Nicholas Humphrey

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Professor Nicholas Keynes Humphrey (b. 27 March 1943) is a British psychologist who in 2004 held a School Professorship at the London School of Economics (LSE) and a half-time Professorship at the New School for Social Research in New York. His work has tackled issues such as consciousness and belief in the supernatural from a Darwinian perspective. His primatological research formed the basis of Machiavellian intelligence theory.

As of 2004, Professor Humphrey had published seven books and made a Channel 4 television series called "The Inner Eye" in 1986. He became involved in the anti-nuclear movement in the late 1970s and delivered a BBC Bronowski memorial lecture titled "Four Minutes to Midnight" in 1981. He edited a book of writings on war and peace with Robert Jay Lifton titled "In a Dark Time: Images for Survival" and won a Martin Luther King Memorial Prize in 1985 for this work.

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[edit] Early career

Nicholas Humphrey went to Westminster School between 1956-61 finishing with honors. Both his undergraduate degree and doctorate in psychology were undertaken at Trinity College, Cambridge. For his doctorate, he demonstrated the existence of a specific impairment in visual size constancy after lesions of the inferotemporal cortex, made the first single cell recordings from the superior colliculus of monkeys and discovered the existence of a previously unsuspected capacity for vision after total lesions of the striate cortex (a capacity which, when it was later confirmed in human beings, came to be called "blindsight").

Dr Humphrey continued his work into the sensory perceptions of primates in the next five years after 1967. This was based on an interest in evolutionary psychology of aesthetics. This developed into a theory on the function of the appreciation of beauty which turned into a radio broadcast which won the Glaxo Science Writers Prize in 1980.

[edit] Work on evolution of cognitive facilities

After spending three months with Dian Fossey and her gorillas in Rwanda followed by time with Richard Leakey at Lake Turkana, Dr Humphrey developed an interest in the evolution of human cognitive facilities. He wrote a review essay in 1975 titled "Social Function of Intellect" on the evolution of cognitive skills. This paper was reprinted a number of times and formed the basis of his book Consciousness Regained: Chapters in the Development of Mind.

Humphrey left his research fellow position at Cambridge to work on his Channel 4 television series "The Inner Eye" on the development of the human mind. This series was finished in 1986 with the release of a book of the same name in the same year.

In 1987, Daniel Dennett invited Dr Humphrey to work with him at his Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. They worked on developing an empirically based theory of consciousness and undertook a study on Multiple Personality Disorder.

His next book A History of the Mind published in 1992 put forward a theory on how consciousness as feeling rather than thinking may have evolved. This book won the inaugural British Psychological Society's annual Book of the Year Award in 1993. Professor Humphrey's writings on the subject continued in The Mind Made Flesh: Essays from the Frontiers of Evolution and Psychology (2002) and Seeing Red: A Study in Consciousness (2006).

[edit] Other work

Dr Humphrey became active in the anti-nuclear movement in the late 1970's. This led to an invitation to deliver the Bronowski lecture on the BBC in 1981. He titled his lecture, on the dangers of the arms race, "Four Minutes to Midnight". With Robert Lifton he edited an anthology of writings on war and peace titled In a Dark Time, which was released in 1984 and resulted in him winning the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize.

In 1992, Dr Humphrey was appointed to a Senior Research Fellowship at Darwin College, Cambridge funded by the Perrott-Warwick Fellowship in parapsychology. He undertook a skeptical study of parapsychological phenomena such as extra-sensory perception and psychokinesis, resulting in his 1995 book Soul Searching: Human Nature and Supernatural Belief (in America this book was published under the title Leaps of Faith).

Professor Humphrey has also worked on a number of TV and radio documentaries apart from "The Inner Eye". The topics range from the psychology of paranormal belief to the psycho-history of mediaeval animal trials. In 2005, he visited the Ulas family of human quadrupeds and published a report on them. A documentary The Family That Walks On All Fours based on this visit was broadcast on BBC2 in March 2006 [1], and on NOVA in November 2006.

