Volume 9, Number 6 · October 12, 1967
Brain-twister
By Edmund R. Leach
The Savage Mind
by Claude Lévi-Strauss
University of Chicago, 290 pp., $5.95
Mythologiques: du miel aux cendres
by Claude Lévi-Strauss
Plon (Paris), 480 pp., 42 francs
The problem is, Just where do we fit in? Are we better or worse or indeed in any way different from our prehistoric ancestors or our primitive contemporaries? We are animals and, therefore, a part of Nature, but we are also self-conscious human beings who can somehow or other conceive of ourselves as outside observers, looking on. And then again the process we call 'thinking' is quite clearly something that goes on inside our heads, a function of electro-chemical processes in the brain, yet it is also a response to signals which we receive from outside through our senses. How can I believe that I can think about Nature, when quite clearly thinking is a phenomenon in which I and Nature interact?
Review, 3289 words
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