anthropology, biology, cognitive sciences, ethology, climate, evolution, brains, language, the future -- not to mention Patrick O'Brian novels and the Science Masters series.
You can click on the topics to see a collection of favorite books on the subject.
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Nicholas Humphrey, Consciousness Regained (Oxford
University Press, 1983).-
UBS amazon.com Powell's
Other books by Nick Humphrey in the Amazon.com database.
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The
Tangled Wing : Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit
by Melvin J. Konner
(Freeman - April 2001).. "Indecently
elegant—a beautifully written book by any standard—and it's about
language, love, lust, learning and all the rest of our apes-and-beyond
nature…. Every behavioral biology topic reflects the enlightenment of
the past two decades since this classic book first appeared." —
William H. Calvin.
"Melvin Konner is. . . the nearest we have to a poet laureate of
behavioral biology. This is an indispensable book." — Robert
Sapolsky
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Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Roger Lewin, Kanzi (Wiley, 1994). -
"Comprehension demands an active intellectual process of listening to another party while trying to figure out, from a short burst of sounds, the other's meaning and intent both of which are always imperfectly conveyed. Production, by contrast, is simple. We know what we think and what we wish to mean. We don't have to figure out "what it is we mean," only how to say it. By contrast, when we listen to someone else, we not only have to determine what the other person is saying, but also what he or she means by what is said, without the insider's knowledge that the speaker has."
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Frans de Waal, Frans Lanting, Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape (University of California Press 1997).- As The Atlantic Monthly said:
What
Professor de Waal describes is a society of mamma's
boys, permanently subject to female control. It is also an
erotic society, with sexual contacts conducted steadily,
ingeniously, and with no discernible concern for sex or
age. One of Mr. Lanting's many photographs sums up
these apes rather well. It is of a male bonobo, standing
straight as a palace sentry, well prepared for sexual action,
and offering handfuls of sugarcane. Bonobo may lie at the
root of civilized behavior. amazon.com
Frans de Waal, Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong (Harvard UP 1996). -
"If carnivory was indeed the catalyst for the evolution of sharing, it is hard to escape the conclusion that human morality is steeped in animal blood. When we give money to begging strangers, ship food to starving people, or vote for measures that benefit the poor, we follow impulses shaped since the time our ancestors began to cluster around meat possessors. At the center of the original circle, we find a prize hard to get but desired by many... this small, sympathetic circle grew steadily to encompass all of humanity if not in practice then at least in principle.... Given the circle's proposed origin, it is profoundly ironic that its expansion should culminate in a plea for vegetarianism."
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Frans de Waal, Peacemaking Among Primates (Harvard UP 1989).-
UBS amazon.com Powell's
Frans de Waal, Chimpanzee Politics: Sex and Power Among the Apes (revised edition, Johns Hopkins University Press 1998).- amazon.com Powell's
Other books by Frans de Waal in the Amazon.com database.
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