Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved (The University Center for Human Values Series)
by Frans de Waal
from Princeton University Press
"It's the animal in us," we often hear when we've been bad. But why not when we're good? Primates and Philosophers tackles this question by exploring the biological foundations of one of humanity's most valued traits: morality.
In this provocative book, primatologist Frans de Waal argues that modern-day evolutionary biology takes far too dim a view of the natural world, emphasizing our "selfish" genes. Science has thus exacerbated our reciprocal habits of blaming nature when we act badly and labeling the good things we do as "humane." Seeking the origin of human morality not in evolution but in human culture, science insists that we are moral by choice, not by nature.
Citing remarkable evidence based on his extensive research of primate behavior, de Waal attacks "Veneer Theory," which posits morality as a thin overlay on an otherwise nasty nature. He explains how we evolved from a long line of animals that care for the weak and build cooperation with reciprocal transactions. Drawing on both Darwin and recent scientific advances, de Waal demonstrates a strong continuity between human and animal behavior. In the process, he also probes issues such as anthropomorphism and human responsibilities toward animals.
Based on the Tanner Lectures de Waal delivered at Princeton University's Center for Human Values in 2004, Primates and Philosophers includes responses by the philosophers Peter Singer, Christine M. Korsgaard, and Philip Kitcher and the science writer Robert Wright. They press de Waal to clarify the differences between humans and other animals, yielding a lively debate that will fascinate all those who wonder about the origins and reach of human goodness.
Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are
by Frans De Waal
from Riverhead Trade
Power, sex, violence and kindness: these four broad-spectrum categories encompass much of human behavior, so it's only fitting that they're also the primary subject material for Frans de Waal's (The Ape and The Sushi Master) book Our Inner Ape. The few (but deeply detailed) chapters are a mesmerizing read that spans biology, child psychology, postmodern theorists and fundamental morality, using tales of stern chimps, and sexy bonobos to examine humans' place between them. In the process, he examines why we need to know our place in the world, how our body language communicates feelings, and where the roots of empathy lie in mammalian life.
De Waal's respect for both his readers and his research subjects come shining through in the simple clarity he uses when describing both the endless sex of bonobo apes and the heartrending violence occasionally present in chimp hierarchal structure. By illustrating his points with a mixture of straight-from-research experiences and jokes at the expense of modern politicians, he keeps his ideas compelling for anyone with a basic understanding of evolutionary science without drifting towards the academic drone that could be expected of by a researcher of his experience.
You won't find specific conclusions concerning human nature, but instead a gentle, almost rambling look at two primate species with vastly different social networks and how, perhaps, humanity can learn from each to our benefit. A few of de Waal's lovely duotone photos (My Family Album: 30 Years of Primate Photography grace the end of the book, featuring close-up shots of the folks he's been writing about--chimps like Yeroen, Nikkie and Mama, and bonobo Kuif and adopted daughter Roosje are downright thrilling to see after reading such interesting stories about their lives. Jill Lightner
From "one of the world's greatest experts on primate behavior" (Desmond Morris) comes a look at the most provocative aspects of human nature-power, sex, violence, kindness, and morality-through our closest cousins. For nearly twenty years, Frans De Waal has studied both the famously aggressive chimpanzee and the egalitarian, matriarchal bonobo, two species whose DNA is nearly identical to ours. The result is an engrossing narrative that reveals what their behavior can teach us about ourselves.
Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind
by Dorothy L. Cheney
from University Of Chicago Press
Cheney and Seyfarth set up camp in Botswana’s Okavango Delta, where they could intimately observe baboons and their social world. Baboons live in groups of up to 150, including a handful of males and eight or nine matrilineal families of females. Such numbers force baboons to form a complicated mix of short-term bonds for mating and longer-term friendships based on careful calculations of status and individual need.
But Baboon Metaphysics is concerned with much more than just baboons’ social organization—Cheney and Seyfarth aim to fully comprehend the intelligence that underlies it. Using innovative field experiments, the authors learn that for baboons, just as for humans, family and friends hold the key to mitigating the ill effects of grief, stress, and anxiety.
Written with a scientist’s precision and a nature-lover’s eye, Baboon Metaphysics gives us an unprecedented and compelling glimpse into the mind of another species.
