. HA!

About the author

It is unfortunate that so much of Julian Jaynes' work gets caught up in this whole argument over what is and isn't consciousness. I am of the school that had he just said the Dawn of the "Experience of Consciousness" in the title all would have been avoided.

I say unfortunate because it opens the door to a lot of unnecessary, and tedious, arguments over what words mean what. Were humans "conscious" prior to 2,000 BC (or thereabouts) or were they "unconscious?" Is consciousness limited to self-awareness (grounded in an internal experience of an 'I') or is it broader and more encompassing than that? Etc.

Jaynes and his disciples go to great lengths to limit consciousness to a very specific experience of self-awareness, thus they pinpoint a moment in time when we became "conscious". But why? You can agree with this theory and find it very persuasive and factually probable without getting into the whole rigmarole of consciousness. Hegel, for example, using a different route, came to an almost exact position. He just called it the evolution of "spirit" (self=soul=interior life)rather than consciousness.

Of course Jaynes is working from a more naturalistic, neurological understanding of the evolution of the human being than Hegel, which is why, perhaps, he and his disciples put so much emphasis on the question of consciousness. They are tortured to place consciousness within the gradual evolution of our species. The thinking is that as we developed greater and greater language complexity (specifically the use of symbol which "spatialized" the exterior world - or - as I prefer- drew a more pronounced division between internal and external) consciousness evolved. Prior to that moment our minds operated with little distinction between internal and external. Much like the schizophrenic mind, we "heard voices" in times of high stress and regarded them as external. (Schizophrenics and other people who experience auditory hallucinations hear them usually over their left shoulder.) This is all very persuasive and explains the omnipresence of idols and gods. That is, the voices (since they were not seen as internal in source) were attributable to external sources which were then invested with sacred and holy features.

Anyone who reads the Hebrew Bible, or just paid attention in Sunday school, knows that the primary feature of the Judaic religion was it assault on idols and the exaltation of a single off-world God. For Jaynes this destruction of idols was part of the evolving mind. Because we are increasingly becoming "conscious" we therefore no longer hear these voices or identify them as external, but rather now identify them as coming from within our own head. Thus idols begin losing their authority. So religion, consequently, must be reconstituted as an internal experience. Likewise for Hegel this introduction of an off-world God produces an internal relationship with an abstraction (Yahweh), and is indicative of an evolving internal life (which Christianity continues with the idea of sin, shame and forgiveness).

Simple right? So why get into the question of consciousness at all? Why not understand it simply as the increasing awareness of an internal self? The primitive mind, which Jaynes describes, vs the more modern mind which begins around 1200 BC? Why get into the question of consciousness at all? Why not call it "self-consciousness" and leave it at that?

The only reason I can come up with is that the ugly head of scientific dogma wants to make sure we all understand that consciousness is an outgrowth of human evolution. It is this materialistic viewpoint that wants to limit consciousnesses to a specific moment of evolution. But the sad truth is, you can read all these essays and Jaynes' work and substitute words like "self awareness" or "experience of consciousness" for the Jaysian's use of the word "consciousness" and nothing changes. NOTHING.

So why does any of this matter?

Because there are those of us who see the universe as primarily a conscience entity, whereby consciousness is all around us, external and internal and that all processes in nature make manifest consciousness. We, however, as humans have an awareness of consciousness through an awareness of self. This awareness is just a small fraction of the total consciousness, but it gives us access to the greater consciousness, which is evolving and us with it.

If you come from this point of view, nothing in Jaynes' argument is lost. In fact, you stand to gain a lot more from it. Because now you understand that the "bicameral" mind, as he calls it, can be a conscious mind, or a specific experience of consciousness, without a direct experience of an internal self as generating that consciousness or as the loci of that consciousness. And that on some level, this experience is still going on in the human psyche - such that we have access to a more primitive experience of consciousness and therefore on some level a greater, more abstracted psyche.

Isn't that much cooler! Why put the human psyche in a conscious box? It is completely unnecessary and I believe introduces an unfortunate bias into the argument that just shouldn't be there (and trust me, these people spend a lot of time defending it).

Why not just describe the phenomena and leave it at that? You're scientists, after all. Why get into speculation? I admit, my view point is equally speculative, but I don't pretend it isn't! It comes down to definitions and what you ultimately believe is the source of consciousness: Evolution or the Great Eternal Mind in the Sky (I joke, but basically, you get the idea.)