Jim, Will, Lassie and I are having a heavenly break over the holidays. Lots of time off, lots of movies, lots of snow shoeing and, for Jim, endless shoveling. For the first time ever I am contemplating getting a snow blower. Boooo.. another machine, another something that breaks down and won’t respond to positive reinforcment. Yeah…. less back breaking work for Jim, and less time for me looking out the window worrying about him. I do some myself, but my back is pathetically problematic so I don’t do much. (Car accidents, 15 foot falls off of hay wagons, fainting in the hot sun and breaking your tail bone turn out to be things that are bad for your back. Who knew?)
I am reading a book sent by one of my sisters (Wendy Barker, a brilliant poet and creative writing professor, if I do say so myself, completely objectively of course) and it is tremendously thought provoking. Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes is a story about the author, Daniel Everett, and his life with a hunter-gatherer tribe in the Amazon. More importantly, the book uses Daniel’s discoveries to question our understanding of the nature and nurture of language. The tribe, known as the Piraha, have no language to describe numbers… never do they say one, two, three, for example. They also live and describe all events as being in the present (I am oversimplifying here). I’ll write more about this in the next blog, but what makes this book important, (and relevant to animal lovers) is that the tribe do not use what have previously been thought of as “universal” aspects of human language and cognition. Daniel’s 30 years of work with the tribe suggest that culture plays a far greater role in language than previously thought (a la Noam Chomsky for example.) This is especially interesting if you are interested in comparative cognition… what goes on in the minds of other animals compared to what goes on in ours. I’m not done with the book yet, more to come, but I do recommend it highly.
Meanwhile, here’s a little of Wisconsin winter. The little round dots are dried apples that haven’t yet fallen off the tree. A White Tail Deer comes every day to paw the snow, in hopes one has fallen, which I presume they do throughout the winter. (She also is enjoying munching on a pumpkin I left out on the porch, which then froze to the porch and was immobile until the brief thaw we had this weekend.)
Jennifer says
Have you read Tomasello’s The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition or any of Haraway’s recent work about species interaction (looking particularly at canine/human interaction)? I just got Haraway’s newest and it looks intriguing. I’ll be interested to be reading both Tomasello’s and Haraway’s work simultaneously (well, not literally) that’d be pretty amazing.
Kelly Ladouceur says
The book sounds really fascinating! I can’t even really fathom a culture where there are no numbers. It’s hard to wrap my mind around, to be honest with you. I can’t wait to read more about it, and how it may change our view of comparative cognition.
trisha says
Thanks for the referral to Tomasello’s book, I haven’t read it but it is now at the top of my list. Tonight I’m starting Guns, Germs and Steel, but I’ve put Tomasello’s at the top of my “get this book!” list because I’ve found his research interesting and I’m about to start teaching my University course, The Biology and Philosophy of Human/Animal Relationships. Will check out Haraway as well. Have you read Frans de Waal’s work on culture and cognition (Ape and the Sushi Master, Primates and Philosophers.) I highly recommend his work as well.
Jennifer says
Sounds like a very cool course (I teach Philosophy). I have read deWaal’s work (though I lent my copy of Ape and the Sushi Master to someone and never got it back) and Tomasello refers to his work (I’m a few chapters into Tomasello and am going to use it for one of my classes). T’s thesis (that the single thing that differentiates human animal from non-human animals is our ability to ascribe to others intentionality and causation. Early in the book he hypothesizes that folks who have autism have less of this ability and so a fun book to pair this one up with would be Grandin’s Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior which I assume you’ve probably read. Haraway’s book is When Species Meet and she teaches in the History of Consciousness Program at UC Santa Cruz — her most famous piece is “Cyborg Manifesto” but she also wrote, a very short book, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People and Significant Otherness. In addition to being an academic she also competes in either herding or agility competitions (maybe both) with her Border Collies. Again, sounds like a very cool class. I’d love to see the syllabus if you’re willing to share
Trisha says
Sounds to me like Haraway and I should get together! Human Animal Relationships? Border Collies? Geez, think we’d have something to talk about?