On Cognitive Anthropology
There are a number of things that I do to taste morsels of hope. I read Anaïs Nin’s diaries. I sip lavender tea. I light incense. I wear a hat. I try to be something greater than I am.
I don’t know that I am really a cognitive scientist, not yet, and that turns all those morsels bitter, as though they were made of desperate, dying ash.
I began studying anthropology when I was sixteen or seventeen. So many of those early memories stick to my flesh. The classrooms, the classmates, the PowerPoint slides, the textbooks. But most pungent of these memories was my wonderful professor, Andrea Cooper. I think her passion transformed into mine. Suddenly, I found myself reading books on language origins and squawking at my friends to recycle their phones to save humans and gorillas alike.
What can be more valuable than to trace one’s intellectual journey, a cognitive odyssey? What lies within me is the greatest adversary I shall ever face, but I use ropes of knowledge to subdue the beast of despair. I use ideas to keep afloat, and I use my love of humankind — what holier passion for an anthropologist? — to chip away at the notion of impossible.
Cognitive anthropology.
If the linguistis worship language and the psychologists love to debate nature or nurture and the philosophers wonder what should trouble humans if we ever conquer death, the cognitive anthropologists frame minds in the context of their culture and evolution. My undergraduate degree was in linguistics (meaning I defeated phonology!) because language is the love of my life. If I could teach a machine anything, it would be to massage words into a literary rodeo, an event of stories. And cognitive anthropologists bring a unique plethora of inquiries to the matter of language: How is it a cultural resource? Where did it come from? Did Neanderthals have it?
Cognitive anthropology.
I would juggle a thousand questions if it meant that I coud inhabit just one of them, some grand void that could give my life meaning in the quest to answer it. In this field, I feel a sense of union between myself and other people, though — I would never sit with these questions alone. For someone who always feels alone, I was in the company of new, wild, untamable, wriggling ideas in Dr. Cooper’s classes. I learned how to get DNA from a banana. I went to the zoo and watched the chimpanzees flip their shit over my classmate’s service dog.
My later anthropology classes, for I double-majored, I saw skulls of Homo heidelbergensis and wept because it was beautiful. Think of all the stories that have passed through the gates of this earth. This was someone’s tooth. Someone rubbed thoughtfully or painfully at that jaw.
Cognitive anthropology.
Cognitive science is by its very origins and nature a field watered by many springs. I began with linguistics, words babbling off my tongue in a joyous dance of neurons swishing and swaying. Soon I was minoring in psychology, then becoming enchanted with computer science and artificial intelligence. Luc Steels papers crowded my red binder where I printed out interesting research. I bought a copy of Cognition in the Wild.
Now I am reflecting on my first paper I ever wrote for Dr. Cooper’s introductory class. I composed mine on archaeoastronomy (at the time I fancied myself going into physics and astronomy). I suspect I still have that essay in a bin somewhere.
There are such things as cognitive archaeologists. Did you know this? It’s all theoretical, which is a much more fun and satisfying word for cognitive scientists than any other person.
This is what I want: A return to the field. A return to the self. A faith in the good of humankind and the study dedicated to understanding it.
And nothing is greater than the mind.
