by Frans de Waal, Professor in Psychology, Director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University I was born in Den Bosch, the city after which Hieronymus Bosch named himself.1 This obviously does not make me an expert on the Dutch painter, but having grown up with his statue on the market square, I have always been fond of his imagery, his symbolism, and how it relates to humanity’s place in
Continue reading Morals without God?
by Jeff McMahan, Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University Would the controlled extinction of carnivorous species be a good thing?
Viewed from a distance, the natural world often presents a vista of sublime, majestic placidity. Yet beneath the foliage and hidden from the distant eye, a vast, unceasing slaughter rages. Wherever there is animal life, predators are stalking, chasing, capturing, killing, and devouring their
Continue reading The Meat Eaters
by Kim Sterelny Two Framing Ideas About Human Evolution.
Human evolutionary change has been rapid and extensive; so much so that the genetic similarity and recent divergence between the human and the chimp lineages came as a profound surprise. Three million years ago humans were relatively minor elements of a rich East African mammalian fauna. Since then, our
Continue reading The Evolved Apprentice
by Peter Railton, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor In “The Metaphysician’s Nightmare”, Bertrand Russell described a Hell in which there is a special torment for practitioners of each branch of scholarly inquiry. In the place in Hell reserved for statisticians, for example, a pack of monkeys walk aimlessly and endlessly on typewriters, each time creating a perfect rendition of a Shakespearean sonnet. Our
Continue reading Moral Camouflage or Moral Monkeys?
by Dame Gillian Beer Darwin’s radical new history of the world did not give a central place to the human. It challenged human exceptionalism and emphasised what was shared, across all organisms extant and extinct. He thought of himself initially as a geologist, so was constantly alert to the ghosting presence of past life forms, visible now only as
Continue reading Late Darwin and the Problem of the Human
by Elliott Sober This is a précis of an argument that I developed in an article called “Did Darwin Write the Origin Backwards?” The article was published in 2009 and may be found on my web set at http://philosophy.wisc.edu/sober/recent.html. An expanded version of the argument is the first chapter of a book that I’m publishing at the end
Continue reading Common Ancestry and Natural Selection in Darwin’s Origin
by Karen B. Strier I have been studying the same group of monkeys, known as northern muriquis, in a small forest in southeastern Brazil for nearly 28 years. When I began my research they were called Brachyteles arachnoides. Subsequently, and within the lifetimes of many of the individuals in my original study group, they were reclassified as a new
Continue reading The Challenge of Comparisons in Primatology
by Terrence W. Deacon Introduction
Since Darwin’s time, the human language capacity has been a perennially cited paragon of extreme complexity that defies the explanatory powers of natural selection. And it is not just critics of Darwinism who have argued that this most distinctive human capacity is problematic. Alfred Russel Wallace—the co-discoverer of natural selection theory and in many
Continue reading On the Human: Rethinking the natural selection of human language
by Suzanne Preston Blier
Egbé eja leja ?wè tò, egbé eye leye ?wò lé Fish swim in a school of their own kind; Birds fly in a flock of their own kind. Yoruba Proverb
We mention nature and forget ourselves in it. Friedrich Nietzsche
So engrained is the trope of the animal in the West that animal
Continue reading Animalia: the Natural World, Art, and Theory
by Stuart A. Marks, Independent Scholar
“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Tennessee Williams
To understand portions of one’s own culture demands a lifetime; to become familiar with another’s depends upon a host of enthusiastic interpreters, attentive listening, experiencing a multitude of unfamiliar activities, a receptive heart, and good fortune. Throughout my life, a major
Continue reading Wild Animals and a Different Human Face
|
|