Today, the belief that human beings are special is distinctly out of fashion. Almost every day we are presented with new revelations about how animals are so much more like us than we ever imagined. The argument is at its most powerful when it comes to our closest living relatives - the great apes. This book argues that whatever first impressions might tell us, apes are really not 'just like us'. Science has provided strong evidence that the boundaries between us and other species are vast. Unless we hold on to the belief in our exceptional abilities we will never be able to envision or build a better future - in which case, we might as well be monkeys
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Current thinking about human beings is dominated by the assumption that, at bottom, humans are 'just' animals and that we can look to the animal kingdom to explain much of human behaviour. These views need to be challenged because they are not only profoundly wrong about humanity but also potentially dangerous, justifying cynicism and pessimism about the future. Helene Guldberg's proposal for her book Just Another Ape seems to me precisely what is needed to issue this challenge. The scope of the proposed book suggests that it will amount to a serious assault on received ideas that have token hold in both academe and popular thought. --Professor Raymond Tallis
For several decades a 'chimps are us' movement has been gathering steam in science and the media. It is part of a wider tendency that 'bambifies' wild animal species and denigrates human nature out of collective guilt for the perception that we are ruining our planet. In this timely, no-nonsense riposte, Helene Guldberg firmly disposes of the notion that humans are scarcely more than chimps with a genetic and cognitive tweak, torpedoes the argument that chimpanzees qualify for human rights, and provides a ringing endorsement for the idea much vilified of late of human cultural and cognitive uniqueness. An essential antidote to our narcissistic over-identification with our fellow apes. --Jeremy Taylor, author of Not a Chimp
Helene Guldberg has done us all a favour in this lucid account of the many failings and false premises of the protracted research programme to demonstrate the intellectual continuity between ourselves and our primate cousins --James Le Fanu, author of Why Us?: How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves
For several decades a 'chimps are us' movement has been gathering steam in science and the media. It is part of a wider tendency that 'bambifies' wild animal species and denigrates human nature out of collective guilt for the perception that we are ruining our planet. In this timely, no-nonsense riposte, Helene Guldberg firmly disposes of the notion that humans are scarcely more than chimps with a genetic and cognitive tweak, torpedoes the argument that chimpanzees qualify for human rights, and provides a ringing endorsement for the idea much vilified of late of human cultural and cognitive uniqueness. An essential antidote to our narcissistic over-identification with our fellow apes. --Jeremy Taylor, author of Not a Chimp
Helene Guldberg has done us all a favour in this lucid account of the many failings and false premises of the protracted research programme to demonstrate the intellectual continuity between ourselves and our primate cousins --James Le Fanu, author of Why Us?: How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves
About the Author
Dr Helene Guldberg is co-founder and director of spiked, the first custom-built online current affairs publication in the UK. She is author of Reclaiming Childhood and teaches developmental psychology with the Open University and the US study abroad centre, CAPA.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By Jim Butcher
Format:Paperback
The book is an excellent account of the debates around ape / human consciousness. Guldberg starts off by reminding us that the argument that apes share much in common with humans is often accompanied by a very dim view of humanity (a 'filthy, meddling, too successful race' according to Lionel Schriver, cited in the book). So in criticising the view that we are 'just another ape' she is arguing for a rather more optimistic view of humanity's potential.
The book looks at a range of key authors and scientific experiments that have pointed in the direction of ape / human similarity. The arguments put forward are carefully considered, and Guldberg shows how often quite limited evidence (for example, on tool use by primates) is used to bolster a broader argument about consciousness. There seems to be a cultural predisposition to read into animal behaviour things which are really not there. Guldberg ends with an optimistic conclusion on the capacity for humanity to confront and overcome its problems, but only if we are prepared to uphold and develop what is distinctive about us - culture, reason, the capacity to mould society around the goals we decide upon. Those who emphasise human / ape similarities tend to decry these.
