Perceiving Animals

2002 Literary Criticism

Author : Erica Fudge
Release : 2002
Genre : Literary Criticism
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 686/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis Perceiving Animals by : Erica Fudge

Download or read book Perceiving Animals written by Erica Fudge. This book was released on 2002. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The boundaries between human and beast forged a rugged philosophical landscape across early modern England. Spectators gathered in London's Bear Garden to watch the callous and brutal baiting of animals. A wave of "new" scientists performed vivisections on live animals to learn more about the human body. In Perceiving Animals, the British scholar Erica Fudge traces the dangers and problems of anthropocentrism in texts written from 1558 to 1649. Meticulous examinations of scientific, legal, political, literary, and religious writings offer unique and fascinating depictions of human perceptions about the natural world. Views carried over from bestiaries--medieval treatises on animals-- posited animals as nonsentient beings whose merits were measured solely by what provisions they afforded humans: food, medicine, clothing, travel, labor, scientific knowledge. Without consciences or faith, animals were deemed far inferior to humans. While writings from the period asserted an enormous biological superiority, Fudge contends actual human behavior and logic worked, sometimes accidentally, to close the alleged gap. In the Bear Garden, even a man of the lowest social rank had power over a tortured animal, sinking him, though, below the beasts. The beast fable itself fails to show a true understanding of animals, as it merely attributes human characteristics to beasts in an attempt to teach humanist ideals. Scholars and writers continually turned to the animal world for reflection. Despite this, scientists of the period used animals for empirical and medical knowledge, recognizing biological and spiritual similarities but refusing to renege human superiority. Including an insightful reexamination of Ben Jonson's Volpone and fascinating looks at works by Francis Bacon, Edward Coke, and Richard Overton, among others, Fudge probes issues of animal ownership and biological and spiritual superiority in early modern England that resonate with philosophical quandaries still relevant in contemporary society.

Perceiving Animals

2016-04-30 Science

Author : NA NA
Release : 2016-04-30
Genre : Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 152/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis Perceiving Animals by : NA NA

Download or read book Perceiving Animals written by NA NA. This book was released on 2016-04-30. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When we look at the human understanding of beasts in the past what we see are not only the foundations of our own perception of animals but humans contemplating their own status. Perceiving Animals argues that what is revealed in a wide range of writing from the early modern period is a recurring attempt to separate the human from the beast. Looking at the representation of the animal in law, religious writings, literary representation, science and political ideas, what emerges is a sense of the fragility of humanity, a sense of a species which always requires an external addition - property, civilisation, education, mastery of the natural world - to be fully human. Erica Fudge engages with both canonical and non-canonical texts from the period 1558-1649, and examines previously unchallenged aspects of the status of humanity: what does it mean to own an animal? How does civilisation take place, and what does this tell us about uncivilised man? What does the humanist emphasis on education mean for the uneducated? Does science ever offer humanity separation from the beast? Texts by writers including Edward Coke, Ben Jonson, Francis Bacon and Richard Overton are re-examined, and the status of humanity comes under question. Perceiving Animals argues that within early modern English culture there is an uncomfortable sense of humanity with a superiority which is not innate, but dangerously unnatural.

Picture Perception in Animals

2000 History

Author : Joël Fagot
Release : 2000
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 565/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis Picture Perception in Animals by : Joël Fagot

Download or read book Picture Perception in Animals written by Joël Fagot. This book was released on 2000. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For 35 years, visual recognition by animals has been studied by showing the subjects pictures of social or non-social objects, or scenes without questioning much the validity of pictorial representations. Here comparative psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists address that issue by asking such questions as whether animals recognize visual objects or scenes on pictures despite variations in viewpoint, the extent to which birds recognize the real world from its two-dimensional representations, and whether monkeys extract gaze information from pictures. c. Book News Inc.

Into the Illusive World

2019-07-12 Science

Author : Paul A. Moore
Release : 2019-07-12
Genre : Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 02X/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis Into the Illusive World by : Paul A. Moore

Download or read book Into the Illusive World written by Paul A. Moore. This book was released on 2019-07-12. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have you ever thought about what a dog smells as it stops to sniff at a tree? Or what a cat is watching as it stares intensely off into space? What about animals in the wild? What do they see, hear, smell, and feel? How do they perceive their surroundings? This is the illusive world. A world filled with fascinating stimuli that we are not equipped to detect. This is particularly true because we tend to rely so heavily on our eyes or ears. We are figuratively, and literally, blind to this part of the natural world. This part, which is full of stimuli we cannot perceive, encompasses the daily lives of so many animals. Beneath our feet are ants, moles, and spiders using vibrations to coordinate colonies and communicate danger. In the oceans, turtles, fish, and octopi are sensitive to magnetic and electric fields, as well as tasty morsels at the tips of their tentacles. In the skies, owls and raptors can see deep into a lake or pierce the night with highly sensitive eyes. This book brings together all these animals and their amazing sensory abilities in an exploration of how animals perceive their world. Within these pages are wonderful and exciting stories of organisms using their senses to perform sophisticated communication with nestmates, find hidden prey in the dark of night or murky of depths, and call to lovers both near and far. This book will open the door to this illusive world and will take you on a journey into the illusive world and see how different the world is when perceived through another animal’s senses.

An Immense World

2022-06-21 Nature

Author : Ed Yong
Release : 2022-06-21
Genre : Nature
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 242/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis An Immense World by : Ed Yong

Download or read book An Immense World written by Ed Yong. This book was released on 2022-06-21. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “thrilling” (The New York Times), “dazzling” (The Wall Street Journal) tour of the radically different ways that animals perceive the world that will fill you with wonder and forever alter your perspective, by Pulitzer Prize–winning science journalist Ed Yong “One of this year’s finest works of narrative nonfiction.”—Oprah Daily ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Time, People, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, Reader’s Digest, Chicago Public Library, Outside, Publishers Weekly, BookPage ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Oprah Daily, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Economist, Smithsonian Magazine, Prospect (UK), Globe & Mail, Esquire, Mental Floss, Marginalian, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world. In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth’s magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile’s scaly face is as sensitive as a lover’s fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries that remain unsolved. Funny, rigorous, and suffused with the joy of discovery, An Immense World takes us on what Marcel Proust called “the only true voyage . . . not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes.” WINNER OF THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON AWARD

Popular eBooks

Perceiving Animals

Perceiving Animals

Picture Perception in Animals

Into the Illusive World

An Immense World

You may also like...