Poking at consciousness
Consciousness — our sense of ourselves in the world — seems at first glance to be a profoundly human trait, the basis of civilization. But its roots may rest in biology and social behaviors we share not only with other primates, but possibly with many other living things. That was the subject of a talk given on Monday by Brian D. Farrell, a biology professor and the director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. Speaking to an overflow crowd at the Geological Lecture Hall, Farrell drew from social sciences and the humanities to discuss the development as well as the meaning of consciousness, specifically referencing the work of a pair of Harvard giants from the 19th and 20th centuries, psychologist William James and ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes. Even before his post-talk discussion with Davíd Carrasco, the Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America at the Divinity...