Feral Children and Clever Animals

Feral Children and Clever Animals
Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Total Pages : 411
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780195356144
ISBN-13 : 0195356144
Rating : 4/5 (44 Downloads)

Synopsis Feral Children and Clever Animals by : Douglas K. Candland

In this provocative book, Douglas Candland shows that as we begin to understand the way animals and non-speaking humans "think," we hold up a mirror of sorts to our own mental world, and gain profound insights into human nature. Weaving together diaries, contemporary newspaper accounts, and his own enlightening commentary, Candland brings to life a series of extraordinary stories. He begins with a look at past efforts to civilize feral children. We meet Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron, now famous as the subject of a Truffaut film; Kaspar Hauser, raised in a cell, civilized, and then assassinated; and the Wolf Girls of India, found early this century huddled among wolf pups in a forest den (they were originally believed to be ghosts by superstitious villagers, who nearly shot them as they were being captured). In each case, it was hoped that the study of these children would help clarify the age-old nature/nurture debate, but, as Candland shows, so much of the information "revealed" was really only a projection of beliefs previously held by the investigating scientists. Candland then turns to "clever animals." We learn how the investigation of "Clever Hans," the German horse who could calculate square roots, proved to be a first step in the direction of behaviorism (researchers found that Hans was being tipped off by the subtle and unwitting body language of his owner and other observers, who would bend almost imperceptibly at the waist with every hoof beat, and stand erect when the correct count was reached). And Candland discusses the many attempts to communicate with our closest neighbor, the apes. We read of Richard Lynch Garner's 1892 experiment living with chimpanzees in Gabon (he taught one to say the French word "feu"), and of Gua, raised by W.N. and L.A. Kellogg alongside their own son Donald, and of the latest successes of teaching sign language to such precocious apes as Sarah, Sherman, Austin, and Koko. Throughout, Candland illuminates the boldest and most intriguing efforts yet to extend our world to that of our fellow creatures. And he shows that, in the end, our effort to "make contact" is a reflection of the way in which we as a species create and order our universe. Humans have long shown a wish to connect with the silent minds around them. In assembling and interpreting the compelling tales in this book, Candland offers us a new understanding not only of the animal kingdom, but of the very nature of humanity, and our place in the great chain of being.

The Jungle Books

The Jungle Books
Author :
Publisher : NorthSouth Books
Total Pages : 0
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0735842264
ISBN-13 : 9780735842267
Rating : 4/5 (64 Downloads)

Synopsis The Jungle Books by : Rudyard Kipling

This breathtaking new edition of Rudyard Kipling’s celebrated coming-of-age tale—illustrated by German illustrator Aljoscha Blau—contains the eight stories and verses featuring Mowgli. Published to celebrate what would have been Kipling’s 150th birthday, these stories and drawings will fascinate and delight a new generation of readers.

The Elementary Structures of Kinship

The Elementary Structures of Kinship
Author :
Publisher : Beacon Press
Total Pages : 588
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0807046698
ISBN-13 : 9780807046692
Rating : 4/5 (98 Downloads)

