The Semioticians on Movement, Process, and Change

Preferring to avoid the creation of arcane new terms when good ones exist, we return to Robinson and Southgate to ferret out the terms that first suggested “a process.” These include: “entering a semiotic matrix,” “creative dialectic” (2010, 702–3), “semiotic dialectical matrix” (2010, 703), and the “juxtapositions of signs” (2010, 702). The authors use two‐dimensional grids (Figure 2, 698 and Figure 3, 701) in which to generate the transposition of meaning.

We became convinced that the construct of Matrix Thinking implies dynamic mental activity, movement, and some kind of transpositions that were potentially new and different, and so, creativity. The mental processes involved in Matrix Thinking are, at minimum: comparison and contrast; identification, expansion, and transposition of analogies (structural relationships); derivation of ideal types and naming them (for ease of use and wider use); and paradigm restructuring and stretching.

A parallel model already exists for the most basic of these processes, because the juxtaposing of language symbols is exactly what a human does every time he or she speaks grammatically (in a linguistic sense). Grammar implies the movement and coalescence of meaning within the context of an utterance, because not only the content, but the ordering of words shapes meaning. An adjective placed before or after a noun can radically alter the sense conveyed. Deacon has written extensively on this parallel or “coevolution” of language and symbol use (1997). Most combinations of words and sounds have been encountered many times before by a listener, so there is little new.

However, new combinations do arise, especially in poetry, metaphor (Robinson and Southgate , 702), and everyday speech, in order to create new ideas, structures, images, and feelings in the speaker or the listener. New creations hinge in part on the infinite re‐combinability of more basic elements, as noted previously. Fully sentient humans do this easily, every day, all day long, when they think and communicate. They were born, and have evolved to juxtapose, to recombine, and to create new cultural knowledge, even if it is the rediscovery of some existing understanding, as children often do. There is imagination (and Matrix Thinking) in children's “recreating the wheel” with the discovery of “new relationships” to which parents nod and smile.

Deacon, in his summary of the symbol concept, cannot help but imply movement when he discusses symbolic reference and the assignation of meaning to various kinds of signs (2011, 393–405). Something (or its quality) moves (changes position) and affects something else. Indeed, his paper begins by recalling the etymology of the word, “symbol,” from the Greek ballein (to throw) and syn (together) (2011, 393). It is this kind of movement that we understand characterizes Matrix Thinking. It is the movement inherent to the notion of “a process,” whether physical or mental. It signals change.

It is important to add that our development of Matrix Thinking does not rely so much on semiotic analysis, that is, on teasing apart the ascription of meanings to types of signs because of their functions. Instead, our article is about applying symbolic structures, themselves (analogies, gradients, outlines, kinship systems, paradigms, even narratives and networks), to create new cultural knowledge. That is the essence of Matrix Thinking.

At the beginning of this section we note that modern human cognition goes beyond symbol use—but where does it go? Answering that question is the task at hand.

Wynn and Coolidge on the Executive Functions

In spite of the movement and finely tuned changes in meaning possible with symbol use in a specific language and culture, we were convinced that Matrix Thinking includes more than symbol use (in a linguistic sense). Wynn and Coolidge were helpful in understanding which nonlinguistic faculties might also be involved, because we never assumed that Matrix Thinking was dependent on language. There was always primary process thinking to consider (Holt ), to which we shall return in the sequel.

In the past twenty years, it has become well accepted that modern human cognition implies more than symbol use, which is now broadly understood to exist among chimpanzees in a far more rudimentary form. Chimpanzees have been seen to make simple recombinations of silent image‐morphemes to express a request or command. Because symbol use is found in our nearest living relative, it must have been part of the hominin line before the evolutionary split leading to modern man and the modern chimpanzee. Wynn and Coolidge write:

…the modern mind is more than just an archaic mind enhanced by symbol use. It also possesses an important problem solving and planning component. In cognitive neuroscience these advanced planning abilities have been extensively investigated through a formal model known as working memory [WM] …At its most basic, WM is the mind's ability to hold in attention, and process, task‐relevant information in the face of interference (2011, 1–2).

