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Book Review
| Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism. Edited by Lorraine Daston & Gregg Mitman. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. vi + 230 pp. Illustrations, tables, notes, index. $49.50.
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| The original meaning of "anthropomorphism"—anthro (man) + morphos (change)—is the attribution of human characteristics to god or the gods, a heresy in some Christian sects. Anthropomorphism in its currently more common usage, as assigning human attributes to non-human animals, has a continuing whiff of heresy, risking the (scientific) sin of sentimentality as well as the (ethical) sin of egocentrism in presuming to "humanize" animals. A book on anthropomorphism might take a number of different approaches: it could examine cognition and draw comparative conclusions about similarities and differences among species; or it might adopt an anthropological stance and examine the role of animals as integers of human thought. Lorraine Daston and Gregg Mitman's book—"about the fact, not the value of anthropomorphism" (p. 6)—adopts both of these tacks and more. That is, of course, the strength as well as the weakness of any collection of essays. But the variety of perspectives also reflects our species' complex relationship with the other species that share this planet: we human animals commonly act as though there is a continuity with non-human animals, a continuity that may either be an unexamined assumption or a considered conclusion drawn from the law of evolution. But we also have used animals as symbols for thinking about the "other," whether the beast is in ourselves or not. It is in this double aspect of our relationship—both as members of a common community and as contrasting with ourselves—that the essays examine "thinking with animals." |
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The nine essays are grouped in four categories: thinking with animals in other times and places, thinking with animals in evolutionary biology, thinking with animals in daily life, and thinking with animals in film. The sweep of the essays is dramatic. The essays in other times and places range from contrasting the bestial humans and humane animals of ancient Sanskrit texts to the medieval scholastics analysis of angels and the struggles to separate sentimentality from objectivity in Victorian vivisection experiments. Evolutionary biology is a lens to examine whether the anti-anthropomorphism of science reflects a modern version of Occam's razor or the error of anthro-podenial; the venerable philosophical conundrum of other minds sheds light on both the analogical bases of anthropomorphism and global arguments against anthropomorphism. The essays on daily life evaluate emotional and physical benefits of pets and the manipulative powers of animal photographs produced for digital image banks in a globalized consumer culture. The final essays examine how film has used anthropomorphism as a political tool to protect elephants and to present the world of orangutans in Borneo. |
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Much has been written about animals and thinking with animals in the past decade. The scientists, artists, philosophers, and historians who have written these essays provide a useful and often engaging introduction to the current debates on what Paul Shepard called "the other that made us human." |
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Dale D. Goble is the Margaret Wilson Schimke Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Idaho. His scholarship currently focuses on the intersection of the science, policy, and law of biodiversity conservation. |
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