Evolution of the Brain: Creation of the Self

Sir John Eccles, a distinguished scientist and Nobel Prize winner who has devoted his scientific life to the study of the mammalian brain, tells the story of how we came to be, not only as animals at the end of the hominid evolutionary line, but also as human beings possessed of reflective consciousness. Eccles traces the line of human evolutionary descent through developments such as skilled bipedal walking and dawning spirituality, linking them with the growth of the human brain. He conjectures that the beginning of human language came with Homo habilisand its greatly enlarged brain, while the mystery of self-consciousness is related to the newly developing neocortical areas of the brain.