…Evidence from neuroscience clearly identifies a planning and problem solving ability that is isolable neurologically and behaviorally from symbolic and language abilities. This component of modern thinking is working memory. Archaeological evidence indicates that human WM capacity underwent an enhancement to the modern range in the relatively recent past (2011, 9).

Wynn and Coolidge extend WM to Enhanced Working Memory (EWM), which includes the executive functions of planning and strategizing (2011; Coolidge and Wynn , ). They have used an EWM cognitive model to analyze archaeological finds and report that the “result has been a different and controversial picture of the emergence of one of the components of modern thinking” (2011, 2). They state that their main problem is methodological, that is, the interpretation of archaeological evidence for working memory. “Hints at increasing capacity (beyond an ape range) can be identified as far back as Homo erectus… But when did it achieve modern levels, something we have labeled ‘enhanced working memory’ (EWM)?” (2011, 4).

The full answer to this question must await evidence that lies hidden in the ground. Nevertheless, we suggest that Matrix Thinking could be one of the faculties that evolved in concert with working memory. Survival could be greatly enhanced by use of the executive functions of EWM, and by an ability to compare strategy options extensively using a faculty such as Matrix Thinking. For bands of humans who were dependent upon a hunting and gathering lifeway until as recently as 10,000 years ago, planning a hunt or a gathering foray would be greatly assisted by expanding a rectangular grid‐like set of options to include a time dimension, thus making the mental display three‐dimensional.

One of our first indications that Matrix Thinking necessarily went beyond a two‐dimensional grid was an attempt to extend Robinson and Southgate's example of the Christian Eucharist (2010, 698). They call the Eucharist an “iconic legisign” (the Last Supper as an icon repeatedly observed according to a conventional rule, the entire ritual symbolizing oneness with Jesus). By using a third dimension of time, we expand our understanding of the Eucharist in a three‐dimensional grid displaying two thousand years of church history. The meaning and significance of the Last Supper slides forward two millenia. Our view changes. In our Extended Eucharist example, the ritual can now be viewed in the context of modern social problems and the existential needs of people in a rapidly urbanizing world of the Information Age.

The earliest indications of the Advanced Domains of Thought (science, religion, and art)—and we believe, Matrix Thinking—come from the Middle Stone Age, which lasted from about 300,000 to 30,000 years ago in Africa. Some of the most intriguing and newest archaeological finds include, for example, a purposefully prepared external storage device discovered at Blombos Cave in South Africa (Henshilwood et al. ), and carefully, evenly pierced shell beads from the same site (D'Errico et al. ). While South Africa yielded these finds, East Africa has also recently provided indications of man's growing cognitive and symbolic capacities. Evidence from Africa includes red ochre and hematite for painting, insecticidal bedding (implying knowledge of a pharmacopeia), compound tools (implying enhanced planning and in‐depth knowledge of construction materials), well carved flutes to play music, and evidence of long‐distance trading.

Together, these discoveries signal rationally, empirically grounded knowledge of the environment (science), an ability to plan and fashion specialized tools (technology), and perhaps hints of spirituality in self‐adornment and music making (art), which are important components of ritual (religion). It is important to remember that the origins of religion were not the origins of “organized religion” that we see developing after the advent of agriculture around 10,000 years ago. The origins of religious thought probably appeared at the beginning of the Middle Stone Age, in the form of awe, wonder, animistic notions of spirits residing in natural places and phenomena, and symbolic attachment of meaning to supernatural phenomena of all types, as they were perceived and conceived by early members of our genus Homo.

Recall Wynn's informal remarks in a Smithsonian Institution online blog: “Finding evidence of this kind of cognition is challenging because humans do not use advanced working memory all that much. ‘It requires a lot of effort,’ Wynn says. ‘If we don't have to use it, we don't’” (2012). The relatively infrequent use of Enhanced Working Memory further likens it to Robinson and Southgate's “entering a semiotic matrix” in order to accomplish a creative dialectic through juxtaposition of signs—and for us, all kinds of symbolic structures—in mental space that evolved to handle complex operations. We sensed that we were approaching ever more closely the creativity that marks full sentience on the hominin evolutionary line. The fact that EWM might not be clearly found often in the archaeological record strengthens the notion of its specialness, as well as the possibility that whatever this inherited capacity is, it is an important part of man's greatest accomplishments in science, religion, and art.

