novel at the time, mainly on the Gazzaniga's "split-brain" theory. Today, his hypotheses are still controversial to many in the field. However, the more general idea of a "divided self" (contrasted with a "unitary self") has found support from psychological and neurological studies, and many of the historical arguments made in the book remain supported, and have not been disproven (although due to the theoretical nature of the work, it may require further study to experimentalize some of the ideas). An early criticism by philosopher Ned Block argued that Jaynes had confused the emergence of consciousness with the emergence of the concept of consciousness. In other words, according to Block, humans were conscious all along but did not have the concept of consciousness and thus did not discuss it in their texts. Daniel Dennett countered that for some things, such as money, baseball, or consciousness, one cannot have the thing without also having the concept of the thing. Moreover, it is arguable that Block misinterpreted the nature of what Jaynes claimed to be a social construction. Translations The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind has been translated into at least seven foreign languages: In popular culture The idea of bicamerality has influenced novelists Philip K. Dick, William S. Burroughs, Neal Stephenson and Robert J. Sawyer. In Neil Gaiman's 2001 novel American Gods, there is an allusion to Jaynes' theory. The novel's protagonist, Shadow, discusses theories about the origins of gods with a hitchhiker he picks up; the hitchhiker says "'I read some book about brains... how five thousand years ago the lobes of the brain fused and before that people thought when the right lobe of the brain said anything it was the voice of the god telling them what to do'." In Douglas Adams' unfinished novel The Salmon of Doubt (2002), Dirk Gently obtains copies of the Financial Times "from an old tramp in return for a blanket, some cider, and a copy of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind." In 2009, American novelist Terence Hawkins published The Rage of Achilles, a re-telling of Homer's The Iliad that imagines the hero's transition from bicameral mentality to consciousness. See also For other claims and analysis of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, see Wine-dark sea Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age Notes References External links The book at Julian Jaynes Society's website