[edit] External reference

[edit] Bibliography

  • Consciousness Regained: Chapters in the Development of Mind, Oxford University Press, 1983. [Spanish translation 1989.]
  • In a Dark Time, (ed. with R.J.Lifton), Faber & Faber 1984, Harvard University Press 1984.
  • The Inner Eye, Faber & Faber 1986, Faber Inc 1987, Vintage 1993, Oxford University Press 2002. [Italian and Spanish translations 1992, Japanese translation 1993, Korean translation forthcoming.]
  • A History of the Mind, Chatto & Windus 1992, Simon & Schuster 1992, Vintage 1993, Copernicus 1999. [Portuguese translation 1995; German translation 1996; Italian translation 1998; Spanish and Korean translations forthcoming.]
  • Soul Searching: Human Nature and Supernatural Belief, Chatto & Windus 1995, Vintage 1996, Basic Books 1996, Copernicus 1999. [Italian translation forthcoming.] (In the United States, retitled Leaps of Faith: Science, Miracles, and the Search for Supernatural Consolation.)
  • The Mind Made Flesh: Essays from the Frontiers of Evolution and Psychology, Oxford University Press, 2002. [Japanese translation forthcoming.]
  • Seeing Red: A Study in Consciousness, Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2006.

[edit] Journal articles

  • Constancy and the geometric illusions. Nature, 206, 744-745, 1965. (With M.J.Morgan).
  • The receptive fields of single units in the superior colliculus of the rat. Journal of Physiology, 189, 86p, 1967.
  • Vision in monkeys after removal of the striate cortex. Nature, 215, 595-597, 1967. (With L.Weiskrantz).
  • Responses to visual stimuli of single units in the superior colliculus of rats and monkeys. Experimental Neurology, 20, 312-340, 1968.
  • Size constancy in monkeys with inferotemporal lesions. Quarterly Journal Experimental Psychology, 21, 225- 238, 1969. (With L.Weiskrantz).
  • Varieties of colour anomia. Brain, 92, 847-860, 1969. (With J.M. and S.M.Oxbury).
  • Colour and brightness preferences in monkeys. Nature, 229, 615-617, 1971.
  • Contrast illusions in perspective. Nature, 232, 91- 93, 1971.
  • 'Interest' and 'pleasure': two determinants of a monkey's visual preferences. Perception, 1, 395-416, 1972.[2]
  • Seeing and nothingness. New Scientist, 53, 682-684, 1972.
  • Les illusions visuelles. La Recherche, 3, 631-638, 1972.
  • Status and the left cheek. New Scientist, 59, 437-439. 1973.[3]
  • The illusion of beauty. Perception 2, 429-439, 1973. [4]
  • The apparent heaviness of colours. Nature, 250, 164-165, 1974. (With E.Pinkerton). [5]
  • Interactive effects of unpleasant light and unpleasant sound. Nature, 253, 346-347, 1975. (With G.R.Keeble). [6]
  • The private world of consciousness. New Scientist, pp. 23-25, 8 January 1994.
  • Reflections on consciousness. The Psychologist, 7, 259, 1994.
  • Kinds of Minds. Journal of Philosophy, 94, 97-103, 1997.
  • Carl Sagan: a tribute. Skeptical Inquirer, 21, no. 2, 14, 1997.
  • Cave art, autism and the evolution of the human mind. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 8, 165-191, 1998; reprinted in Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6, 116-143, 1999. [7]
  • The power of prayer. Skeptical Inquirer, 24 (3), 61, 2000.
  • Shamanism and cognitive evolution [Commentary on Michael Winkelman]. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 12, 91-3, 2002 [8]
  • Do babies know what they look like? Doppelgängers and the phenomenology of infancy. In Susan Hurley and Nick Chater (Eds.), Perspectives on Imitation: From Cognitive Neuroscience to Social Science. Cambridge: MIT Press. (2005)[9]
  • with Skoyles, John R. and Keynes, Roger (2005) Human hand-walkers : five siblings who never stood up. Discussion Paper. Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, London, UK [10]

[edit] External links