The writings of Wynn and Coolidge and Robinson and Southgate suggest faculties of human sentience that go beyond the use of symbols. Matrix Thinking may well be one type of cognition that evolved along with executive functions such as planning and strategizing, and also as an extension of the manipulation of more basic signs (the icon and index). The process of Matrix Thinking is extraordinarily flexible, given a sufficiently large brain, and it produces ideas and behaviors that can be quickly conceived and modified to suit survival needs. It is important to remember that, whatever capacity lies at the foundation of science, religion, and art, and that makes them somehow similar, it originally had to make sense in the context of natural selection. Whatever mental capacities evolved among early populations of the genus Homo, they had to confer a reproductive advantage and enhance the survival of individuals who pursued a hunting and gathering lifeway (Fiddick and Barrett ; Cosmides, Barrett, and Tooby ; Stringer ). Early on, we came to see sentience (including Matrix Thinking) as the ultimate adaptation, so far, because humans are still evolving (Hawks et al. ; Cochran and Harpending ).

Evolutionary Scientists on the Importance of Sociability in Human Cognition

When we began our exploration of sentience, we sampled the literatures in a wide variety of sciences and humanities to determine how other scholars described sentience and the specialness of human thought, particularly in science, religion, and art. From this broad review, we developed a list of the general components of sentience (Table ). The features that characterize sentience in Table  were suggested by other authors, although their areas of research and practice were varied and they tended toward interdisciplinary endeavors. Table  appears very inclusive, as well it should, since these are the qualities that, together, the sciences and humanities have fastened upon to describe the essence of the human species. Sentience is not defined by any one of these characteristics or by a few of them, but by all of them at the same time. Further research led to more specialized lists for science, religion, and art (Table ). We shall return to these more specialized lists in “tests” of science, religion, and art as true adaptations, in the sequel to this article.

Our review of interdisciplinary sources helped us to understand how archaeologists and evolutionary biologists came to develop the next important insight concerning the evolution of human thought. The energy burden placed upon early humans (and, to a lesser extent, all members of the order Primates) by an expanding brain size required explanation. No other line of evolution has created the same degree of brain expansion. In retrospect, it seems reasonable that brains of a size and complexity that enabled them to accomplish complex manipulations of symbolic structures, to plan and strategize, and to fasten intently for extended periods upon survival problems, required a great deal of energy. Yet, evolutionary scientists ask: Why did this costly Primate brain expansion occur? What initiated the change? What kept it going? What was there about the ancient environment of early humans that made brain expansion desirable when it emerged? Some have considered a changing African climate and environmental stress in the Middle Stone Age (Wurz ; Brooks n.d.). This stimulus is potentially of great importance. Another line of reasoning points to the intensely social character of the higher species in the order Primates. Explanations based on sociability are particularly cogent and interesting, and they eventually directed us to an important insight about sentience on the hominin line.

We had not been ready to characterize what we eventually called Matrix Thinking—provisionally, the creative driver of human sentience—because the features of sentience that seemed to be lacking from our model were not so much in the realm of intellect and reason, but in man's fundamental sociability and his use of emotionality in vetting his rational models (“Does it feel right?”). Rational and scientific features dominate, but social and emotional features permeate all in‐depth explorations of sentience, whether literary or scientific. Indeed, these features are prominent in our lists of general sentience components (Table ). Human thinking is always social thinking, even in an individual's seemingly isolated pursuit of science, religion, or art. While it is often said that “sentience equals rationality,” it is important to remember that full sentience developed on Earth only among species that were intensely social—not “social” in a preprogrammed fashion like the bees and ants or other members of the insect order Hymenoptera, but in the more plastic way characteristic of mammals, and especially species in the order Primates. Social insects and social primates are at the far, opposite ends of two major evolutionary branches, and to apply the same term “social” to both types of species’ joint activities is misplaced.

