A (Really) Brief History of Knowledge
A (Really) Brief History of Knowledge
This is a big subject—a long story—but I will keep it short, brevity being the soul of wisdom. We all know those books about the history of this or that area of human knowledge: physics, astronomy, mathematics, psychology (not so much biology). They are quite engaging, partly because they show the progress of knowledge—obstacles overcome, discoveries made. But they only cover the most recent chapters of the whole history of knowledge—human recorded history. Before that, there stretches a vast history of knowledge, human and animal. Knowledge has evolved over eons, from the primitive to the sophisticated. It would be nice to have a story of the origins and phases of knowledge, analogous to the evolutionary history of other animal traits: when it first appeared and to whom, how it evolved over time, what the mechanisms were, what its phenotypes are. It would be good to have an evolutionary epistemic science. This would be like cognitive science—a mixture of psychology, biology, neuroscience, philosophy, and the various branches of knowledge. It need not focus on human knowledge but could take in the knowledge possessed by other species; there could be an epistemic science of the squirrel, for example. One of the tasks of this nascent science would be the ordering of the various types of knowledge in time—what preceded what. In particular, what was the nature of the very first form of knowledge—the most primitive type of knowledge. For that is likely to shape all later elaborations. We will approach these questions in a Darwinian spirit, regarding animal knowledge as a biological adaptation descended from earlier adaptations. As species and traits of species evolve from earlier species and traits, so knowledge evolves from earlier knowledge, forming a more or less smooth progression (no saltation). Yet we must respect differences—the classic problem of all evolutionary science. We can’t suppose that all knowledge was created simultaneously, or that each type of knowledge arose independently. And we must be prepared to accept that the origins of later knowledge lie in humble beginnings quite far removed from their eventual forms (like bacteria and butterflies). The following question therefore assumes fundamental importance: what was the first type of knowledge to exist on planet Earth?
I believe that pain was the first form of consciousness to exist.[1] I won’t repeat my reasons for saying this; I take it that it is prima facie plausible, given the function of pain, namely to warn of damage and danger. Pain is a marvelous aid to survival (the “survival of the painiest”). Then it is a short step to the thesis that the most primitive form of knowledge involves pain, either intrinsically or as a consequence. We can either suppose that pain itself is a type of knowledge (of harm to the body or impending harm) or that the organism will necessarily know it is in pain when it is (how could it not know?). Actually, I think the first claim is quite compelling: pain is a way of knowing relevant facts about the body without looking or otherwise sensing them—to feel pain is to have this kind of primordial knowledge. To experience pain is to apprehend a bodily condition—and in a highly motivating way. In feeling pain your body knows it is in trouble. It is perceiving bodily harm. Somehow the organism then came to have an extra piece of knowledge, namely that it has the first piece, the sensation itself. It knows a mode of knowing. Pain is thus inherently epistemic—though not at this early stage in the way later knowledge came to exist. Call it proto-knowledge if you feel queasy about applying the modern concept. We can leave the niceties aside; the point is that the first knowledge was inextricably bound up with the sensation of pain, which itself no doubt evolved further refinements and types. Assuming this, we have an important clue to the history of knowledge as a biological phenomenon: knowledge in all its forms grew from pain knowledge; it has pain knowledge in its DNA, literally. Pain is the most basic way that organisms know the world—it is known as painful. Later, we may suppose, pleasure came on the scene, perhaps as a modification of pain, so that knowledge now had some pleasure mixed in with it; knowledge came to have a pain-pleasure axis. Both pain and pleasure are associated with knowledge, it having evolved from these primitive sensations. This is long ago, but the evolutionary past has a way of clinging on over time. Bacterial Adam and Eve knew pain and pleasure
(in that order), and we still sense the connection. Knowledge can hurt, but it can also produce pleasure.
Notice that the external world has not yet come into the picture. There is as yet no knowledge of material objects in space, so the first knowledge precedes this kind of knowledge (subjective knowledge precedes objective knowledge). But it is reasonable to suppose that the next big stage in the onward march of knowledge—the age of the dinosaurs, so to speak—involves knowledge of space, time, and material bodies (the “Stone Age”). I mean practical knowledge not advanced theoretical knowledge—knowing-how, as we now describe it. The organism knows how to get about without banging into things and making a mess. We could call this “substance knowledge”. How pain knowledge led to this type of knowledge we don’t know; what we do know is that it marked a major advance in the power of knowledge, because it introduced the subject-object split. Now knowledge has polarity built into it: here the state of knowing, there the thing known. In the pain phase such a division did not exist in res, but when external bodies came to be known knowledge distinguished itself from the thing known. That is, perception of the external world involves a subject-object split. Distant things are seen and heard. This division was already present in plants as they orient themselves to external objects—the sun, water, the earth. But they don’t know these things, though it is as if they do; it took pain (and pleasure) to convert this kind of directedness into knowledge proper. If trees felt pain, they might well be perceiving subjects, given their tropisms and orienting behavior. So, let’s declare the age of sense perception the second great phase in the development of knowledge on planet Earth. The two types of knowledge will be connected, because sensed objects are sources of pain and pleasure: it’s good to know about external objects because they are the things that occasion pain or pleasure, and hence aid survival.
I will now speed up the narrative, as promised. Next on the scene we will have knowledge of motion (hence space and time), knowledge of other organisms and their behavior (hence their psychology), followed by knowledge of right and wrong, knowledge of beauty, scientific knowledge of various kinds, social and political knowledge, and philosophical knowledge. Eventually we will have the technology of knowledge: books, libraries, education, computers, artificial intelligence. All this grows from a tiny seed long ago swimming in a vast ocean: the sensation of pain. From “Ouch!” to “Eureka!”. We go to universities because our distant ancestors felt pricks and pangs: one sort of knowledge led to the other after a brief period of time (by cosmic standards). A super-scientist might have seen it coming (“It won’t be long before they have advanced degrees and diplomas”). The point I want to stress is that this is a natural evolutionary process, governed by the usual laws of evolution–cumulative, progressive, opportunistic, gradual. As species evolve from other species by small alterations, so it is with the evolution of knowledge; there is no simultaneous independent creation of all the species of knowledge. Knowledge-how, acquaintance knowledge, propositional knowledge, the a priori and the a posteriori, knowledge of fact and knowledge of value, science and common sense—all this stems from the same distant root (though no doubt supplemented). It was pain that got the ball rolling, and maybe nothing else would have (pain really marks a watershed in the evolution of life on Earth). Knowledge of language came very late in the game and is not be regarded as fundamental. Epistemology is much broader than language. Knowledge has all the variety and complexity we expect from life forms with a long evolutionary history. Quite a bit of the anatomy of advanced organisms is devoted to epistemic aims–the eyes, the ears, the nose, the sense of touch, memory, thought, and so on. Knowledge is not a negligible adaptation. Yet it must have comparatively simple origins. It didn’t arise when a human woke up one bright morning and felt a love of wisdom in his bosom. It arose from primitive swampy creatures trying to survive another day.
I will make one further point: knowledge, like life in general, is a struggle with obstacles. Survival isn’t easy, and nor is knowledge. In both there are obstacles to be overcome, resistance and recalcitrance to be fought, battles to win or lose. Knowledge is hard: you know it don’t come easy. It’s a difficult task. Those books about the history of science draw this lesson repeatedly—it wasn’t easy to figure out the structure of the solar system or the laws of genetics. But that is part of the very nature of knowledge as an evolved capacity—the struggle to be informed. The organism needs to know if it is in danger, so pain came along; we would like to know whether the Earth is the center of the universe, so astronomy was invented. Knowing is the overcoming of obstacles, like the rest of evolved life. Knowledge was born in pain and struggle. It is not for the fainthearted. This is epistemology naturalized.[2]
[1] See my “Consciousness and Evolution”, “The Cruel Gene”, “Pain and Unintelligent Design”, and “Evolution of Pain”.
[2] Quine talked about epistemology naturalized, eschewing (his word) traditional epistemology. I am not eschewing anything; I am adding not subtracting. I want to acknowledge the biological roots of knowledge, finding knowledge in nature (it’s not about schools and examinations). Books are recent accessories. The very first knowledge is an organism feeling pain for the first time: it hurts but at least it gains valuable information. Eventually, organisms grow to love knowledge—we become scholars of reality. The pain is a distant memory. Still, if you read the book of knowledge (chapter 3 of the Book of Life), you find a footnote to primordial pain.
Mr. McGinn,
Are you familiar with Max S. Bennett’s book A History of Knowledge? Bennett speaks of five decisive evolutionary advances. The first is the creation of directionality and right/left bilateralism. From this arises the good/bad dichotomy—for example, hot/cold; food/nothing.
A second comment I would like to make is the following. Structurally, your thinking closely resembles existential phenomenology. I am thinking of two authors. First, Heidegger in Being and Time. I believe the structure of your thinking is the same as the one he presents. There is, however, an important difference: whereas Heidegger presents a static anthropology, you present it as evolving, which is more precise.
The second author is Merleau-Ponty. The French author speaks extensively about bodily knowledge. He attempts to locate proto-knowledge in the organism. He speaks of the intentional arc prior to the mind–body split. He does not use Darwinian categories, which ultimately condemns him to speaking in metaphors. But the intention is there.
Kind regards,
Sergio
Very interesting. I have not read or even heard of the Bennett book. I have read some Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. In the analytic tradition I don’t know of anything comparable to my proposals. It is a good subject.
K. O. Apel speaks of the “corporeal a priori” in order to think about the same phenomenon. He attempts to approach the same phenomenon from the standpoint of Kantian anthropology, but he fails. He addresses the issue only briefly and in a very obscure manner. (Kantian anthropology has the Greek structure of a mind–body dichotomy, which makes it impossible to approach the phenomenon empirically.) I believe that the most successful approach in continental philosophy is that of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty (since the anthropology underlying their thought is no longer Greek, but Asian). However, this approach needs to be complemented by the Darwinian perspective that you develop in order to provide it with scientific content.
The Darwinian perspective is essential–plus a decent analysis of what knowledge is. I particularly like my pain theory of knowledge.
+1 on the Max Bennett book. Excellent rapid survey and synopsis of the natural history of human intelligence. A philosophical ‘annotation’ or commentary on that book would be fun to read.
I like the approach you are taking here and would welcome further elaboration.
I hope others take up the mantle–it’s an interdisciplinary project.
I use the conclusion of Bennett’s book to produce a summary of his theses. I hope you like it.
Advance 1 occurred when radial animals (spherical in shape) transformed into elongated or bilaterally symmetrical animals. In this way, they simplified spatial orientation and locomotion problems. They concentrated motor decision-making at one end of the body. It became a matter of establishing valence in bilateral decision-making. The following orientation and movement vectors developed: pleasure, pain, satiety, and stress.
Advance 2 was the reinforcement of repeated learning. The bilateral animal developed the structures of the vertebral column, eyes, gills, and heart. The spine (which was the encephalic part) recognized patterns, while the rest (basal ganglia) learned through trial and error. The following intellectual and affective vectors developed: learning by omission, temporal perception, curiosity, fear, excitement, disappointment, and relief.
Advance 3 was simulation, or the capacity to simulate stimuli and actions. According to Bennett, a 10 cm mammal 100 million years ago developed, on the basis we already know, the modern neocortex. This allowed it to simulate and project counterfactual states of reality. It learned to anticipate what would happen if it did something before actually doing it. Learning through imagination, episodic memory, and planning ability emerged. It was not only thinking about escape routes or risky movements, but also about fine bodily movements.
Advance 4 was mentalization, or modeling one’s own mind. To the capacity to simulate actions was now added the ability to simulate mental states, intentions, and knowledge. This pattern was applied to understanding others (theory of mind) and to learning by observation.
Advance 5 was speech: accumulating knowledge not through bodily action but through thought.
The next advance, Advance 6, will be the decoupling of thought from the limiting biological bases of the brain: a compact brain mass that can no longer grow inside the skull, a biological heat source, and a scarce energy source such as sugars. AI will no longer need this, as it will not be based on carbon but on silicon. Silicon’s processing speed will be much faster than that of carbon. This will amplify cognitive capacity, freed from human biology. Of course, AI will follow the mental path traced by the first bilaterals.
I like it: very naturalistic. I suppose it could be dovetailed into my scheme.
I don’t dislike Bennett’s approach. However, as it progresses, it becomes more questionable or debatable. It turns into a mechanism in which any claim fits with the preceding ones. The reason, I think, is that it does not make its philosophical assumptions explicit.
By contrast, you make an effort to spell them out. I believe this path is more honest.
There is no point in accumulating scientific data if it is not organized according to an explicit anthropology. And one must be willing to engage in discussion about it.
I quite agree: science without philosophy is apt to be barren and superficial. Really, it is not scientific enough.
Yes indeed. It is a kind of workable and down to earth “Sorge”. It is very promising.
Mr. Mcginn:
I’m reading your book about the hand. I find it very interesting and usefull.
You say in chapter 4: “No artificial hand is anywhere near matching what every human hand can achieve without its owner even thinking about it”.
Do you still think the same?
Have you seen this?
Clone Synthetic Hand v18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4Gp8oQey5M
Regards,
Sergi
That is quite impressive, but nowhere near what the human hand-brain can do in terms of versatility. I’d like to see an artificial hand play a guitar.
My book on the hand should have more readers. It seems to be beyond the ability of philosophical readers to understand.
You’re recreating the work of Peter Damerow and the broader work of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG).
Damerow (along with collaborators like Jürgen Renn) spent decades building a “evolutionary epistemic science” under the framework of Historical Epistemology.
A few key points of “unintentional overlap”:
• The Concept of “Evolutionary” Knowledge: Damerow’s 1995 book, Abstraction and Representation: Essays on the Cultural Evolution of Thinking, explicitly frames the development of cognition and knowledge (like counting and writing) as a long-term evolutionary process.
• The Scope of “Knowledge”: Damerow and Renn have pioneered the “Longue Durée” approach, which looks at the “Globalization of Knowledge” across millennia, including how practical, intuitive knowledge (like that of builders or navigators) evolves into formal theoretical science.
• The “Naturalization” of Epistemology: You reference Quine and suggests he is “adding” to the idea of naturalized epistemology by finding its roots in pain. Damerow’s work actually provides the empirical, historical data for how “natural” cognitive structures (mental models) are transformed by culture and technology over time.
I’m aware of evolutionary epistemology, but not done in the philosophical form I favor. Quine doesn’t talk about pain in the way I do; his idea of epistemology naturalized is completely different.
I am curious to know your thinking why it is necessary pain might precede pleasure. Happy to check out the sources you mentioned if the thinking can’t be stated adequately in the space of a blog comment. It seems to me that knowledge of pain in and of itself might at least hint at its opposite (more pain if go this way; less pain if go that way). It occurs to me that it might be possible for proto-pleasure to occur first (more nutrient if go this way). I can’t recall at the moment if the early bacterial motility functionality I’ve read about was theorized to be evolved for one or the other, though.
It is a speculation based on the idea that pain is a lot more relevant to survival than pleasure, especially if the organism moves around. Avoidance responses are vital, approach responses less so. That’s why pain is so extreme. I would’t be at all surprised if pain occurs in the fetus before pleasure, or lower down the phylogenetic scale than pleasure. Animals would die without pain, but could get by without feeling pleasure.
Yes, I see. I could see also that pain serves as a definitive “not-me” knowledge, where obtaining nutrients (so long as it lasts) could exist without any sense of differentiation (“this nutrient here is part of me” being not far off from “that nutrient over there is part of me”), especially if there were first nutrient-processing situations where motility was not necessary.
FWIW: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7004002/
(To be clear I’m not positing self-knowledge at that level; but I think you know what I mean.)
There is also the point that pain responses are reflexive and hard-wired, while pleasure responses are more flexible and learned.
I was wondering about this myself. It may have been safer to posit that knowledge began with “sensation” — some sort of feedback. Pain implies to me a level of sophistication higher than mere sensation, but this is my first engagement with the subject, so I claim no special understanding of it. All I have at this stage are further questions, but I remain grateful for the introduction to the issue.
No, pain is a sensation of the most basic kind–a reflex of the nervous system. It has a sensory side and a behavioral side.
“It is a speculation based on the idea that pain is a lot more relevant to survival than pleasure, especially if the organism moves around.”
I’m 100% with your take on the matter. Pain is the dish, pleasure is icing on the cake. Darwin and thermodynamics combined.
Quite so.
One last thing: pathology is the evolutionary price of flexibility. Dealing with pathology (i.e. pain/suffering) rules any culture, homo sapiens included. It takes a whole village to grow up a kid, it takes one fool in the village to make risk analyses. Focus on pain is what drives human life on earth, geopolitics anno 2026 included. Pleasure is no issue.
I totally agree: pain is at the center of human (and animal) life. Pleasure is an after thought. Life is suffering-avoidance.
Elaine Scarry’s “The Body in Pain” seems to me an antecedent. She argues that the closest phenomenon to what philosophers consider epistemological certainty is pain, but also that its inherently unstable because it can never be adequately communicated from the pain-bearer to others.
You sure as hell know you are in pain when you are–but is pleasure that self-intimating? On the other hand, isn’t certainty more pleasurable than painful?
You might be interested in reading Jerry Coyne’s (he’s a professor emeritus of biology) comment on his blog: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2026/01/23/colin-mcginn-on-the-evolution-of-knowledge/
Oh boy, I suppose I will have to respond to this. He seems to think I’m horribly confused about consciousness and knowledge!
Given that the term pain comes laden with multiple meanings, why did you choose this over nocioception?
Because I relied on the reader to interpret the word “pain” in the intended way, as philosophers generally do.
Very interesting summary. How would you take into consideration instinct as a form of knowledge? Would instinct come before perception or vice-versa?
That’s a good question, because instinct is often if not always imbued with knowledge. The animal knows what to eat or mate with, for example. Also, perception is instinctive–you don’t learn to see, as you don’t learn to digest.
You make a history of knowledge starting from pain , don’t you think that it is possible to do the same thing for phenomenality?
Yes, I do. So, the sensation of pain is the beginning of consciousness and knowledge. The mind begins in an unpleasant reflex.
“The mind begins in an unpleasant reflex.”
I’m not sure. According to the hypothesis ‘self’defence is prime. Seems to me that behavioral reflexes are pleasant nor unpleasant, they’re * effective* or not. I guess pleasure is a by-product of * effiency * of the reflex. It’s the ratio energy investment / energy gain that counts. It’s what makes us (tennis players, craftsmen, academics, artists, family people) tick.
There are also mental reflexes. Sometimes mental causation is necessary for full efficacy of behavior (that’s why the mind exists).
An other question :
Don’t you think that using the world « pain » for elementary organisms can lead to think that the painful sensation of an elementary organism (a worm for exemple) is the same than ours. Would’nt we use something like proto pain or (in a more neutral way) négative qualitative effect?
Proto-pain is still pain, even though different from pain as we know it today.
Given the choice between studying consciousness or knowledge, 50 years ago I threw consciousness overboard. Au fond it’s metaphysics, recently culminated in the so called hard problem. I see no way to solve that quasi-problem other than discarding it. I ‘m an epistemologist i.e. interested in how knowledge works, not what it ‘is’. I agree 100% with the hypothesis of the pain-phenomenon being first knowledge. No way to expermimentally proving/refuting the hypothesis but it’s good heuristics. I get the impression that opponent J. Coyne confuses the heuristic function of a hypothesis with finding ‘truth’. Oh well so be it.
He seems blind to the nature of scientific method–has he never heard of Karl Popper?
Perhaps pleasure emerged with sexual reproduction.
I think it must have been earlier, in connection with food. But sexual reproduction is associated with extreme pleasure in many animals. Note that sexual reproduction is not always associated with pleasure, as with simple organisms and plants.
Your explanation reminded me of Charles Peirce’s semiotic theory, particularly the theee concepts of firstness (perceiving pure sensations), secondness (becoming aware of the existente of objects in reality) and thirdness (constructing more complex rules by realizing of patterns in reality).
Thank you for your post.
Yes, some overlap there, especially the first two.