This book develops a modern evolutionary anthropological theory of the cognitive conditions for
explanatory descriptions of the world. Within the broad framework of processual hermeneutics
this monograph studies rationality by investigating what are the fundamental cognitive
mechanisms required for the cultural development of rational constructions. It analyses the
basic cognitive competences through which the human being connects categories and operations in
a manner that allows it to orient itself in the world. If both understanding and explaining are
forms of human-specific orientation what does asking the question how imply cognitively? This
monograph focuses therefore on the human-specific array of cognitive mechanisms here referred
to as enarrativity.