Evolutionary theory reminds us that it was not the individual human who evolved. It was a population of them, in fact, an increasing number of identified populations of archaic humans in the Old World (Garrigan et al. ; Templeton ; Trinkaus ; Garrigan and Hammer ; Wang et al. ; Voight et al. ). In those breeding populations and their individual bands, the social group was, and remains today, the key to survival for the individual human, so it makes logical sense that whatever enhanced sociability was potentially adaptive. It was a type of sociability that required long periods of nurturance and learning, and varied somewhat from group to group—a feature humans share with all the anthropoid apes and, to a lesser extent, with monkeys.

It may be helpful to note that there is still some debate as to whether the unit acted upon by natural selection is the individual human or the human group. While it is not our intention to explore this philosophical debate (along with a definition of “altruism” in a biological context and a discussion of the sociobiology debate), it is quite clear that the individual hominin is the one who lives or dies, and so receives the ultimate “selection” by natural selection. Yet, the human social group, with its inherent, superior capabilities when individuals act in concert according to a shared culture is, in general, acknowledged by anthropologists and evolutionary biologists as far more important than groups in other species. The human cultural group makes a critical difference in the survival of the individual. The flexibility of human culture (using biologically based features like Matrix Thinking), will ultimately be traced to physical changes that occurred in the course of hominin evolution, and eventually, the identification of specific genes and gene combinations. Even Matrix Thinking, if it can be demonstrated by repeated research studies (like “executive functions” of the human brain), will be traced to genome changes in human populations.

Dunbar on the Social Brain Hypothesis, and Whiten and Erdal on Sociocognitive Niche

In the decades spanning the millennium, archaeologists and evolutionary psychologists such as Byrne (), Byrne and Bates (), Humphrey (, ), Dunbar (, ), Whiten (), Whiten and Erdal (), and Chris Stringer (), have confronted a major theoretical question: Why did the primate brain evolve to be so large, indeed tripling the genus Homo's encephalization in the past 2.5 million years (Whiten and Erdal , 2119)? What created sufficient selection pressure to make these enormous changes? Was total brain size really all that important? Was not the brain's structure more important than its size? What would make man's large brain worth the energy required to fuel it?

Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar's 1998 investigation led to a formal statement of the social brain hypothesis. He takes the reader systematically through one hypothesis after another, to arrive at conclusions that are crucial in understanding the context in which sentience first emerged on the hominin line. First, he had to find a good measure of “brain” since the size of brains varies among different sized animals. He found that the ratio of the primate brain's neocortex (where executive functions reside), to the medulla (a more primitive brain organ), increases in size steadily and linearly from lower to higher primates, including man (1998, 180). Second, the neocortex ratio (neocortex vs. the rest of the brain) best predicts group size in anthropoid (higher) primates: The larger the ratio, the larger the group (troop) size. Third, he successfully challenges other hypotheses about the origin of large brains (e.g., type of foraging; percentage fruit in the diet) and finds that neocortex ratio is related to mean group size at a highly significant level of 0.001 (1998, 182). Dunbar refines this striking finding by methodically testing what mediates this relationship: visual signals; pattern recognition, pure memory, emotional responses, or ability to manipulate information about social relationships. He concludes, “The social brain hypothesis is about the ability to manipulate information, not simply remember it” (1998, 185). The nature of that manipulation has been described in scientific, humanistic, and literary writings, including those by Robinson and Southgate, and Wynn and Coolidge, among many others.

In the years since Dunbar's systematic analysis, others have paraphrased the social brain hypothesis in very informal terms, which may have some utility. The following description captures the type of sociability that we all naturally come to appreciate from birth. We take it for granted. We know it well.

Primates are not the only mammals that live in large groups, but monkeys and apes stand out…for having very intense social relationships. In fact, watching a group of monkeys is kind of like watching a soap opera: Individuals have friends, but they also have enemies. They team up to form coalitions to overthrow their foes, but they also reconcile after a fight. They yield to the leaders of their group, but they also sneak off to engage in clandestine affairs when no one's looking… If you're going to be involved in all of these social maneuverings, you need to be able to keep track of all sorts of social information… you need a big brain. (Smithsonian Institution Online Blog, Hominid Hunting, ).

