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Merlin Donald

Donald, Merlin

Donald, Merlin

Professor Emeritus, Queen's University; Fellow, World Academy of Art & Science

Job Title

Professor Emeritus, Queen's University; Fellow, World Academy of Art & Science

Merlin Donald is Professor Emeritus at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario; Adjunct Professor at Case Western Reserve University, and Honorary Professor at Aarhus University, Denmark. A cognitive neuroscientist with a background in philosophy, he is the author of many scientific papers, and two influential books: Origins of the Modern Mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition (Harvard, 1991), and A Mind So Rare: The evolution of human consciousness (Norton, 2001). He is a Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association, the Royal Society of Canada, and the World Academy of Art & Science.

ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR

The Digital Era: Challenges for the Modern Mind   ( Mind, Thinking & Creativity ), ( Knowledge, Science & Values )
 Get Full Text in PDF Abstract The digital media are the new interface between mind and world. They enable us to gain instant access to an infinitely expandable collective memory system. This is an indispensable breakthrough, but has the potential to seriously violate the ancient co-evolutionary pact between brain and culture which has kept the rate of cultural and technological change within tolerable limits. Traditional cultures, with all their flaws, stayed well within the adaptive...