Complementary Cognition
Complementary Cognition
Humans have crossed oceans, built cities and traced the history of the universe. Yet no single person holds all the knowledge needed to do any of these things. How did we become capable of so much?
Dr Taylor’s research proposes that the answer lies in how our brains evolved to become specialised in ways that complement one another. Each specialisation brings advantages and trade-offs, making us dependent on one another. This is Complementary Cognition: a theory of how cognitive specialisation and collaboration evolved together to make our species extraordinarily adaptable.
More than the sum of us
It is tempting to explain humans’ ability to learn and adapt through our intelligence as individuals, or by the collective knowledge and perspectives a group can pool. Dr Taylor’s research points to something different, and deeper: we are adaptive because our brains are specialised in complementary ways, and collaboration binds those differences into a single system that generates, tests and passes on knowledge across generations.
This is what sets Complementary Cognition apart. This theory locates our adaptability in how our brains evolved: specialised, through biology, in complementary aspects of learning, and co-evolving with language and collaboration into a system that generates knowledge no individual could reach.
‘Individuals were specialized to navigate the search process in complementary ways, with neurocognitive specializations that supported search at different scales.’
Co-authored article in Cambridge Archaeological Journal.
How the system works
Our survival and flourishing have depended – and continue to depend – on this system of knowledge generation. Picture searching for food with limited time. Do you gather from the patch you know, explore nearby valleys, or strike out into new territory?
Every choice has a cost: time spent one way is time unavailable for another. We face a similar trade-off whenever we search for ideas or solutions.
The capability of any single brain is limited: its resources are finite, and the features that support one kind of search can come at the expense of another. This theory proposes that those constraints helped drive the evolution of complementary specialisations, so that our brains are tuned to different degrees along that continuum, from broad exploration, through refining and developing ideas, to applying what works reliably.
These trade-offs are the starting point. The wider theory traces how complementary specialisations are expressed across cognition and behaviour – from what we notice and remember, to how we create, solve problems and relate to one another.
It explains the nature of differently specialised brains, the relationships between them, and how they self-organise into an evolutionary system.
A major transition in how life adapts
Complementary Cognition, Dr Taylor argues, marks what biologists call a major evolutionary transition. These are among the most profound changes in the history of life, and have occurred only rarely over the last 3.5 billion years. They include the origins of cells, multicellular organisms, and of eusocial insect colonies such as honeybees.
A recurring pattern is that previously independent entities become interdependent parts of a higher-level system, bringing a new level of adaptive organisation into being.
Dr Taylor proposes that our species crossed such a threshold: complementary cognitive specialisation and collaboration together produced a new evolutionary system, beyond genetic evolution and individual cognition. The work of generating, testing and passing on knowledge became distributed across specialisations, which collaboration integrates into a single adaptive system.
This is why, she proposes, our species adapts with such speed and flexibility. Dr Taylor's current research examines how the system is organised, and what enables or disrupts its capacity to learn and adapt.
What could become possible if we designed education, organisations and societies around this new understanding of how we evolved?
The theory was first published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal with supporting evidence in Frontiers in Psychology.
The research draws on economic and complex systems theory and is supported by a range of evidence from cognitive psychology, computational neuroscience, evolutionary biology, paleo-environmental and archaeology.