Guldberg's book is excellently written. As well as a convincing argument for human distinctiveness, its clear coverage of the key protagonists and books on this issue (all well indexed for reference purposes), makes it an invaluable book for students and anyone interested in this subject.
The book looks at a range of key authors and scientific experiments that have pointed in the direction of ape / human similarity. The arguments put forward are carefully considered, and Guldberg shows how often quite limited evidence (for example, on tool use by primates) is used to bolster a broader argument about consciousness. There seems to be a cultural predisposition to read into animal behaviour things which are really not there. Guldberg ends with an optimistic conclusion on the capacity for humanity to confront and overcome its problems, but only if we are prepared to uphold and develop what is distinctive about us - culture, reason, the capacity to mould society around the goals we decide upon. Those who emphasise human / ape similarities tend to decry these.
Guldberg's book is excellently written. As well as a convincing argument for human distinctiveness, its clear coverage of the key protagonists and books on this issue (all well indexed for reference purposes), makes it an invaluable book for students and anyone interested in this subject.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a very useful book for anyone frustrated at the difficulty of expressing clearly what's intuitively obvious - the fact that humans are unlike other animals and capable of much more. By drawing on her expertise in child development, Guldberg shows how human abilities seemingly mirrored by animals - such as imitation itself, in fact - are actually far more sophisticated. This is important not to disparage animals, but to make the case that humans are special, and that our humanity is something to be cherished and developed rather than lamented and reviled as it is too often today.
By Jan Bowman
Format:Paperback
As a cat-owning ex-vegan, I was fascinated by this book. It's the first tme I've read something that proves how completely unique humans are in comparison with animals. Guldberg makes you conscious of the unbridgeable chasm between our world and theirs.
It's fashionable nowadays to denigrate humanity's achievements and to remark on what a pathetic species we are (eg "at least animals don't cause wars"). So Guldberg's unswerving belief in the total superiority of people over anything else in the world is positively refreshing. I also enjoyed the way she presents her opponents' arguments very clearly and convincingly, so you think goodness, how can she possibly disprove that - and on the next page she goes ahead and does it.
She uses lots of case studies to show how we and animals exist on completely different cognitive planets. Even the most intelligent ape only ever does what it's either been programmed to do for centuries, or what it's picked up, laboriously, through trial and error and countless repeated actions. Unlike us, an animal never ever asks why; it can't plan ahead; it can only react to what's immediately around it. Animals' ability to learn is strictly curtailed by their lack of self-awareness.
This is the essential difference between ourselves and animals: or what Guldberg calls `an ability to participate in collective cognition' -- our ability to learn from and teach each other. Even the brightest animals are stuck at the mental age of a baby which has learnt to smile, but will never learn to point (the first sign, she explains, of an urge to communicate with others).
Guldberg is particularly good at explaining the way we anthropomorphise about things.... Read more ›
It's fashionable nowadays to denigrate humanity's achievements and to remark on what a pathetic species we are (eg "at least animals don't cause wars"). So Guldberg's unswerving belief in the total superiority of people over anything else in the world is positively refreshing. I also enjoyed the way she presents her opponents' arguments very clearly and convincingly, so you think goodness, how can she possibly disprove that - and on the next page she goes ahead and does it.
She uses lots of case studies to show how we and animals exist on completely different cognitive planets. Even the most intelligent ape only ever does what it's either been programmed to do for centuries, or what it's picked up, laboriously, through trial and error and countless repeated actions. Unlike us, an animal never ever asks why; it can't plan ahead; it can only react to what's immediately around it. Animals' ability to learn is strictly curtailed by their lack of self-awareness.
This is the essential difference between ourselves and animals: or what Guldberg calls `an ability to participate in collective cognition' -- our ability to learn from and teach each other. Even the brightest animals are stuck at the mental age of a baby which has learnt to smile, but will never learn to point (the first sign, she explains, of an urge to communicate with others).
Guldberg is particularly good at explaining the way we anthropomorphise about things.... Read more ›
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