“The vivid narrative is like a bush detective story.”—Steven Poole, Guardian
“Baboon Metaphysics is a distillation of a big chunk of academic lives. . . . It is exactly what such a book should be—full of imaginative experiments, meticulous scholarship, limpid literary style, and above all, truly important questions.”—Alison Jolly, Science
“Cheney and Seyfarth found that for a baboon to get on in life involves a complicated blend of short-term relationships, friendships, and careful status calculations. . . . Needless to say, the ensuing political machinations and convenient romantic dalliances in the quest to become numero uno rival the bard himself.”—Science News “Cheney and Seyfarth’s enthusiasm is obvious, and their knowledge is vast and expressed with great clarity. All this makes Baboon Metaphysics a captivating read. It will get you thinking—and maybe spur you to travel to Africa to see it all for yourself.”—Asif A. Ghazanfar, Nature
“Through ingenious playback experiments . . . Cheney and Seyfarth have worked out many aspects of what baboons used their minds for, along with their limitations. Reading a baboon’s mind affords an excellent grasp of the dynamics of baboon society. But more than that, it bears on the evolution of the human mind and the nature of human existence.”—Nicholas Wade, New York Times
In the Shadow of Man
by Jane Goodall
from Mariner Books
This best-selling classic tells the story of one of the world's greatest scientific adventures. Jane Goodall was a young secretarial school graduate when the legendary Louis Leakey chose her to undertake a landmark study of chimpanzees in the wild. In the Shadow of Man is an absorbing account of her early years at Gombe Stream Reserve, telling us of the remarkable discoveries she made as she got to know the chimps and they got to know her. This paperback edition, illustrated with 80 photographs, includes an introduction by Stephen Jay Gould and a postscript by Goodall. During Goodall's forty years of studying chimpanzees, she has become one of the world's most honored scientists. She tells of the later years in THROUGH A WINDOW, also available in Mariner paperback. AFRICA IN MY BLOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN LETTERS tells the story, through her letters, of childhood through the early years at Gombe.
Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey
by Jane Goodall
from Grand Central Publishing
As a young woman, Jane Goodall was best known for her groundbreaking fieldwork with the chimpanzees of Gombe, Africa. Goodall's work has always been controversial, mostly because she broke the mold of research scientist by developing meaningful relationships with her "specimens" and honoring their lives as she would other humans.
Now at the age of 60, she continues to break the mold of scientist by revealing how her research and worldwide conservation institutes spring from her childhood callings and adult spiritual convictions. Reason for Hope is a smoothly written memoir that does not shy away from facing the realities of environmental destruction, animal abuse, and genocide. But Goodall shares her antidote to the poison of despair with specific examples of why she has not lost faith. For instance, she shares her spiritual epiphany during a visit to Auschwitz; her bravery in the face of chimpanzee imprisonment in medical laboratories; and devotes a whole chapter to individuals, corporations, and countries that are doing the right thing. But most of all Goodall provides a beautifully written plea for why everyone can and must find a reason for hope. --Gail Hudson
Those who know Jane Goodall through her many books, speeches, and National Geographic television specials, know she is obviously no ordinary scientist. She is a genuinely spiritual woman who cares passionately about the preservation and enhancement of life in all its forms. Based upon the many spiritual experiences that have graced and shaped her outlook on life, Dr. Goodall is convinced there is a higher purpose to life, and that this purpose can best be served by a sense of reverence for creation - a commitment to opening our hearts and minds to the spiritual ties that bind us to the Earth. In this book, Dr. Goodall takes us through the pivotal events of her life - her childhood in war-torn England, her relationship with the Leakeys, her groundbreaking work with the chimpanzees of Gombe - and in doing so, touches upon such topics as faith and love, mysticism and science, the origins of good and evil and evolution, and the existence of the soul and of God. She sheds light not only on why millions of people today are hungry for meaning, but on the steps we can take to transform our lives for the better; to rekindle our spirits and reawaken our minds.
Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes
by Frans de Waal
from The Johns Hopkins University Press
The great apes, like humans, can recognize themselves in mirrors. They communicate by sound and gesture, form bands along what can only be called political lines, and sometimes engage in what is very clearly organized warfare. (Less frequently, too, they practice cannibalism.) In Chimpanzee Politics Frans de Waal, a longtime student of simian behavior, analyzes the behavior of a captive tribe of chimpanzees, comparing its actions with those of ape societies in the wild. What he finds is often not pleasant: chimps seem capable of astonishing deviousness and savagery, which has obvious implications for the behavior their human cousins sometimes exhibit.
The first edition of Frans de Waal's Chimpanzee Politics was acclaimed not only by primatologists for its scientific achievement but also by politicians, business leaders, and social psychologists for its remarkable insights into the most basic human needs and behaviors. Twenty-five years later, this book is considered a classic. Featuring a new preface that includes recent insights from the author, this anniversary edition is a detailed and thoroughly engrossing account of rivalries and coalitions -- actions governed by intelligence rather than instinct. As we watch the chimpanzees of Arnhem behave in ways we recognize from Machiavelli (and from the nightly news), de Waal reminds us again that the roots of politics are older than humanity.
