The history of the animal sciences shows that they have had grave
difficulties with the fact that the observers are present and human.
These sciences, like physics, chemistry, and biology, play the game as
if the human observer were not there and the systems were isolated from
man. This is fine strategy for “man-less nature” studies and quite
appropriate for such studies.
However, I submit to you another view, for a science of man and animal,
their relationships to one another. Modern man and modern dolphin and
whale may be best investigated in the framework of a new science one
might call “anthropo-zoology” or “zoo-anthropology.” This science is a
deep study of man, of the animal, of their mutual relations, present and
potential. In this discipline scientists encourage close relations with
the animal, and study the developing relation between man and so-called
“beast.”
For the last three years in the Communication Research Institute[23] we
have been pursuing an investigative path in this new science with the
pair “man and bottlenose dolphin.” We have encouraged and pursued
studies in classical sciences such as neurophysiology, animal
psychology, anatomy, biophysics, and zoology. We have also initiated and
pursued this new science of the man and dolphin relation; these
“homo-delphic” studies, if you will, are triply demanding: we must not
only know our animal objectively but we must know man objectively, and
ourselves subjectively. We cannot fight shy of involving ourselves in
the investigation as objects also. In this science man, and hence one’s
own self, are part of the system under investigation. This is not an
easy discipline. One must guard quite as rigorously (or even more so)
against the pitfalls of wishful thinking and sensational fantasy as in
other scientific endeavors. This field requires a self-candor, an inner
honesty, and a humility quite difficult to acquire. But I maintain that
good science can be done here, that the field is a proper one for
properly trained and properly motivated investigators.
REFERENCES AND NOTES
[1]Plinius Secundus. _Natural History._ III, Book IX.
[2]Aristotle. _Historia Animalium._ Books I-IX.
[3]Donaldson, Henry H. _The Growth of the Brain._ London: Walter Scott,
1895.
[4]Smith, G. Elliot, in Royal College of Surgeons of England, Museum,
_Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Physiological Series
of Comparative Anatomy_. London: Taylor and Francis, 1902, pp. 349,
351, 356.
[5]Scammon, Charles Melville. _The Marine Mammals of the North-Western
Coast of North America, Described and Illustrated: Together with an
Account of the American Whale-Fishery._ San Francisco: J. H.
Carmany, 1874, p. 78.
[6]von Bonin, Gerhardt. “Brain-Weight and Body-Weight in Mammals,”
_Journal of General Psychology_, XVI (1937), 379-389.
[7]Lilly, John C. _Man and Dolphin._ Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961;
London: Victor Gollancz, 1962.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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