19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Important but Defensive, January 9, 2000
This is an important, if somewhat defensive book. I would have been much more interested to read more about Kanzi's day to day behavior and to see some actual scientific data instead of the story of the investigator's scientific publishing woes. Nevertheless, this book should be read widely and it's message that we humans are not as unique as we like to think needs careful consideration by all scientists and the general population.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding glimpse into the mind of our closest relative., July 14, 1996
By A Customer
This review is from: Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind (Hardcover)
This wonderful book by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Roger Lewin forces the reader to reevaluate what it means to be human. Kanzi is a remarkable ape that has revolutionized our understanding of how our closest relatives think, how our common ancestors may have evolved, and why we may not be as different as once supposed. Roger and Sue's collaboration is very readable and conveys the excitement of Sue's scientific research and Kanzi's remarkable talents
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A SUMMARY BY ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS "APE LANGUAGE" RESEARCHERS, July 14, 2010
Sue Savage-Rumbaugh (born 1946) is a primatologist most famous for her work with two bonobos, Kanzi and Mulika, investigating their apparent use of "Great Ape language" using lexigrams and computer-based keyboards. She is also the co-author of
Apes, Language, and the Human Mind. In this 1994 book, she and science writer Roger Lewin have summarized her research at teaching chimpanzees to use a specially-designed keyboard to communicate with trainers.
She writes of her early concerns, "This absence of full comprehension in language-trained apes was, I felt strongly, a more fundamental criticism of ape-language research than the absence of syntax, as demonstrated by Terrace. Cooperative comprehension is fundamental to language, and two-way communication that does not reflect comprehension is not language, no matter what other attributes it may possess."
She details her reaction to an attack on such ape language work by behaviorists such as B.F. Skinner, who "explained that, although the sequence of events might look like 'sustained and natural conversation,' it was in fact the result of strict conditioning procedures." She writes, "One issue that undoubtedly had provoked the behaviorists' attack was my conclusion that Sherman and Austin were exhibiting conscious intentionality during their communication--a clear red flag to those who believe behavior should simply be viewed as responses to external stimuli. As a result I became labeled a cognitive psychologist."
She writes that "Kanzi was clearly doing this (i.e., comprehending language). For so revolutionary a scientific claim as this, a persuasive body of data would be required, and as yet, I had only my notes of what Kanzi had done. Would anyone believe those? Would anyone believe anything without a number of detailed blind tests? I doubted it. I knew that convincing others would be a difficult task, but I also knew that if I were to focus too intently on proving everything Kanzi said or did, I would lose his natural engagement in the language process."
She concludes, "The ease with which Kanzi acquired a facility for symbolic communication not only tells us something about humans, and the assumed uniqueness of the human mind, but also something about apes and their cognitive competence in their natural state... The boundary wall between humans and apes has finally been breached."
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