Thinking Animals: Animals and the Development of Human Intelligence [Paperback]

Paul Shepard (Author), Max Oelschlaeger (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1998

In a world increasingly dominated by human beings, the survival of other species becomes more and more questionable. In this brilliant book, Paul Shepard offers a provocative alternative to an "us or them" mentality, proposing that other species are integral to humanity's evolution and exist at the core of our imagination. This trait, he argues, compels us to think of animals in order to be human. Without other living species by which to measure ourselves, Shepard warns, we would be less mature, care less for and be more careless of all life, including our own kind.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

What can animals teach humans? Everything, writes the environmental philosopher Paul Shepard, and he's not being hyperbolic. In Shepard's view, it was through the observation and emulation of animals that humans developed their abilities to communicate. The development of the brain and larynx depended on accidents of biology, on bipedalism and upright posture. But more, their development both hinged on and reinforced the desire of humans to communicate with each other, and to members of other species, about their existence in the world; as Shepard writes of one particular human mental skill, "grouping and categorizing is not something done by children simply because their biology requires it, but because the real animal world of each child is to be his concrete model of reality." The natural world, in other words, teaches us to think.

All human culture, in Shepard's view, rests on our natural history, and the separation that has occurred over the generations between humans and the natural environment is to our detriment. Shepard imagines a future in which animals no longer have a place, their role in the world having been assumed by human inventions. Scholarly without ever being pedantic, Shepard offers a powerful argument for conservation and preservation. Thinking Animals, like many of Shepard's books, has come to be a key text in the literature of the animal rights movement and of environmentalism generally, and it is endlessly stimulating. --Gregory McNamee

From Library Journal

Published in 1982, 1973, and 1978, respectively, Shepard's titles employ animals in order to further the study of humans. His theories incorporate elements from nature as well as from mythology, literature, sociology, and numerous other concentrations.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press (April 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0820319821
• ISBN-13: 978-0820319827
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,349,848 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Paul Shepard's Thinking Animals, December 1, 1999

By 

Barbara B. Burn (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Thinking Animals: Animals and the Development of Human Intelligence (Paperback)

The original edition of this book was published by The Viking Press in 1978 (I know, because I was its editor), and a very important book it is. I'm delighted to see it back in print, because it got little attention when it first appeared. Few scientists then believed in the importance of animals to the development of human intelligence; now the subject of animal intelligence itself is taken far more seriously, and I'm certain that Paul Shepard's work made a significant contribution to this change.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most profound book I have ever read, March 28, 2006

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nemahawg (Peru, NE USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Thinking Animals: Animals and the Development of Human Intelligence (Paperback)

...in forty years of relentless reading. We have all seen the evidence of subjects driven mad by sensory deprivation. We know that the health of an individual is tied up with the health of the community. Shepard gives us a glimpse of the myriad ways in which the mental health of our species is tied up with the interspecies conversations that produced our consciousness. To vastly oversimplify his synthesis of anthropological, biological, and cultural sources, Shepard's thesis is that the only argument that can possibly save wild animals and the environments upon which they survive is this: that without them we will destroy that heritage of which we are most proud: our human consciousness. The arguments are expanded in his other work, and I keep meaning to read them-as soon as I have absorbed this one. I've been rereading it for 20 years.