For about 30 years, including 20 years as Co‐Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Studies (1998‐2018) Michael Tomasello led an observational and experimental search for the fundamental differences in developmental psychology between humans and our closest living cousins the chimpanzee and bonobo. This book is a summary of the research methods and findings. In a few words, Tomasello and colleagues were “In Search of Human Uniqueness”—the title of Chapter 1 with emphasis added. The word “unique” is used multiple times in every chapter to describe human differences from the nonhuman apes. Their effort adds to a noble quest for the Holy Grail question of “What is humanness?”, a question that winds its way through hominin philosophy, science, religion, and art since the earliest representations of being a person more than 40 000 years ago.

Tomasello built his quest on ideas developed in the early 20th century by Lev Vygotsky. In a life cut short by tuberculosis (dying in 1934 aged 37), Vygotsky created a sociocultural theory of human development which hypothesized that infants and children acquire their cultural values, beliefs, and problem‐solving strategies through socially mediated collaborative dialogues with more knowledgeable members of society, especially adults (McLeod, 2018). In contrast to other influential developmental psychologists, and Tomasello specifically mentions Jean Piaget who proposed that human cognitive development is programed (genetically one presumes) and universal to all people, Vygotsky and his followers placed more emphasis on the social and cultural milieu affecting cognitive development. Vygotskian hypotheses also placed more emphasis on the role of language and interactions with adults on cognitive development.

There is too much research available to review here that is supportive of the Vygotskian perspective. The research by Tomasello and colleagues extends and supports Vygotskian hypotheses by, as Tomasello writes, examining in close detail the, “…ontogeny of uniquely human psychology…” (p. 301). The ontogenetic time that Tomasello considers is birth to age 6 or 7 years. For humans, these are the years that are defined in terms of growth rate, feeding style, motor development, and language abilities as infancy, birth to ~2.9 years, and childhood, ~3.0 to 6.9 years (Bogin, 2021).

The book has 12 chapters with the first devoted to the background of Tomasello's purpose and Chapter 2, titled “Evolutionary Foundations,” providing some review of human evolution and human ontogeny. Tomasello correctly states that human cognitive abilities and human culture are part of human biological evolution. Human biologists and bioanthropologists will likely find the coverage of evolution and ontogeny sorely lacking in terms of both biological detail and citation to any major researchers. It is impossible for me to understand how Tomasello hopes to integrate biology and evolution into a theory of human ontogeny without referencing anything or anyone related to the relevant research. A few 20th‐century researchers of biological‐evolutionary human ontogeny are: D'arcy Thompson, Julian Huxley, Adolph Schultz, Wilton Marion Krogman, Franz Boas, James M. Tanner, Elizabeth S. Watts, and James A. Gavan. Contemporary researchers missing from the Tomasello review are B. Holly Smith, Christopher Dean, Tanya M. Smith, Debra R. Bolter, Luis Rios, Steven R. Leigh, Melvin Konner, and Anne Pusey. Several colleagues and I review in greater detail the scholarship on the human pattern of physical growth, life history biology, and their place in human biocultural evolution (Bogin, Varea, Hermanussen, & Scheffler, 2018). That review includes my own work on these topics spanning the past 33 years and presented in the three editions of my book Patterns of Human Growth (Bogin, 2021, 1999, 1988). A few passages in Tomasello's book have discussion that seems to be based on my publications and those of others listed here, but no citation is given to any researcher, leaving the naïve reader to assume that these ideas originate with Tomasello. Two anthropologists given some credit for contributions to the evolutionary ontogeny of human social relationships are Sarah Hrdy and Kristen Hawkes. Minor citations are provided to Kim Hill, A. Magdalena Hurtado, and Michael Gurven.

Chapters 3 through 10 present Tomasello's discussion of his eight uniquely human cognitive and social capacities. These are (a) social cognition, (b) communication, (c) cultural learning, (d) cooperative thinking, (e) collaboration, (f) prosociality, (g) social norms, and (g) moral identity. Each chapter tells the reader what humans got from apes, that is, what the chimpanzee or bonobo can do, and then what seems to be unique about humans. Tomasello states that the apes have some of the rudiments for these capacities, which are biologically in‐built. Readers are never told what it is about ape biology that allows for any of the eight cognitive and social capacities. Tomasello avoids biology by writing, “Each of these pathways has its foundations in great ape functioning, so we do not need to explain the exitance of these functional domains; we only need to explain their transformation from a great ape form into a uniquely human form” (p. 306). Even if readers accept the nonhuman ape foundations, Tomasello does not provide any material‐biological basis for the human transformation. Presumably, the human brain plays some part, but no discussion or reference to the anatomy or physiology of the brain, or nervous system, or endocrine system, or any basic biology is provided. Rather, Tomasello emphasizes many times that the nonhuman ape condition provides the “biological preparedness” for the eight unique human cognitive and social capacities which together give people shared intentionality. According to Tomasello, shared intentionality is the basis of all special human abilities in social, cognitive, and cultural behavior.

Tomasello and colleagues have published many, many articles, chapters, and previous books on shared intentionality. Based on those previous works (especially Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll, 2005) I understand shared intentionality to be the ability to impute or attribute mental states to self and to others. Especially important is the ability to infer the intentions of others and the disposition to align these intentions with one's own physical and emotional states. There is no doubt that human shared intentionality is a critically important ability. Nor is their doubt that humans are better at this than any other primate, perhaps any other animal species. But the idea of shared intentionality did not arise spontaneously from the research conducted at Tomasello's lab. Intellectual roots extend back more a century and there is late 20th century experimental research with nonhuman apes leading to the demonstration of “theory of mind,” which has conceptual overlap with shared intentionality (Povinelli & Preuss, 1995). Psychoanalysis treatment traditions use the terms intersubjectivity or intersubjective awareness, which are very close in meaning, even identical, to ‘shared intentionality.’ The origin of intersubjectivity in psychoanalysis is credited to Heinz Kohut (1913 – 1981) and the terms themselves were first used by Atwood and Stolorow (1984).

Tomasello's new book excels at explaining how human shared intentionality develops in terms of social and cognitive behavior between birth and age 7 years. The book jacket summarizes this: “The first step occurs around nine months, with the emergence of joint intentionality, exercised mostly with caregiving adults. The second step occurs around three years, with the emergence of collective intentionality involving both authoritative adults, who convey cultural knowledge, and coequal peers, who elicit collaboration and communication. Finally, by age six or seven, children become responsible for self‐regulating their beliefs and actions so that they comport with cultural norms.” There are clear and very useful illustrations of these steps and of the ape‐human differences in almost every chapter.

Did Tomasello find the essence of human “uniqueness”? Every species, of course, is unique—that is the nature of a species. Every person is a unique product of biological, cultural, and personal history. Every snowflake is unique. I am a member of the UCSD/Salk Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (https://carta.anthropogeny.org/). CARTA's primary goal is to explore and explain the origins of the human phenomenon. We eschew the word unique because to date every proposed human unique feature, ability, or capacity can be found to some extent in one or more species of animals. I still cling to some features of human symbolic language as “very special” if not unique, such as displacement and infinite productivity, but I remain agnostic about shared intentionality. More observation and experimentation with more species are needed. More and better fieldwork with human foragers and horticultural societies are also required. Better analytical methods, especially mixed methods approaches, are required (Weisner, 2018). That new research may never be performed, for ethical reasons related to maintaining chimpanzees, bonobos, and other primates in captivity, and because so few traditional forager and horticultural societies remain.

As a one‐stop resource to summarize the past 30 years of research by Tomasello and colleagues, the book Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny is valuable. Tomasello plants the seeds of his research and this new book in the garden of scientific inquiry called evolutionary psychology. This is a relatively young discipline and its garden needs time to bear mature fruit. To quote again from the jacket the book hopes to show how, “…biology creates the conditions under which culture does its work.” I did not find any meaningful biology, especially biological anthropology and evolutionary biology, in this book. Tomasello's ideas on human ontogeny, and evolutionary psychology in general, have a lot of growth, development, and maturation to complete.

在大约30年的时间里，其中包括20年来担任马克斯·普朗克（Max Planck）进化研究所的联合主任（1998-2018），迈克尔·托马塞洛（Michael Tomasello）进行了观察和实验研究，寻找人类与我们近亲的黑猩猩和近亲之间发展心理学的根本差异。 no黑猩猩。这本书是研究方法和发现的总结。简而言之，Tomasello和他的同事们“追求人类的独特性”” —第1章的标题，并增加了重点。在每一章中多次使用“独特”一词来描述人类与非人类猿的区别。他们的努力增加了对圣杯问题的崇高追求：“什么是人性？”，这个问题早在四万多年前就已成为人的代表，贯穿人类哲学，科学，宗教和艺术。 。

Tomasello对Lev Vygotsky在20世纪初提出的想法进行了探索。在因结核病而缩短的生命中（去世于1934年，享年37岁），维果斯基创造了人类发展的社会文化理论，假设婴儿和儿童通过与更多知识渊博的成员进行社会介导的协作性对话来获得其文化价值，信仰和解决问题的策略社会，尤其是成年人（McLeod，2018）。与其他有影响力的发展心理学家形成鲜明对比的是，托马塞洛特别提到让·皮亚杰（Jean Piaget）提出，人类的认知发展是程序性的（通常是一种假设），并且对所有人都是普遍的，维果斯基及其追随者更加重视影响认知发展的社会和文化环境。Vygotskian假说也更加重视语言的作用以及与成年人的互动对认知发展的影响。

这里有太多的研究可以回顾，这支持了维果斯基的观点。正如托马塞洛所写，托马塞洛及其同事的研究扩展和支持了维果斯基的假设，并仔细研究了“……人类心理学的本体论……”（第301页）。Tomasello认为的发生时间是6或7岁。对于人类而言，这些年是根据生长速度，进食方式，运动发育和语言能力（如婴儿，出生至2.9岁和儿童至3.0至6.9岁）定义的（Bogin，2021年）。

该书有12章，第一章专门介绍托马塞洛的目的背景，第二章称为“进化基础”，提供了有关人类进化和人类本体论的一些综述。托马塞洛正确地指出，人类的认知能力和人类文化是人类生物进化的一部分。人类生物学家和生物人类学家很可能会发现进化论和个体论的报道在生物学细节和对任何主要研究者的引用方面都非常缺乏。对于我而言，我无法理解托马塞洛如何希望将生物学和进化论整合到人类个体发育理论中，而无需引用任何与相关研究相关的信息。二十世纪一些有关人类进化的人类进化论的研究者是：达西·汤普森，朱利安·赫x黎，阿道夫·舒尔茨，威尔顿·马里恩·克罗格曼，Franz Boas，James M.Tanner，Elizabeth S.Watts和James A.Gavan。Tomasello评论中缺少的当代研究人员包括B. Holly Smith，Christopher Dean，Tanya M. Smith，Debra R. Bolter，Luis Rios，Steven R. Leigh，Melvin Konner和Anne Pusey。我和一些同事更详细地回顾了有关人类身体发育，生命史生物学及其在人类生物文化进化中的地位的奖学金（Bogin，Varea，Hermanussen和Scheffler，2018）。该评论包括我过去33年来在这些主题上的工作，并在我的《人类成长模式》（Bogin，2021年，1999年，1988年）的三个版本中进行了介绍。Tomasello的书中有几段讨论似乎是基于我的出版物以及此处列出的其他出版物的讨论，但没有引用任何研究人员，因此纯熟的读者认为这些想法源自Tomasello。两位人类学家Sarah Hrdy和Kristen Hawkes因对人类社会关系的进化本体论的贡献而受到赞扬。次要引用是Kim Hill，A。Magdalena Hurtado和Michael Gurven。

第3章至第10章介绍了Tomasello对他的八种独特的人类认知和社会能力的讨论。这些是（a）社会认知，（b）交流，（c）文化学习，（d）合作思维，（e）合作，（f）亲社会，（g）社会规范和（g）道德认同。每章都向读者讲述了人类从猿类中得到了什么，即黑猩猩或can黑猩猩可以做什么，以及人类似乎有什么独特之处。托马塞洛指出，猿类具有这些能力的一些雏形，它们是生物学上内置的。永远不会告诉读者关于猿生物学的八种认知和社交能力中的任何一种是什么。Tomasello写道：“这些途径中的每一个都具有强大的猿猴功能，因此避免了生物学的存在，因此，我们无需解释这些功能域的存在。我们只需要解释它们从大猩猩形式到独特的人类形式的转变”（第306页）。即使读者接受非人类的猿猴基础，Tomasello也不提供人类转化的任何物质生物学基础。据推测，人脑起着一定的作用，但是没有讨论或提及脑，神经系统，内分泌系统或任何基本生物学的解剖结构或生理学。相反，托马塞洛（Tomasello）多次强调，非人类猿类疾病为八种独特的人类认知和社会能力提供了“生物学上的准备”，它们共同为人们 托马塞洛没有为人类的转化提供任何物质生物学基础。据推测，人脑起着一定的作用，但是没有讨论或提及脑，神经系统，内分泌系统或任何基本生物学的解剖结构或生理学。相反，托马塞洛（Tomasello）多次强调，非人类猿类疾病为八种独特的人类认知和社会能力提供了“生物学上的准备”，它们共同为人们 托马塞洛没有为人类的转化提供任何物质生物学基础。据推测，人脑起着一定的作用，但是没有讨论或提及脑，神经系统，内分泌系统或任何基本生物学的解剖结构或生理学。相反，托马塞洛（Tomasello）多次强调，非人类猿类疾病为八种独特的人类认知和社会能力提供了“生物学上的准备”，它们共同为人们共同的意向性。托马塞洛认为，共同的意图是人类在社交，认知和文化行为中所有特殊能力的基础。

Tomasello和他的同事发表了许多关于共有意图的文章，章节和以前的书。基于以前的作品（尤其是Tomasello，Carpenter，Call，Behne和Moll，2005年）我理解共同的意图是指将精神状态归因于自己和他人的能力。尤其重要的是，能够推断出他人意图的能力以及使这些意图与自己的身体和情绪状态保持一致的倾向。毫无疑问，人类共有的意图是至关重要的能力。他们也不怀疑人类比其他灵长类动物，也许还有其他任何动物物种都擅长这一点。但是，共有目的性的想法并不是在Tomasello实验室进行的研究中自发产生的。智力的根源可以追溯到一个世纪以前，并且在20世纪后期，非人类猿类的实验研究导致了“心智理论”的论证，“心智论”在概念上与共同的意图性重叠（Povinelli＆Preuss，）。精神分析治疗传统使用主体间性或主体间意识这两个术语，它们的含义与“共有的意图”非常接近，甚至相同。心理分析中主体间性的起源归因于亨氏·科胡特（Heinz Kohut，1913 – 1981），术语本身最早是由Atwood和Stolorow（1984）使用的。

托马塞洛（Tomasello）的新书擅长于解释人类共有的意向性是如何从出生到7岁之间的社交和认知行为发展的。这本书的书摘总结了这一点：“第一步发生在大约9个月之内，随着联合意向的出现，这种锻炼主要是在照顾成年人的情况下进行的。第二步发生在三年左右，集体意向性的出现涉及到传达文化知识的权威成年人和引起合作与交流的同等同龄人。最终，到了六，七岁，孩子们开始负责自我调节自己的信仰和行为，从而符合文化规范。” 这些步骤以及几乎每一章中人与人之间的差异都有清晰，非常有用的说明。

托马塞洛是否找到了人类“独特性”的本质？当然，每个物种都是唯一的-这就是物种的本质。每个人都是生物学，文化和个人历史的独特产物。每个雪花都是独一无二的。我是UCSD / Salk人类学学术研究和培训中心（https://carta.anthropogeny.org/）的成员。CARTA的主要目标是探索和解释人类现象的起源。我们避免使用“独特”一词，因为迄今为止，在一个或多个动物物种中都可以在某种程度上发现每种提议的人类独特特征，能力或能力。我仍然坚持人类符号语言的某些特征，即使不是唯一的，也具有“非常特殊”的特征，例如位移和无限的生产力，但是我对共同的意图并不确定。需要更多的物种观察和实验。还需要与人类觅食者和园艺学会进行更多更好的田野调查。需要更好的分析方法，尤其是混合方法（Weisner，2018）。由于与将黑猩猩，bo黑猩猩和其他灵长类动物圈养在一起有关的伦理原因，而且由于很少有传统的觅食和园艺社会，因此可能永远不会进行新的研究。

作为总结Tomasello及其同事过去30年研究的一站式资源，《成为人类：本体论的理论》一书非常有价值。托马塞洛在科学探究的花园中种下了他的研究和这本新书的种子，被称为进化心理学。这是一门相对年轻的学科，其花园需要时间才能结出果实。再次引用这本书的外套，希望借此表明：“……生物学创造了文化开展工作的条件。” 在本书中，我没有发现任何有意义的生物学，尤其是生物学人类学和进化生物学。托马塞洛关于人类个体发育的思想以及总体上的进化心理学有许多成长，发展和成熟的过程。