»What can the course of human cognitive evolution predict about the long term role of science in human affairs?«

At any point in history, the standards and methodologies of science reflect our cognitive evolution as a species. Over the last four thousand years, science has evolved from the esoteric interest of a few scholars to the primary driver of the modern economy. Recently, science, and scientists, have become embedded in a global industrial process.

The human brain is the creative platform on which science is built, but its methods and strategies are closely tied to technology, and particularly to information technology, which is increasingly entangled with the internal cognitive organization of the brain.

The large-scale collective cognitive process which constructs science is continuously adapting to the state of these two variables: a highly plastic and interactive core cerebral system, and its technological extensions and resources. Now that further genetic and technological interventions and accelerations of the process have become possible, the number of possible future directions of this large-scale process has become is more uncertain and unpredictable than ever before. In that sense, Science as a collective endeavour does not appear to be coming to an end; on the contrary, it has hardly begun.

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Merlin Donald is Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Education at Queen's University, Kingston, and Honorary Professor at Aarhus University, Denmark. A cognitive neuroscientist with a background in philosophy, he is the author of many scientific papers, and influential books.

Influential Books:

• Origins of the Modern Mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition (Harvard, 1991).
• A Mind So Rare: The evolution of human consciousness (Norton, 2001).

Fellowship:

• The Canadian Psychological Association
• The World Academy of Art & Science
• The Royal Society of Canada

Contact:

e-Mail: donaldm@queensu.ca