Embodiment, How Animals and Humans Make Sense of Things: The Dawn of Art, Ethics, Science, Politics, and Religion

by Jesse James Thomas

This book is not about what we can teach animals, but what they can teach us. Their differences are often not as radical as most humans imagine, which is one reason we love animals. We have more neurons in our neurological systems, but we share many of the same features and underestimate what they have learned about survival strategies over the eons. We stop and think a lot more, but in doing so can sometimes interfere with natural processes and the results are not always good. Animals provide a good platform from which we should launch emotionally and even ethically if we pay attention to them.
This book is unlike carefully documented scholarly articles that Dr. Thomas also writes. It is written for a wide popular audience, and is loaded with stories and humor. It is meant to be easy to read for almost anyone.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science

204 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 2, 2018

Reviews

[Corvus · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF this one. All I can say is that it reads like a blog post that's too long. I don't really understand what the point of most of it is. The anecdotes about animals he does offer in the chunk I read are welfarist at best. There are long, drawn out descriptions of movie plots that seem irrelevant. Im assuming this guy has not had anyone edit his work. Maybe with a good editor, this book could be condensed into an online article.