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This Article From Issue
March-April 2015
Volume 103, Number 2
Page 149
DOI: 10.1511/2015.113.149
A TALENT FOR FRIENDSHIP: Rediscovery of a Remarkable Trait. John Edward Terrell. xiv + 306. Oxford University Press, 2014. $29.95.
We have perhaps no better account of the compelling nature and power of friendship than that given by the Roman orator Cicero, who in his classic essay "On Friendship" ("Dé Amicitiá") wrote,
If the natural love of friends were to be removed from the world there is no single house, no single state that would go on existing; even agriculture would cease to be. If this seems a bit difficult to understand, we can readily see how great is the power of friendship and love by observing their opposites, enmity and ill will. For what house is so firmly established, what constitution so unshakable that it could not be utterly destroyed by hatred and internal division? From this we may judge how much good there is in friendship.
Cicero’s observations and practical philosophy of friendship—its power, dimensions, and the conditions under which it arises and is nurtured—are reiterated in more contemporary scientific terms by John Edward Terrell in his study A Talent for Friendship.
Terrell, curator of Oceanic archeology and ethnology at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, traces the evolving scientific understanding of friendship, focusing on several distinct disciplines: social philosophy, psychology, evolutionary biology, and cultural anthropology.
In the area of social philosophy he briefly reviews the ideas of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, as well as those of the neglected scholar and jurist Samuel Pufendorf, examining what makes order possible in society, group competition and cooperation, and the question of good and evil in human nature. In the area of psychology he recounts Franz Gall’s phrenology studies, which attempted to correlate mental faculties with the relative prominence of bumps on the skull; revisits Freud’s psychoanalytic concept of the human mind; and presents more contemporary models of mental processes that rely on research using functional magnetic resonance imaging and other technologies.
In the field of evolutionary biology, Terrell’s riveting chapter “The Wizard of Down House” examines in some detail Darwin’s research; his methodology; and, more generally, his contributions to our understanding of our own species’ evolution and emotional makeup. Finally, in the area of cultural anthropology the author’s often autobiographical accounts of fieldwork in New Guinea figure prominently.
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From A Talent for Friendship.
Terrell’s study grew out of a lecture he delivered at the University of Lund, Sweden, examining friendship as a behavior that evolved partly in response to culturally diverse and inequitable social situations. Indeed, the notion of friendship as an evolved, distinctly human trait is a main avenue of inquiry that resonates throughout the book. Terrell’s cross-disciplinary discussion sets the stage for articulating what he calls the friendship hypothesis: "Our evolved ability, our psychological and biological capacity, to make friends even with strangers is a defining characteristic of our species, an evolved human trait marking us apart from most other species on Earth just as surely as the other diagnostic traits that have been singled out as being characteristic of our kind, such as walking upright on two legs, having opposable thumbs and a prominent chin, and possessing the powers of both speech and complex abstract reasoning."
As he explains in A Talent for Friendship, Terrell believes that understanding the evolution of friendship will be crucial to our future as a species. Evoking the Roman deity representing both hindsight and foresight, he explains, “Like Janus, the friendship hypothesis…asks us to look back into our evolutionary past to discover what are our biologically inherited strengths and weaknesses as a species.… If we take this hypothesis seriously, we human beings may be able to tinker with our evolutionary heritage in social rather than biological ways to help us achieve greater control over the future of our species.”
Furthermore, Terrell asserts that the psychobiological roots of our drive to form friendships—whether with those nearby or, more notably, those far away—are founded in large measure “on our basic animal and cognitive responses to what may be labeled somewhat tongue in cheek as our five ‘human senses.’” He goes on to specify that these represent our sense of “belonging to something bigger than just ourselves; responsibility for the success and happiness of others, not just ourselves; understanding where other people are coming from even when we may not agree with them; commitment to something bigger than just our own personal success; [and] engagement with other people in meaningful and productive ways.” Terrell’s perspective on what underlies the human predisposition to establish friendships is both cogent and refreshingly original.
