"Creative thinging and human incompleteness: Towards a process archaeology of mind" Seminar

Abstract

Humans can be described as deep time creative thingers. That is, we are embodied and self-conscious beings able to influence our developmental paths by changing our means of material engagement. In short, we create material things and assemblages which scaffold the ecology of our minds and shape the boundaries of our thinking. This openness of the human mind to creative evolution is one of the distinctive features of our species. It also indicates that the nature of human intelligence is to remain amenable to deep reorganization and reconstitution, thus, to remain incomplete. I will try to explore in my talk what exactly are the major implications of this ongoing dialectic of co-constitution of people and things for the traditional (neo-evolutionary) ways we understand the importance of embodiment, plasticity, and material culture in human evolution.