At the same time that theorists speculate as to why sentience emerged, archaeologists and evolutionary biologists have continued the painstaking work of piecing together the details of exactly how sentience developed by examining the remnants found lying in the ground of early humans’ science and technology, ritual, and art. With respect to these Advanced Domains of Thought, scientists always self‐consciously monitor themselves, asking, “Are we reading too much into this?” When we regard a carefully prepared flat surface of red ochre and see evenly spaced markings made with a sharp tool by someone between 100,000 and 70,000 years ago, is it too much to assume that the hominin thought like you and me, and was acting similarly, as when we make hatch marks on the back of an envelope to make sure we know how many times we have done something? Are we jumping to conclusions when we find carefully punctured shells whose number, precise holes, and decorative quality suggest a necklace? Is this too far to go? After all, what is so significant about making and wearing beads? The answer to such a question is the subject of a short paper for Zygon, to be sure!

Are we jumping to conclusions, or are we seeing our own behavior from farther and farther back in time? It can be a poignant experience for a modern human to realize for the first time how similar these beings were to our neighbors and our kin—that, they are we. The new field of cognitive archaeology attempts to recreate and explore the mentality that accompanied the creation of early humans’ cultural artifacts and patterns of behavior (e.g., De Beaune et al. ). Long‐lost techniques are rediscovered along with the mentation that accompanied their use. Is the exercise valid? What are we looking for, if not ourselves?

Evolutionary psychologists Andrew Whiten and David Erdal () use an ecological framework to understand the niche separation that made early humans distinctive vis‐à‐vis other animals who were exploiting the same general environment. Members of the genus Homo foraged for foodstuffs and exploited available prey, thus separating themselves from other species that used different approaches to gaining sustenance. The niche separation, itself, was adaptive by making early human strategies complementary to, rather than in competition with, other species. Yet, what was so unique about early humans’ actions that together qualified them for a new and separate ecological niche? Whiten and Erdal use Tooby and DeVore's concept of a “cognitive niche” (, 209) to describe early humans’ “conceptually abstracting from a situation a model of what manipulations are necessary to achieve proximate goals that correlate with fitness.” Whiten and Erdal find that “…the concept of the hominin ‘cognitive niche’ really signals a new sophistication in cognitive powers, reflected in massive encephalization…” (2012, 2120). The use of hunting weapons and traps, sophisticated tracking, and later analysis of what took place on the hunt—all of these would illustrate the fruits of the conceptual abstraction characteristic of this ecological niche.

Whiten and Erdal go further to define early humans’ “sociocognitive niche,” which depends upon cooperation; egalitarianism (sharing for the benefit of the group, the use of negotiation, and group decision‐making); mindreading, theory of mind, or interpreting what others’ thoughts and views are, thus enabling “the band to act as a unified, sophisticated predatory ‘organism’” (2012, 2123); language; and cumulative culture that allows innovations to accrete and produce new cultural knowledge that is transmitted through the generations (2012, 2121–26).

Our Perspective on the Importance of Emotionality for Sentience

The focus in Whiten and Erdal is not on human emotion, although the reader cannot help but imagine the emotional exchanges that must have occurred during intense social interaction of early humans while they fought for survival and exploited their sociocognitive niche. Much attention has been paid to sociability as a foundation of sentience in early humans, and the development of rational thought is now conceived as solidly within a social matrix. However, emotionality has received less attention. There have been a few surveys of “emotion and archaeology” (e.g., Panksepp and Biven ), but only recently has the emerging field of the archaeology of emotion begun to take shape. Tarlow () carefully surveys models and methods for understanding emotion in the archaeological record.

As part of The Human Sentience Project, one of our goals is to explore emotionality as a basis for sentience, and as an important factor underlying the Advanced Domains of Thought. Our goal in a recent conference paper on “The Emotional Brain Hypothesis” is to illustrate that emotionally informed decision making and even scientific modeling evolved to the benefit of members of the genus Homo. We view emotion, as well as sociability, as important components of Matrix Thinking, and have evaluated each general component of sentience as having intellectual, perceptual, and emotional features. (A table with this analysis is in the sequel to this article.)

The history of emotion's importance is very old indeed. Sentience took hold as man's greatest biological adaptation, and it did so in a way that meant later humans could not help but vet rational decisions, in part, through emotion. Recent findings show that problem solving proceeds best for human children when they interact as a group on all levels: social, emotional, and intellectual. Dean et al. () illustrate this in a study where learning a task by human children is seen as fundamentally different from chimpanzees’ efforts to accomplish the same task. Individual children are encouraged by each other to tinker, change, explore, and try new things. Together, human children “ratchet up” the process of creativity until a synthesis is created and a solution is found.

Human adults do this, too. Emotion is an important part of cultural ratcheting within generations, and part of scaffolding between generations (Caporael et al. ). When we examine our lists of specific sentience components in Table , we conclude that scientific, religious, and artistic thought probably evolved in an interactive fashion, so that emotional evaluation of rational decision‐making took place constantly within a social context of individuals who encouraged, supported, challenged, and argued with each other in order to arrive at a decision for the benefit of the group. This mechanism operates indirectly, too. Emotion drives the modern scientist and he uses it to feel his way toward theory. The religious practitioner helps others to meaningfully interpret emotional and spiritual experience. The modern artist reinterprets the urban landscape in light of old human emotions.

Pagel on the Origins of Religion, Art, Music, and Morality

Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel points correctly to the capacity for culture as one of the human species’ defining attributes (2012). He views cultural “memes” as units that compete, just as genes compete in reproduction. This may strike many cultural anthropologists as a simplistic view of cultural evolution, perhaps rightly so, because the processes operating at the biological level are not the same as at the cultural level—that is, a specific culture held by a group of people, not a general capacity for culture, which is embedded in the species’ genome. In his application of the theory of biological evolution to cultural evolution he may be running into the problem of mixing levels of complexity, which theorists in Big History are now trying hard to resolve.

Yet, Pagel does provide tantalizing suggestions by the inclusion of art, music, religion, and morality as human attributes, within the context of evolutionary science. This is not new for philosophers, but it is relatively new for evolutionary biologists, and it may mean that we are finally approaching a time when capacities such as religious and artistic thinking may be understood from the perspective of the human genome. Pagel holds that humans share a general sense of morality cross‐culturally—this, in spite of differences in value systems and social control in widely different cultures. His work causes us to wonder if a cross‐cultural moral sameness for the species—if one exists—may indeed be the result of similar life cycle events (birth, puberty, marriage, and death), and similar processes of human cognition, such as Matrix Thinking.

Pagel writes on theories of the adaptive nature of “religion and other cultural ‘enhancers’” (2012, 132ff.) and confronts issues related to the maladaptive nature of religious excesses. He addresses “possible Darwinian roles for music and visual art” (2012, 164ff.). We will return to Pagel in the sequel to this article, with an evaluation of existing theories for the adaptive role of scientific, religious, and artistic thinking—our Advanced Domains of Thought that are the crowning achievements of human sentience, so far. We do this in an evolutionary context and apply tests for “special design.”

Defining the Matrix

The matrix used for Matrix Thinking is a mental representation that facilitates extended interaction of its structural components. The best way to visualize a matrix can vary for individuals, although a two‐dimensional rectangle is a good place to start. They are useful with two provisos. First, on a flat sheet of paper or a flat screen, matrices have two dimensions, and as we have seen in the case of the Extended Eucharist example above, three dimensions are sometimes useful. Indeed, as many dimensions as necessary can be used in Matrix Thinking, although four dimensions are often challenging. In Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time (1998), the reader is helped to imagine four dimensions (three spatial, one temporal) with cones, diagrams, and cartoons. Yet, three spatial dimensions and one time dimension can be difficult for many to manipulate, although some people do this every day. Three spatial dimensions are more easily pictured, as in computer‐assisted design programs and genome research programs in which three‐dimensional structures can be seen rotating on a flat screen. On flat paper, three dimensions are often diagrammed with x, y, and z dimensions. Several commonly used statistical packages such as SAS provide easy access to three and four dimensions for those who have a sizable database and can accomplish relatively easy programming operations. For example, multidimensional scaling, factor analysis, and canonical correlation routines can provide a good feel for third and fourth dimensions of variation in a database. Nevertheless, most of the examples used here are in two dimensions, for easy illustration.

A second proviso is that the symbolic structures that are, for example, applied to a new topic in Matrix Thinking are not always in rectangular form, themselves. In the Fictive Kinship example an entire kinship structure (frequently diagramed in a tree branch or root pattern) is held up to a new instance (a man lost and hurt), and a place is found for this lone individual in an existing kinship structure. His new position is perhaps determined according to his characteristics, or who in the group is in need of assistance from a man that is usually provided by kin (for example, marriage, house‐building, or sustenance). No doubt informal factors also play a role (who likes him and who he likes). Afterward, because he is then embedded in the kinship structure itself, he has to abide by its rules henceforth. Placement of him is a stellar example of the flexibility of cultural structures and their rules. Few groups can afford to waste an adult man or woman.

Similarly, Matrix Thinking can handle networks, holding up a network example to a new instance. For example, an epidemiological network of disease transmission, with Patient Zero at the center of a network with a certain network density and intensity of contacts, can be held up to a new outbreak of disease. Analysis helps to determine where to focus a prevention program. Matrix Thinking can be used for very practical purposes, and is, in fact, used every day in program evaluation and policy analysis.

The matrix, itself, in Matrix Thinking is a mental construct that is either implicit or explicit, and which provides a framework for comparison, contrast, extrapolation, and the creation of new cultural knowledge.

Let us now turn to a relatively simple example of Matrix Thinking in the creation of a new metaphor. In Table , an example of metaphor generation appears in a 1 × 3 rectangular grid with a top row of labels. In the left cell, the original metaphor is displayed. Its words are few, but when decompressed in the center cell, it has a fascinating meaning and clear structure. Some of the artistic satisfaction of the metaphor comes from its compressed nature, and unpacking the metaphor in the middle column takes some delight from it. Nevertheless, it provides a good opportunity to examine its structure and meaning, and to create the parallel metaphor (perhaps not quite so elegant), displayed in the right column. Decompression is akin to explication de texte, a type of structural analysis in French literature. In Table , a structure is laid bare and used to stamp out another, similar (although not exact) instance by searching for words and idioms in the toolkit of the English language. The second metaphor is an example of the creation of new culture.

Because our work is never far from trying to understand human capacities in a context of evolution and natural selection, we should take this opportunity to examine Robinson and Southgate's words on Neanderthals, in which they speculate that Neanderthals had an ability to imitate “the products of this [creative] dialectic… without ever ‘getting’ the cognitive trick” (2010, 702). It is quite possible that Neanderthals or some other collateral population of early hominins, could not, for example, understand the cognitive steps in deconstructing a metaphor and creating a new one (creation of new nonmaterial culture). For example, in Piers Anthony's () novel, Climate of Change, he shows behaviorally modern early humans reacting time and again to climate change, just as archaeologists suggest. He also shows their using a method for making clothes with a sharp instrument called an awl (lacing ties through holes, or sewing). He then shows Neanderthals copying the inventions of behaviorally modern humans. Did this happen? Did this happen in reverse (transmission from Neanderthal to modern humans)? A critical role for archaeologists is to develop methods for the sometimes difficult assessment of when a site shows original use of a faculty and when it shows copying. This will be extremely important in determining when cultural modernity—along with its “cognitive bag of tricks”—appeared, and how its spread.

Identifying Processes Used in the Matrix

To this point, we have suggested several types of processes that are used in Matrix Thinking. Other authors suggest some of these in their own work, for example, processes similar to Reich's theory of relational and contextual reasoning (Teske ), and the model of conceptual blending identified by Fauconnier and Turner ().

Here, we will summarize these creative cognitive processes. In doing so, it is important to keep two issues constantly in mind: first, that our original interest was in finding commonalities that underlie the Advanced Domains of Thought (science, religion, and art); and second, these cognitive processes had to be useful to early humans who followed a hunting and gathering lifeway. Each process must be viewed as an aide in finding purchase on the enormous task of surviving. If the process cannot be imagined as having a purpose in that lifestyle, then it would have to be viewed as derivative (not bad, just not quite so basic).

The processes we suggest include comparison, contrast, drawing two‐way and multiway analogies, developing ideal types, naming the results, and ultimately paradigm‐stretching. We suggest an overall process that systematically brings together, in a creative dialectic, different kinds of signs, symbolic structures, gradients, analogies, narratives, and entire paradigms, and applies them (either singly or in combination) to new material. What kind of material? Anything or any process laid bare through introspection and/or observation of natural phenomena. All of the components of Matrix Thinking can be imaginary, as in the pantheon of Greek gods and goddesses, although there are most often some connections to real problems that humans and their societies confront. What kind of symbolic structures are compared or applied? All kinds: structures of people, ideas, colors, or even emotions. The structures can be partly, or purely social and emotional. Indeed, structures colored by emotions and social relationships would be expected for intensely social and emotional members of the genus Homo. What are the results of Matrix Thinking? The results are new models, new analogies, new creations that have new characteristics, which are either observed or manufactured, real or imaginary, naturally occurring or culturally invented. Our “Advanced Domains of Thought” (science, religion, and art) are all deeply human enterprises, which all draw upon not just intellectual and cognitive knowledge of the world, but evaluation using social and emotional factors, as well.

Examples of Matrix Thinking

Our first examples of Matrix Thinking were developed as short, five‐minute dramatic presentations (“skits”), with two performers, to illustrate Matrix Thinking for our colleagues at a conference on astronomy and the arts. True to our two major fields (anthropology and astronomy), we developed skits on the appearance of three supernovae (unpredictable astronomical events) in A.D. 1054, 2054, and 3054, and how they were integrated into existing cultures, at three time points, each a thousand years apart.

The A.D. 1054 supernova was recorded by Chinese astrologers (the astronomers of their time) and called a “Guest Star.” It was so bright, it was visible during the day, and remained visible for two years at night. After the discovery of the telescope, this star was identified as the beautiful Crab Nebula, which is still expanding but no longer shines brightly enough to be seen in the day because it has lost energy in almost a thousand years. In the skit, the head of the Astronomical Bureau, Yang Weide, spies the Guest Star and records his prognostications associated with it, according to a coherent structure of astrological houses, movements, and beliefs. The Guest Star was integrated into a well developed system that was politically significant, because Yang Weide apparently struggled with his prognostication for two months before explaining the appearance of the Guest Star to Emperor Renzong of Song. His words are recorded in Chinese historical documents. He made a flattering report out of what was essentially an ominous appearance.

The A.D. 2054 and 3054 skits were necessarily science fiction (whose writing is an avocation for one of us). The 2054 supernova was of Eta Carinae, which is known now to have rather unstable features. The two characters in the skit are astronomers, who have developed a short list of unstable stars that might “go supernova.” They use five available telescopes to survey all of them, from an observatory on the Atacama Desert of highland Chile. One of the stars, “Eta Car,” blows, and Henry Yang (a descendant of Yang Weide in A.D. 1054) gains fame and a Nobel prize for capturing the data before a major supernova appears, thus enabling him to build a scientific model for why stars explode. Henry and his colleague, Xiao‐Xing (“morning star”), neatly fit their understanding of the Eta Car supernova into their existing scientific culture of 2054, which is not too far off.

The A.D. 3054 skit was so far in the future that we had to use a technology that does not exist now, and for which there are significant scientific problems in development. Borrowing from the Star Trek series, we chose “subspace communications,” that is, communication signals travelling at faster than light (FTL) speed. In the 3054 scenario, an anthropologist doing field work on Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, discovers that the astronomers on Europa have found a new supernova in the constellation Cassiopeia. The anthropologist quickly contacts her astronomer‐friend on Earth's Moon, to warn him that in just a few minutes, he would catch the light from the explosion of “Rho Cas.” Her “subspace call” comes just in time, and he is able to train his lunar telescope in the right direction to catch the initial explosion. This was possible only because the sub‐space call was travelling at an FTL speed. The light coming from Rho Cas was travelling at only the speed of light when it reached the Jovian moon Europa, and thence Earth's own Moon.

In both the A.D. 2054 and A.D. 3054 skits, it can be shown that Matrix Thinking is easily accomplished with cultures and technologies that do not yet exist, but, like the pantheon of Greek gods, live only in our imagination.