Are names destiny? Will Shepard lead the human flock to
compassionate understanding and preservation of the animal kingdom?
Clearly this is his goal. And who could argue that diverse species
are part of the grand scheme of things. But Shepard bases his
argument not on benevolence, or even self-interest, but on the
premise that humans are utterly dependent on animals as the
inspiration and guide to thought and language, as the indispensable
"other" that establishes our identity. In defense of these ideas he
discourses on human evolution, our simian heritage, the relation
between predator and prey, the hunter-gatherer days, agrarianism
and animal domestication. He mixes accepted fact with fanciful
notions, particularly in relation to the nervous system, human
development, and language. (For example, he gives primacy to the
sense of hearing over vision in evolution, arguing that the former
involves central processing while the latter is external, in the
eye. In fact the eye is an extension of the brain; the retina
itself contains several orders of neurons which process visual
information.) Following these misguided beginnings, Shepard
discusses animals in imagery, myth, custom, fairy tales, metaphor,
advertising, etc., seeing the role of the various species as
necessary concomitants to human reasoning and abstraction. Much of
this material is interesting, but whether it proves Shepard's point
is something else. No, even granting that his embroidered, often
overblown style conceals rather than reveals, and agreeing that it
would be folly for humankind to dismiss or diminish the role of
other species in human ecology, Shepard's dependency arguments are
unconvincing and inconclusive. (Kirkus Reviews)
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.
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