文档介绍：THE CULTURAL ORIGINS
OF HUMAN COGNITION
Exam Copy
Copyright © 1999 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
Exam Copy
Copyright © 1999 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
THE CULTURAL
ORIGINS OF
HUMAN COGNITION
Michael Tomasello
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts
ExamLondon, England 1999Copy
Copyright © 1999 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
Copyright © 1999 by Michael Tomasello
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tomasello, Michael.
The cultural origins of human cognition / Michael Tomasello.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–674–00070–6
1. Cognition and culture. 2. Cognition in children. I. Title.
1999
Exam153—dc21 99-35902 Copy
Copyright © 1999 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
acknowledgments
Individual human beings are able to create culturally significant arti-
facts only if they receive significant amounts of assistance from other
human beings and social institutions. In my case, I was able to write
this book—whatever its faults and however limited its cultural sig-
nificance—only because I received direct assistance from the follow-
ing people and institutions (and, of course, indirect assistance from
all the other people over the past 2,500 years of Western civilization
who have thought and written about the basic puzzles of human
cognition).
Financial support for a one-year leave of absence, during which
the majority of the book was written, was provided by the Guggen-
heim Foundation, by Emory University (Dr. Steven Sanderson, Dean
of Emory College), and by the Max Planck Gesellschaft. Support for
my empirical research over the past decade or so has been provided
by the Spencer Foundation, the National Science Foundation (Ani-
mal Behavior Section), and the National Institute of Child Health
and Human Development. I express my deepest