Julian Jaynes Bicameral Breakdown: The Auguries of Science

Julian Jaynes Bicameral Breakdown Series, 7 of 8

Science started out as a religious endeavor to reveal hidden divinity (that once was there before the breakdown), (p436).

We must become our own authorization (p438).

It is only if we make generations our persons, or centuries hours that the pattern is clear (p445).

The very notion of truth is a culturally given direction, a part of the pervasive nostalgia for an earlier certainty (p446).

What was then an augury for direction of action among the ruins of an archaic mentality is now the search for an innocence of certainty among the mythologies of facts (p446, last sentence of the book).

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes, 1976.

ISBN 0-395-20729-0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Jaynes

http://www.julianjaynes.org/

Julian Jaynes Bicameral Breakdown: On Ancient Misinterpretation

Julian Jaynes Bicameral Breakdown Series, 6 of 8

There is a constant attempt on the part of scholars to impose modern categories of thought on those ancient cultures in order to make them more familiar…to modern readers (p201).

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes, 1976.

ISBN 0-395-20729-0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Jaynes

http://www.julianjaynes.org/

Julian Jaynes Bicameral Breakdown: The Code of Hammurabi

Julian Jaynes Bicameral Breakdown Series, 5 of 8

The prologue/epilogue is written by Hammurabi, the text is about him and his relationship to his god, evident is the concept of ‘I’ or ‘self’.

The code itself is written by Marduk, his god, spoken to Hammurabi and channeled from him to a scribe.

Both sides are unconscious of each other. When the code is written, Hammurabi, in a trance, lets the unconscious take over.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes, 1976.

ISBN 0-395-20729-0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Jaynes

http://www.julianjaynes.org/

Julian Jaynes Bicameral Breakdown: On Human Responsibility

Julian Jaynes Bicameral Breakdown Series, 4 of 8

The soldiers of the Trojan War were noble automatons who knew not what they did (p75).

Man and his early civilizations had a profoundly different mentality than our own. They were not conscious, not responsible for their actions and cannot be given credit of blame. Instead, each person had a part of his nervous system [the right hemisphere of the brain] that was divine, by which he was ordered about like a slave (p201-202)

The debut of human responsibility: Solon (Greek, credited with “Know Thyself”) warns his fellow Athenians not to blame the gods, but themselves (p386).

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes, 1976.

ISBN 0-395-20729-0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Jaynes

http://www.julianjaynes.org/

Julian Jaynes Bicameral Breakdown: Writing and the Erosion of the Bicameral Mind

Julian Jaynes Bicameral Breakdown Series, 3 of 8

Writing eroded the auditory authority of the bicameral mind [god’s orders were transmitted via ‘auditory hallucinations’ within mind of the bicameral man]. The input to the divine hallucinatory aspect of the bicameral mind was auditory. Once the word of god was silent, written on dumb clay tablets or incised into speechless stone, the god’s commands or the king’s directives could be turned to or avoided by one’s own efforts in a way that auditory hallucinations never could be. The word of god had a controllable location rather than an ubiquitous power with immediate obedience (p208).

“What had to be spoken is now silent and carved upon a stone to be taken in visually” (p302).

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes, 1976.

ISBN 0-395-20729-0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Jaynes

http://www.julianjaynes.org/

Julian Jaynes Bicameral Breakdown: The Disappearance of God

Julian Jaynes Bicameral Breakdown Series, 2 of 8

As the complexity of society increases, the bicameral mind becomes stressed, requiring elaborate rituals to maintain the voice within.

[end of 3^rd millennium B.C.] the tempo and complexity of social organization demand a far greater number of decisions in a far greater number of contexts, resulting in a proliferation of deities for any potential situation (p196).

As gods increased in complexity (in the Near East, 2^nd millennium B.C.) unsureness creates personal gods to intercede and reach the higher gods – “Who seem to be receding into the heavens where in one brief millennium they will have disappeared” (p202).

Inconsistency between people:

As people migrate, quickly due to major geological/climatological stressors, as refugees, they are thrust into ever-increasing new situations not dealt with before, either by themselves or their ancestors. The voices then say different things to different people. Hierarchical authority deconstructs and loses its validity.

– Social Disorganization and Bicameral Breakdown

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes, 1976.

ISBN 0-395-20729-0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Jaynes

http://www.julianjaynes.org/

Julian Jaynes Bicameral Breakdown: General Notes

Julian Jaynes Bicameral Breakdown Series, 1 of 8

[The Iliad] There is no evidence of consciousness; instead, the gods take place of consciousness. Man doesn’t know he is conscious; he is not aware; his feelings and decisions come from god (p72).

[The Bible] Amos does not consciously think before he speaks, in fact, he does not think as we do at all; his thinking is done for him (p296).

The function of the gods was chiefly the guiding and planning of action in novel situations. The gods size up problems and organize action according to an ongoing pattern or purpose resulting in intricate bicameral civilizations, fitting all the disparate part together, planting times, harvest times, the sorting out of commodities, all the vast putting together of things in a grand design, and the giving of directions to the neurological man in his verbal and analytical sanctuary in the left hemisphere. We might thus predict that one residual function of the right hemisphere today would be an organizational one (p117-118)

Individuals do not respond to even basic physiological needs except within the whole pattern of the group’s activity. A thirsty baboon, for example, does not leave the group and go seeking water; it is the whole group that moves, or none. Thirst is satiated only within the patterned activity of the group (p127).

The gods were in no sense a ‘figment of the imagination’ of anyone. They were man’s volition. They occupied his nervous system and transmitted experience into articulated speech which then ‘told’ the man what to do (p202).

Bicameral Timeline

2000-1000 BC: man stops hearing voices

1000-0 BC: oracle and prophets die away

0-1000 AD: sayings and hearings preserved in sacred text

1000-2000 AD: sacred text loses its authority

Literary examples of Bicameralism Theory (vs. Subjective Consciousness)

Chinese-Confucious (SC)

India-Veda (bicam) / Upanishads (SC)

Hebrew-Bible: Amos (bicam) / Ecclesiastes (SC)

Greek-The Iliad (bicam) / The Odyssey (SC)

By 400 B.C. bicameral prophecy is dead (p312)

As the stag pants after the waterbrooks,

So pants my mind after you, O gods!

My mind thirsts for gods! Living Gods!

When shall I come face to face with gods?

-Psalm 42

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes, 1976.

ISBN 0-395-20729-0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Jaynes

http://www.julianjaynes.org/