Monkey Portraits
by Jill Greenberg
from Bulfinch
Book Description:
We share about 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees, our closest biological cousins. And never have the similarities between simians and humans been so amusingly and brilliantly captured as in Monkey Portratis. Jill Greenberg has spent 15 years photographing celebrities--from Clint Eastwood to Drew Barrymore--for leading publications, but has recently focused on actors of a different sort. She has been photographing monkeys and apes, many of whom have appeared on film or in television shows. Her intimate portraits of these animals convey a startling range of emotions and personalities, and evoke an almost eerie sense of recognition. Each of these 76 amazingly anthropomorphic photographs will remind you of someone you know. These monkeys in all their glory will cause you to laugh out loud and to wonder just how different we truly are.
Monkey Business
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We share about 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees, our closest biological cousins. And never have the similarities between simians and humans been so amusingly and brilliantly captured as in MONKEY PORTRAITS. Jill Greenberg has spent 15 years photographing celebrities--from Clint Eastwood to Drew Barrymore--for leading publications, but has recently focused on actors of a different sort. She has been photographing monkeys and apes, many of whom have appeared on film or in television shows. Her intimate portraits of these animals convey a startling range of emotions and personalities, and evoke an almost eerie sense of recognition. Each of these 76 amazingly anthropomorphic photographs will remind you of someone you know. These monkeys in all their glory will cause you to laugh out loud and to wonder just how different we truly are.
Beautiful Minds: The Parallel Lives of Great Apes and Dolphins
by Maddalena Bearzi
from Harvard University Press
Apes and dolphins: primates and cetaceans. Could any creatures appear to be more different? Yet both are large-brained intelligent mammals with complex communication and social interaction. In the first book to study apes and dolphins side by side, Maddalena Bearzi and Craig B. Stanford, a dolphin biologist and a primatologist who have spent their careers studying these animals in the wild, combine their insights with compelling results. Beautiful Minds explains how and why apes and dolphins are so distantly related yet so cognitively alike and what this teaches us about another large-brained mammal: Homo sapiens.
Noting that apes and dolphins have had no common ancestor in nearly 100 million years, Bearzi and Stanford describe the parallel evolution that gave rise to their intelligence. And they closely observe that intelligence in action, in the territorial grassland and rainforest communities of chimpanzees and other apes, and in groups of dolphins moving freely through open coastal waters. The authors detail their subjects’ ability to develop family bonds, form alliances, and care for their young. They offer an understanding of their culture, politics, social structure, personality, and capacity for emotion. The resulting dual portrait—with striking overlaps in behavior—is key to understanding the nature of “beautiful minds.”
(20080128)Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man
by Dale Peterson
from Mariner Books
This essential biography of one of the most influential women of the past century shows how truly remarkable Jane Goodall's accomplishments have been. Goodall was a secretarial school graduate when Louis Leakey, unable to find someone with more fitting credentials, first sent her to Gombe to study chimpanzees. In this acclaimed work, Dale Peterson details how this young woman of uncommon resourcefulness and pluck would go on to set radically new standards in the study of animal behavior. He vividly captures the triumphs and setbacks of her dramatic life, including the private quest that led to her now-famous activism.
Peterson, a longtime Goodall collaborator, has a unique knowledge of his subject. Candid and illuminating, this work will be a revelation even to readers who are familiar with the public Goodall as presented in her own writing.
The Primate Family Tree: The Amazing Diversity of Our Closest Relatives
by Ian Redmond
from Firefly Books
Apes, monkeys, lemurs -- and other family members.
The Primate Family Tree is a beautiful and comprehensive resource on the subject of our animal relatives. Readers will find an abundance of up-to-date facts, review the latest research and conservation efforts, and discover the remarkable characteristics that all primates -- including humans -- share.
The book is structured according to the four main branches of the primate family tree and contains expert information on the natural history, characteristics and behavior of over 250 species, along with maps showing the ranges of the species. Some of the topics covered are:
- Definition of a primate
- Darwin's big idea, anthropological theories, DNA
- The structure of the primate family tree
- Distribution of species, including lorises and lemurs
- Diet, habitat, life cycles, social structure, communication
- Primate emotions
- Primates as "gardeners of the forest"
- Issues involving conservation, bush meat, civil war, habitat loss
- Primate tourism: Does it help or hurt?
With its authoritative text, color photographs taken in the field, range maps and classification diagrams, The Primate Family Tree is a comprehensive reference on a subject that is vitally important to all humans.
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