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Communication Between Man & Dolphin: The Possibilities of Talking with Other Species
Communication Between Man and The possibilities of talking with other John C. Communication Between Man and The possibilities of talking with other Crown FIRST First Edition, Third Printing. Not price-clipped. Published by Crown Publishers, 1978. Octavo. Hardcover. Book is very good. Dust jacket is very good with shelf/edgewear and nicks. 100% positive feedback. 30 day money back guarantee. NEXT DAY SHIPPING! Excellent customer service. Please email with any questions. All books packed carefully and ship with free delivery confirmation/tracking. All books come with free bookmarks. Ships from Sag Harbor, New York.Seller 321065 Science & Nature We Buy Books! Collections - Libraries - Estates - Individual Titles. Message us if you have books to sell!
269 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1967
3 people are currently reading
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About the author
John C. Lilly
27 books211 followersJohn Cunningham Lilly was an American physician, neuroscientist, psychoanalyst, psychonaut, philosopher, writer and inventor.
He was a researcher of the nature of consciousness using mainly isolation tanks, dolphin communication, and psychedelic drugs, sometimes in combination.
He was a researcher of the nature of consciousness using mainly isolation tanks, dolphin communication, and psychedelic drugs, sometimes in combination.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 26, 2017
Worth it for Chapter 16 "The Possible Existence of Nonhuman Languages"
February 1, 2025
AN EXCELLENT PRESENTATION OF LILLY’S ATTEMPTS TO COMMUNICATE WITH DOLPHINS
Dr. (he WAS a medical doctor, among other things) John Cunningham Lilly (1915-2001) wrote in the Preface to this 1978 book, “In 1955 I began scientific research with the bottle-nosed dolphin… In 1968 this research program was terminated. In the intervening years, several major discoveries about dolphins were made. From 1968 to 1976 my efforts were put into research on myself and other humans. This work was subsequently published in depth in a book [‘The Deep Self: Profound Relaxation and the Tank Isolation Technique’].
“During the completion of this work I reviewed the dolphin research literature from 1968 to 1976. I found that practically no research based on the 1955-1968 work had been done along the lines of communication between dolphins and humans and among dolphins themselves… This review of the literature convinced me that it was timely for me to resume my research with the dolphins. In preparation for this, I reviewed all the papers and books that I had written on the subject…
“With my wife... and our friends… we established the Human/Dolphin Foundation in Malibu, California. The aims of the foundation are to support research and education leading to communication between man and the cetaceans by new electronic and computer methods. The basic considerations leading to this proposal are given in this book.”
He states in the Introduction, “In this book I invite you to entertain some new beliefs about dolphins. Many of the young new generation believe as I do; many do not so believe. Here we give the basis for these beliefs---experience, experiment, and deductions therefrom. As the accumulated facts about the structure of the brains and the behavior of the Cetacea have become integrated, beliefs about them have been constructed and realized quite counter to those held by many biologists and many keepers of dolphins and whales in oceanaria. In brief, this new belief claims: these Cetacea with huge brains are more intelligent than any man or woman. The old beliefs have been based upon ignorance and lack of direct personal experience with dolphins and whales… The new beliefs about the Cetacea lead to problems—personal, political, and social in addition to scientific…” (Pg. 1)
He continues, “In the past (before 1965) I felt that the scientific viewpoint of total objectivity, of the noninvolved scientific observer, was the be-all and end-all for one’s life. I am no longer convinced that such a dispassionate noninvolved view of ecology will ever work. A scientist who fails to assume social responsibility, the feedback from all other members of his species, is not taking the responsibility of being a human being beyond a limited self-serving role in society. Involvement and participation are absolutely essential for understanding and for survival of self and of one’s own species. We need a new ethic… We need modifications of our laws so that the Cetacea can no longer become the property of individuals, corporations, or governments. Even as the respect for human individuals is growing in our law, so must the respect for individual whales, dolphins, and porpoises…
“Those who catch and imprison dolphins must modify what they are doing to allow more communication between the imprisoned dolphins and their families and friends in the sea. If any dolphins and whales are to be kept captive, their captivity should be for only an agreed-upon, limited time, after which they should be released to their natural habitat to communicate man’s activities to their fellows. I envision the day when the current oceanaria will progress from being ‘prisons’ to being ‘interspecies schools,’ educating both dolphins and humans about one another.” (Pg. 1-3)
He argues, “we deduce that the human-sized brains in Cetacea correspond to human computational power and that the larger cetacean brains are capable of extensions of computations into the past and into the future beyond the range of the human. Such considerations … generate new beliefs about dolphins, whales, and porpoises: 1. In the large range of brain size in the Cetacea the smallest Cetacea correspond in their computational capacities to the apes. 2. Those whose brains are as large as human… have computational capacities similar to the human regarding the use of past and future in current computations. 3. In those brains larger than the human … the computational capacities exceed those of the human regarding past and future used in computations of the current situation. 4. Man’s current consensus judgments about the Cetacea are too limited… At the least their record of adaptation to their environment is as successful as man’s adaptation to his for a period of time at least twenty times as great as that of man’s existence on earth. 5. The Cetacea are sensitive, compassionate, ethical, philosophical, and have ancient ‘vocal’ histories that their young must learn. 6. Cetacean knowledge of humans is restricted to experiences in the sea between the Cetacea and human ships, warfare, yachts, catcher boats, and so forth… 7. The Cetacea realize that man is incredibly dangerous… 8. Thus, we deduce that the whales have a knowledge of man… which they weave into theories and into accounts of direct experiences in a way similar to the way we develop knowledge of one another… 9. Paleontological evidence shows that the whales and the dolphins have been here on the planet a lot longer than has man.” (Pg, 7-9)
He adds, “This book is an attempt to present the basis for these beliefs and their current details insofar as possible. It is hoped that the contents of the book will become known widely enough to help start programs of research on communication with the Cetacea.” (Pg. 9)
He recounts, “In May of 1958 I gave a talk at the American Psychoanalytic and American Psychiatric meetings… I was surprised to find that there was an immediate interest and an overwhelming response to my saying that the work to date showed that the dolphins were probably quite as intelligent as man but in a strange and alien way, as a consequence to their life in the sea… I hadn’t realized how radical a change this was from the previous views of the dolphins. This view, which apparently hadn’t been suggested before by any scientist, became very popular.” (Pg. 20)
He mentions Duane Rumbaugh’s language experiments with apes (e.g., ‘The Lana Project’), where the ape presses 156 switches with its fingers, and “Each time a switch is pushed a special projector turns on that particular lexigram… A sequence of lexigrams is thus portrayed … as if to form a sequence.” But he comments, “To reproduce the system exactly would require … underwater switches of much larger size so that they could be pushed by a dolphin’s beak… Man and apes … both have fingers and hands, and we can ‘manipulate’ the external world with these marvelous instruments. We should not ask the dolphin to communicate by pushing switches devised for the chimpanzee… we feel that it would be far better to make use of the dolphin’s incredible ability to produce and to understand complex sequences of sound in such an investigation.” (Pg. 81-82)
He points out, “Dolphins in close proximity to man voluntarily raise their blowholes into the air and make sounds in the air in the presence of the humans. This takes place only when the dolphins are placed in close proximity to humans who will speak in air to them or to other humans loudly enough for the dolphins to hear…” (Pg. 155)
He asserts, “As I stated in ‘The Center of the Cyclone,’ I closed the dolphin laboratory because I did not want to continue to run a concentration camp for my friends, the dolphins. I have not attacked publicly the oceanaria for keeping dolphins restrained… The oceanaria have done a very great service for the dolphins and killer whales by acquainting … hundreds of thousands of humans with their existence and with their capabilities in a circus way… This has been a costly education for these species, however… The oceanaria assure that we will get closer and closer to an ability to communicate and to break the barrier between these species and ourselves. For this I am very grateful. If it weren’t for the oceanaria, I would not have been able to do my initial work with the dolphins.” (Pg. 257-258)
This book (as well as ‘Lilly on Dolphins’) will be ‘must reading’ for anyone interested dolphins, and the possibility of communication with them.
Dr. (he WAS a medical doctor, among other things) John Cunningham Lilly (1915-2001) wrote in the Preface to this 1978 book, “In 1955 I began scientific research with the bottle-nosed dolphin… In 1968 this research program was terminated. In the intervening years, several major discoveries about dolphins were made. From 1968 to 1976 my efforts were put into research on myself and other humans. This work was subsequently published in depth in a book [‘The Deep Self: Profound Relaxation and the Tank Isolation Technique’].
“During the completion of this work I reviewed the dolphin research literature from 1968 to 1976. I found that practically no research based on the 1955-1968 work had been done along the lines of communication between dolphins and humans and among dolphins themselves… This review of the literature convinced me that it was timely for me to resume my research with the dolphins. In preparation for this, I reviewed all the papers and books that I had written on the subject…
“With my wife... and our friends… we established the Human/Dolphin Foundation in Malibu, California. The aims of the foundation are to support research and education leading to communication between man and the cetaceans by new electronic and computer methods. The basic considerations leading to this proposal are given in this book.”
He states in the Introduction, “In this book I invite you to entertain some new beliefs about dolphins. Many of the young new generation believe as I do; many do not so believe. Here we give the basis for these beliefs---experience, experiment, and deductions therefrom. As the accumulated facts about the structure of the brains and the behavior of the Cetacea have become integrated, beliefs about them have been constructed and realized quite counter to those held by many biologists and many keepers of dolphins and whales in oceanaria. In brief, this new belief claims: these Cetacea with huge brains are more intelligent than any man or woman. The old beliefs have been based upon ignorance and lack of direct personal experience with dolphins and whales… The new beliefs about the Cetacea lead to problems—personal, political, and social in addition to scientific…” (Pg. 1)
He continues, “In the past (before 1965) I felt that the scientific viewpoint of total objectivity, of the noninvolved scientific observer, was the be-all and end-all for one’s life. I am no longer convinced that such a dispassionate noninvolved view of ecology will ever work. A scientist who fails to assume social responsibility, the feedback from all other members of his species, is not taking the responsibility of being a human being beyond a limited self-serving role in society. Involvement and participation are absolutely essential for understanding and for survival of self and of one’s own species. We need a new ethic… We need modifications of our laws so that the Cetacea can no longer become the property of individuals, corporations, or governments. Even as the respect for human individuals is growing in our law, so must the respect for individual whales, dolphins, and porpoises…
“Those who catch and imprison dolphins must modify what they are doing to allow more communication between the imprisoned dolphins and their families and friends in the sea. If any dolphins and whales are to be kept captive, their captivity should be for only an agreed-upon, limited time, after which they should be released to their natural habitat to communicate man’s activities to their fellows. I envision the day when the current oceanaria will progress from being ‘prisons’ to being ‘interspecies schools,’ educating both dolphins and humans about one another.” (Pg. 1-3)
He argues, “we deduce that the human-sized brains in Cetacea correspond to human computational power and that the larger cetacean brains are capable of extensions of computations into the past and into the future beyond the range of the human. Such considerations … generate new beliefs about dolphins, whales, and porpoises: 1. In the large range of brain size in the Cetacea the smallest Cetacea correspond in their computational capacities to the apes. 2. Those whose brains are as large as human… have computational capacities similar to the human regarding the use of past and future in current computations. 3. In those brains larger than the human … the computational capacities exceed those of the human regarding past and future used in computations of the current situation. 4. Man’s current consensus judgments about the Cetacea are too limited… At the least their record of adaptation to their environment is as successful as man’s adaptation to his for a period of time at least twenty times as great as that of man’s existence on earth. 5. The Cetacea are sensitive, compassionate, ethical, philosophical, and have ancient ‘vocal’ histories that their young must learn. 6. Cetacean knowledge of humans is restricted to experiences in the sea between the Cetacea and human ships, warfare, yachts, catcher boats, and so forth… 7. The Cetacea realize that man is incredibly dangerous… 8. Thus, we deduce that the whales have a knowledge of man… which they weave into theories and into accounts of direct experiences in a way similar to the way we develop knowledge of one another… 9. Paleontological evidence shows that the whales and the dolphins have been here on the planet a lot longer than has man.” (Pg, 7-9)
He adds, “This book is an attempt to present the basis for these beliefs and their current details insofar as possible. It is hoped that the contents of the book will become known widely enough to help start programs of research on communication with the Cetacea.” (Pg. 9)
He recounts, “In May of 1958 I gave a talk at the American Psychoanalytic and American Psychiatric meetings… I was surprised to find that there was an immediate interest and an overwhelming response to my saying that the work to date showed that the dolphins were probably quite as intelligent as man but in a strange and alien way, as a consequence to their life in the sea… I hadn’t realized how radical a change this was from the previous views of the dolphins. This view, which apparently hadn’t been suggested before by any scientist, became very popular.” (Pg. 20)
He mentions Duane Rumbaugh’s language experiments with apes (e.g., ‘The Lana Project’), where the ape presses 156 switches with its fingers, and “Each time a switch is pushed a special projector turns on that particular lexigram… A sequence of lexigrams is thus portrayed … as if to form a sequence.” But he comments, “To reproduce the system exactly would require … underwater switches of much larger size so that they could be pushed by a dolphin’s beak… Man and apes … both have fingers and hands, and we can ‘manipulate’ the external world with these marvelous instruments. We should not ask the dolphin to communicate by pushing switches devised for the chimpanzee… we feel that it would be far better to make use of the dolphin’s incredible ability to produce and to understand complex sequences of sound in such an investigation.” (Pg. 81-82)
He points out, “Dolphins in close proximity to man voluntarily raise their blowholes into the air and make sounds in the air in the presence of the humans. This takes place only when the dolphins are placed in close proximity to humans who will speak in air to them or to other humans loudly enough for the dolphins to hear…” (Pg. 155)
He asserts, “As I stated in ‘The Center of the Cyclone,’ I closed the dolphin laboratory because I did not want to continue to run a concentration camp for my friends, the dolphins. I have not attacked publicly the oceanaria for keeping dolphins restrained… The oceanaria have done a very great service for the dolphins and killer whales by acquainting … hundreds of thousands of humans with their existence and with their capabilities in a circus way… This has been a costly education for these species, however… The oceanaria assure that we will get closer and closer to an ability to communicate and to break the barrier between these species and ourselves. For this I am very grateful. If it weren’t for the oceanaria, I would not have been able to do my initial work with the dolphins.” (Pg. 257-258)
This book (as well as ‘Lilly on Dolphins’) will be ‘must reading’ for anyone interested dolphins, and the possibility of communication with them.
June 20, 2022
I found this book interesting but hardly geared for the casual reader. It offers an abundance of technical data and information; most of which is over the heads of the typical pleasure-reader.
November 26, 2010
Interesting.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews