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Mind in the Waters: A Book to Celebrate the Consciousness of Whales & Dolphins
Mind in the Waters joins Mostert's Supership as this year's strongest ecological attack on idiocy & greed, with McIntyre focusing on the slaughter of whales & dolphins. She plunges the reader into the Cetacea family with great, great power. Her contributors include leading scientists in whale brain studies, neurology, societal habits; Arctic naturalist Farley Mowatt & dolphinologist John Lilly; poets D.H. Lawrence, Pablo Neruda, Michael McClure etc.; & scholars of whale myths in world literatures. Brain analysis indicates that whales perceive in all their senses at once; i.e., where human motor controls are in varied areas of the brain, the whale's overlap & apparently are cross-stimulated, with results we can only imagine. Whales have very long lives (nobody knows for sure how long) & have been in the oceans for 30 million years. This extraordinary collection goes beyond any studies yet published & will appeal to a reader's imagination, intuition & heart, & should satisfy the scientific mind as well. Royalties from this thickly illustrated book will go to Project Jonah, a campaign for a world moratorium on the commercial killing of whales & dolphins.--Kirkus (edited)
240 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1974
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 18, 2015
This book was a good mix of fact and fiction about the natures and consciousnesses of whales and dolphins as well as about the study of these beings. I was particularly impressed by the editor's inclusion of John Lilly as well as of an essay about the erotic relations of one the authors with a dolphin--no it wasn't gay, these mammals were straight. He certainly thinks them intelligent--and more objective studies appear to indicate the same.
Generally, I find most public discourse, the kinds of stuff one sees in papers and magazines, to be narrowly focused, poorly informed and/or trivial. Many important issues are hardly mentioned. One of them is the ethical status of other animals and the relations between them and we humans both as individuals and as species and, particularly, as regards the impact of human populations and growing economies on their sustaining environments. I recall once going to a meeting held by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, a meeting concerned with duneland "development" along the lakeshore. No one, not even the environmentalists, mentioned the effects of such projected development on the native species. Well, I did...and I felt that they felt I was crazy. In any case, no one picked up on that theme except the woman who occupied the chair beside mine--and that only in a whisper when I returned. The concerns of the meeting-goers were all human concerns, concerns divided between those who wanted to turn a buck building along Lake Michigan and those more concerned about the tourists drawn by the undeveloped woods and beaches.
Generally, I find most public discourse, the kinds of stuff one sees in papers and magazines, to be narrowly focused, poorly informed and/or trivial. Many important issues are hardly mentioned. One of them is the ethical status of other animals and the relations between them and we humans both as individuals and as species and, particularly, as regards the impact of human populations and growing economies on their sustaining environments. I recall once going to a meeting held by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, a meeting concerned with duneland "development" along the lakeshore. No one, not even the environmentalists, mentioned the effects of such projected development on the native species. Well, I did...and I felt that they felt I was crazy. In any case, no one picked up on that theme except the woman who occupied the chair beside mine--and that only in a whisper when I returned. The concerns of the meeting-goers were all human concerns, concerns divided between those who wanted to turn a buck building along Lake Michigan and those more concerned about the tourists drawn by the undeveloped woods and beaches.
July 5, 2013
Based on listening to Patrick Moore, cofounder of Greenpeace, but now leading a movement called Green Spirit, he mentioned that one of his few religious beliefs is that dolphins and whales are mysteriously and uniquely intelligent creatures with minds potentially as capable as ours but profoundly different. His position remains from the founding of Greenpeace, that commercialized whale and dolphin killing should end. Period.
He recommended a little known compilation of research and inquiries into the minds and intelligence of whale and dolphins in this book.
It is a fascinating, if uneven, read. A variety of individual statements or summaries of research are pulled together, and a reader can find dry, obtuse findings of researchers to emotional, nearly unapproachable texts on consciousness and connectedness we might be missing to our "brother and sister" whales.
One of the basic gleanings from this book emphasizes that while land based animals rely on hearing, scent, and eyesight for much of their input to their surroundings, sea animals have focused on hearing, and in a much different medium (water vs the atmosphere). And the brains of these creatures and ours have developed so differently over the millenniums as a result of such different environments. We (humans) have picked up on just a bit of this - sonar - for example, but the authors and contributors to this book, suggest we have so much more to learn, and for that matter respect from these life forms.
As long as one reads this book with considerable tolerance, it is instructive and mind-opening as to how humans have viewed and exploited these species of sea creatures, without any real understanding of the profound differences there are of these minds in the waters.
He recommended a little known compilation of research and inquiries into the minds and intelligence of whale and dolphins in this book.
It is a fascinating, if uneven, read. A variety of individual statements or summaries of research are pulled together, and a reader can find dry, obtuse findings of researchers to emotional, nearly unapproachable texts on consciousness and connectedness we might be missing to our "brother and sister" whales.
One of the basic gleanings from this book emphasizes that while land based animals rely on hearing, scent, and eyesight for much of their input to their surroundings, sea animals have focused on hearing, and in a much different medium (water vs the atmosphere). And the brains of these creatures and ours have developed so differently over the millenniums as a result of such different environments. We (humans) have picked up on just a bit of this - sonar - for example, but the authors and contributors to this book, suggest we have so much more to learn, and for that matter respect from these life forms.
As long as one reads this book with considerable tolerance, it is instructive and mind-opening as to how humans have viewed and exploited these species of sea creatures, without any real understanding of the profound differences there are of these minds in the waters.
September 12, 2018
a beautiful book. Title makes its point.Sentience is not limited to human kind
June 23, 2010
Such an exceptional book, decided to put the books published review:
"Mind in the Waters joins Mostert's Supership (KR, p.924) as this year's strongest ecological attack on idiocy & greed, with McIntyre focusing on the slaughter of whales & dolphins. She plunges the reader into the Cetacea family with great, great power. Her contributors include leading scientists in whale brain studies, neurology, societal habits; Arctic naturalist Farley Mowatt & dolphinologist John Lilly; poets D.H. Lawrence, Pablo Neruda, Michael McClure etc.; & scholars of whale myths in world literatures. Brain analysis indicates that whales perceive in all their senses at once; i.e., where human motor controls are in varied areas of the brain, the whale's overlap & apparently are cross-stimulated, with results we can only imagine. Whales have very long lives (nobody knows for sure how long) & have been in the oceans for 30 million years. This extraordinary collection goes beyond any studies yet published & will appeal to a reader's imagination, intuition & heart, & should satisfy the scientific mind as well. Royalties from this thickly illustrated book will go to Project Jonah, a campaign for a world moratorium on the commercial killing of whales & dolphins.--Kirkus"
"Mind in the Waters joins Mostert's Supership (KR, p.924) as this year's strongest ecological attack on idiocy & greed, with McIntyre focusing on the slaughter of whales & dolphins. She plunges the reader into the Cetacea family with great, great power. Her contributors include leading scientists in whale brain studies, neurology, societal habits; Arctic naturalist Farley Mowatt & dolphinologist John Lilly; poets D.H. Lawrence, Pablo Neruda, Michael McClure etc.; & scholars of whale myths in world literatures. Brain analysis indicates that whales perceive in all their senses at once; i.e., where human motor controls are in varied areas of the brain, the whale's overlap & apparently are cross-stimulated, with results we can only imagine. Whales have very long lives (nobody knows for sure how long) & have been in the oceans for 30 million years. This extraordinary collection goes beyond any studies yet published & will appeal to a reader's imagination, intuition & heart, & should satisfy the scientific mind as well. Royalties from this thickly illustrated book will go to Project Jonah, a campaign for a world moratorium on the commercial killing of whales & dolphins.--Kirkus"
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February 20, 2010This book referred me to the works of Lilly, which turned out to be virtually unreadable. This is a good popularization, and probably explains much of what Lilly said, in considerably less turgid prose.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews