Imagining the Emergence of the Human: Reflections on Chris Johnson's Late Work

This paper offers a series of commentaries and reflections on certain of Christopher Johnson's lines of argument as perceived from the perspective of cognitive studies, with particular reference to the notion of embodied cognition. It opens with a brief outline of his work on the evolution of human intelligence in the context of the conceptually parallel question of the evolution of cognition. Subsequently, it raises questions about what this account does not include — notably an anthropological view of the role of literature — and what difference that absence might make. It further proposes that a spectrum view of the relationship between ‘body’ and ‘mind’ might helpfully supplement a view which is by implication oppositional and hierarchical. The overall concern of the paper is to reflect on what it might mean to ‘mediate thought’, and more specifically on the economy of such (cognitive) mediation.