Julian Jaynes



Julian Jaynes (February 27 1920 – November 21 1997) was an American psychologist, best known for his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976), in which he argued that ancient peoples were not conscious as we consider the term today, and that the change of human thinking occurred over a period of centuries about three thousand years ago.

Jaynes was born in West Newton, Massachusetts and attended Harvard University. He was an undergraduate at McGill University and afterwards received master's and doctorate degrees from Yale University. Jaynes lectured as a professor of psychology at Princeton University from 1966 to 1990, and was said to be a popular teacher, occasionally invited to lecture at other universities.

Jaynes' theories on consciousness proved highly controversial. At the time of publication of The Origin of Consciousness, he was heavily criticized for pandering to pedestrian readers and not submitting the work for peer review. It was, however, a successful work of popular science, and was a nominee for the National Book Award in 1978.

The polemics created by the book tended to overshadow his other achievements, which were numerous, mostly in the fields of animal behavior and ethology. Other prominent writers and scientists whose works were influenced or affected by Jaynes' theories include William S. Burroughs, Neal Stephenson, Daniel Dennett, and Steven Pinker.