The chapter titled “Confronting the Obvious” is especially interesting in its depiction of friendships that arise across distances, despite linguistic complexities. The number of languages spoken in New Guinea, generally agreed to be around 1,000, is remarkable; Terrell explains that geographical isolation of different populations due to prolonged warfare is a prime contributor to this linguistic diversity. Nonetheless, a wealth of inherited friendships may be found there, bridging many communities where different languages are spoken. Terrell observes, “What became clear during our fieldwork in 1993–1994 was that these friendships form a vast network of [functional] intersecting social relationships that in its entirety encompasses thousands of people in scores of places.” Such examples offer compelling evidence that the friendship impulse is stronger than barriers created by language as well as distance.
Hallmarks of Terrell’s writing include his conversational style and the author’s ability to imaginatively simplify complex concepts. For instance, in the fourth chapter, "The Secret Lives of Lou, Laurence, and Leslie," he distinguishes between three modes of thinking by naming them after classic film stars Lou Costello, Laurence Olivier, and Leslie Howard. Lou, he explains, represents “the realm of our habitual selves,” considered "unconscious, automatic, quick, perhaps emotional" and likely possible for other animal species to do. Laurence is tied to logic and decision making and requires more effort; possibly unique to humans, it signifies conscious thinking that is slower and more purposeful. The kind of thinking dubbed Leslie, which may also be uniquely human, "is contemplative, abstract, may be counterfactual, and is largely detached from an individual’s immediate realities."
In his journey to discover the nature of our human cultural heritage, Terrell favors a broadly conceived approach. Tapping into a speculative and philosophical vein, the noteworthy chapter "Houston, We’ve Had a Problem" discusses Victorian polymath Herbert Spencer, a man influential in his time yet also very much of his time—his theories conflated evolution with progress, offered up the English temperament as evidence of evolutionary advancement, and proposed that, as Terrell puts it, “violence begets progress.” He observes, however, that Spencer’s ideas still reverberate through Western culture and, among other things, affect our views of which cultures merit study.
Near the end of the book, he presents a vivid account of a Maori face-to-face meeting ceremony, called a marae encounter, which is a manifestation of "pride in the history and accomplishments of their respective community, and recognition of the similar standing and accomplishments of those facing them on the other side of the open field." Here the author suggests that the marae encounter might serve as an exemplar for better understanding among nations.
Moving beyond the anthropologic, Terrell devotes two chapters to social behavior and cognition among nonhuman animals. The book also includes some discussions that roam beyond Terrell’s central subject. One interesting section presents the early history of the Field Museum, the institution with which Terrell is affiliated, and the contributions made by two of its early curators, George A. Dorsey and Albert B. Lewis. Dorsey (the first American to receive a PhD in anthropology from Harvard) and Lewis were instrumental in adding an appreciable number of artifacts to the museum’s collection. During one collecting expedition to Oceana, Lewis shipped 14,385 items back to the museum, and between about 1909 and 1913 he took almost 2,000 photographs depicting life and culture in the Great South Sea. Artifacts from these researchers’ expeditions later prove invaluable to Terrell’s work tracing evidence of the longevity of intercommunity friendships in New Guinea. Chapters exploring the history of the Dutch United East India Company, founded in 1602, and Abel Tasman’s voyage to Murderer’s Bay also prove to be fascinating asides. Ultimately, these engaging detours illuminate Terrell’s study.
I highly recommend A Talent for Friendship as collateral reading for courses in cultural anthropology and social science research methods. But the author’s engaging style and infectious enthusiasm also make the book appealing to any general reader with an interest in archaeology, geography, psychology, and anthropology.
Harold M. Green is a writer and lecturer from Liberty, New York. A frequent contributor to these pages, his primary research interests include the history of American psychology and sociology, the golden age of radio comedy, and the pioneers of American radio. He is an emeritus member of Sigma Xi.
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