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Our search for certainty rests in our attempts at understanding the history of all individual selves and all civilizations. Beyond that, there is only awe.
Julian Jaynes
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Julian Jaynes
Age: 77 †
Born: 1920
Born: February 27
Died: 1997
Died: November 21
Psychologist
University Teacher
Newton
Massachusetts
Individual
Selves
History
Attempts
Self
Awe
Certainty
Search
Civilization
Beyond
Civilizations
Understanding
Rests
More quotes by Julian Jaynes
No one is moral among the god-controlled puppets of the _Iliad_. Good and evil do not exist.
Julian Jaynes
The changes in the Catholic Church since Vatican II can certainly be scanned in terms of this long retreat from the sacred which has followed the inception of consciousness into the human species.
Julian Jaynes
It is by metaphor that language grows.
Julian Jaynes
Memory is the medium of the must-have-been.
Julian Jaynes
Poetry, from describing external events objectively, is becoming subjectified into a poetry of personal conscious expression.
Julian Jaynes
The vestiges of the bicameral mind do not exist in any empty psychological space.
Julian Jaynes
This breakdown in the bicameral mind in what is called the Intermediate Period is reminiscent at least of those periodic breakdowns of Mayan civilizations when all authority suddenly collapsed, and the population melted back into tribal living in the jungles.
Julian Jaynes
Every god is a jealous god after the breakdown of the bicameral mind.
Julian Jaynes
Idolatry is still a socially cohesive force - its original function.
Julian Jaynes
Our sense of justice depends on our sense of time. Justice is a phenomenon only of consciousness, because time spread out in a spatial succession is its very essence. And this is possible only in a spatial metaphor of time.
Julian Jaynes
For if consciousness is based on language, then it follows that it is of much more recent origin than has been heretofore supposed. Consciousness come after language! The implications of such a position are extremely serious.
Julian Jaynes
Reading in the third millennium B.C. may therefore have been a matter of hearing the cuneiform, that is, hallucinating the speech from looking at its picture symbols, rather than visual reading of syllables in our sense.
Julian Jaynes
We know to much to command ourselves very far.
Julian Jaynes
Indeed, it is sometimes almost as if the problem had to be forgotten to be solved.
Julian Jaynes
History does not move by leaps into unrelated novelty, but rather by the selective emphasis of aspects of its own immediate past.
Julian Jaynes
I shall state my thesis plain. The first poets were gods. Poetry began with the bicameral mind.
Julian Jaynes
Consciousness is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of, because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of.
Julian Jaynes
The importance of writing in the breakdown of the bicameral voices is tremendously important. What had to be spoken is now silent and carved upon a stone to be taken in visually.
Julian Jaynes
The very reason we need logic at all is because most reasoning is not conscious at all.
Julian Jaynes
Consciousness is always open to many possibilities because it involves play. It is always an adventure.
Julian Jaynes
