Studying the Evolution of Abstract Thought

Our thoughts about morality, society and spirituality may be deeply personal, but they build on ideas passed on to us by others. Abstract thoughts have been passed down over thousands of generations. Explaining the ancient origins of these traditions has been one of the major challenges faced by anthropologists and archaeologists, but Prof John Mansfield, of the Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution at the University of Zurich, thinks that language data can provide new insights.

In the new ERC-funded project, “Conceptual Diversity and the Evolution of Abstract Thought” (CONCEVO), Mansfield will lead a team of researchers to develop a method for reconstructing the evolution of abstract concepts, especially spirituality, ethics and social relations. “Using linguistic and anthropological data from hundreds of different cultural groups, new statistical techniques allow us to infer the most likely evolutionary trajectories that could have given rise to the concepts we find today across diverse indigenous cultures,” Mansfield says. This project could substantially expand what we know about the history of human thought, while also highlighting intellectual traditions that are most at threat from globalisation.