Synopsis The Elementary Structures of Kinship by : Claude Levi-Strauss

Professor Lévi-Strauss’s first major work, Les Structures élémentaires de la Parenté, has acquired a classic reputation since its original publication in 1949; and it has become the constant focus of academic debate about central theoretical concerns in social anthropology. It is, however, a long and difficult book for many students to read in French, and its arguments have consequently become known, even among professional anthropologists, largely through critical analysis. It was republished in a revised French edition in 1967 with a new foreword by the author, and it is this text with his further emendations that has been used in this translation. Lévi-Strauss applies his intellectual powers to the perennial problem of incest, which he elucidates by means of the concept of exchange as formulated by Marcel Mauss in his famous analysis of the gift (Essai sur le don, 1925). He distinguishes two elementary modes of exchange which govern not only the conventional variety of goods and services but also the transfer of women in marriage: these are “restricted” and “generalized” exchange. With a mass of ethnographic evidence he demonstrates how the formidable intricacy of marriage customs, comprising moral and jural ideas and institutions (which appear to be essentially arbitrary), can be seen as local and historical rules of exchange. Charles Lévi-Strauss traces these rules throughout a vast range of simple societies, chiefly in Australia and mainland Southeast Asia but also in the Americas, in Oceania, and in other parts of the world. To this survey he adds two extended sections on the great civilizations of China and India. He continues with a briefer consideration of the passage from elementary to complex structures, with particular reference to African societies, and concludes with a stimulating chapter on the principles of kinship, exchange as the universal basis for marriage prohibitions, and the formal relations between the sexes as part of a universe of communication. Although much of the work is technical, consisting of detailed analyses of types of social organization with which social anthropologists will be most familiar, it also contains much that will be of interest to psychologists, linguists, and philosophers, and to all who are interested in the possibility and the technique of the structural analysis of human activity. After the successes, moreover, of Lévi-Strauss’s subsequent books—notably Structural Anthropology, Tristes Tropiques, Totemism, and The Savage Mind—this new edition of the work which founded his present outstanding reputation will have additional value as a further means of contact with one of the original minds of this century. The translation has been made by James Harle Bell and John Richard von Sturmer, of the University of New England, Australia, and by Rodney Needham, of the University of Oxford. Dr. Needham also acted as general editor and supplied the work with a new general index. He is the translator of Lévi-Strauss’s Le Totemisme aujourd’hui and author of Structure and Sentiment (1962) and numerous papers which have contributed to the recognition of Professor Lévi-Strauss’s work in the English-speaking world.

The Second Jungle Book

The Second Jungle Book
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 256
Release :
ISBN-10 : UOM:39015011955237
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (37 Downloads)

Synopsis The Second Jungle Book by : Rudyard Kipling

The Second Jungle Book is a sequel to The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. First published in 1895, it features five stories about Mowgli and three unrelated stories, all but one set in India, most of which Kipling wrote while living in Vermont. All of the stories were previously published in magazines in 1894-5, often under different titles. The original book is now worth $3.4 million.

Savage Girls and Wild Boys

Savage Girls and Wild Boys
Author :
Publisher : Macmillan
Total Pages : 316
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781466869004
ISBN-13 : 1466869003
Rating : 4/5 (04 Downloads)

Synopsis Savage Girls and Wild Boys by : Michael Newton

Savage Girls and Wild Boys is a fascinating history of extraordinary children---brought up by animals, raised in the wilderness, or locked up for long years in solitary confinement. Wild or feral children have fascinated us through the centuries, and continue to do so today. In a haunting and hugely readable study, Michael Newton deftly investigates a number of infamous cases. He looks at Peter the Wild Boy, who gripped the attention of Swift and Defoe, and at Victor of Aveyron, who roamed wild in the forests of revolutionary France. He tells the story of a savage girl lost on the streets of Paris, of two children brought up by wolves in the jungles of India, and of a Los Angeles girl who emerged from thirteen years locked in a room to international celebrity. He describes, too, a boy brought up among monkeys in Uganda; and in Moscow, the child found living with a pack of wild dogs. Savage Girls and Wild Boys examines the lives of these children and of the adults who "rescued" them, looked after them, educated, or abused them. How can we explain the mixture of disgust and envy that such children can provoke? And what can they teach us about our notions of education, civilization, and man's true nature?

The Dumb Philosopher

The Dumb Philosopher
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 0
Release :
ISBN-10 : LCCN:02023819
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (19 Downloads)

Synopsis The Dumb Philosopher by : Daniel Defoe

Gabriel-Ernest

Gabriel-Ernest
Author :
Publisher : Read Books Ltd
Total Pages : 11
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781473373143
ISBN-13 : 147337314X
Rating : 4/5 (43 Downloads)

Synopsis Gabriel-Ernest by : Hector Hugh Munro

This early work by H. H. Munro was originally published in 1910 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'Gabriel-Ernest' is a short story about a were-wolf named Gabriel and his terrible deed. Hector Hugh Munro was born in Akyab, Burma in 1870. He was raised by aunts in North Devon, England, before returning to Burma in his early twenties to join the Colonial Burmese Military Police. Later, Munro returned once more to England, where he embarked on his career as a journalist, becoming well-known for his satirical 'Alice in Westminster' political sketches, which appeared in the Westminster Gazette. Arguably better-remembered by his pen name, 'Saki', Munro is now considered a master of the short story, with tales such as 'The Open Window' regarded as examples of the form at its finest.

Two Treatises

Two Treatises
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages :
Release :
ISBN-10 : OCLC:1125500957
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (57 Downloads)

Synopsis Two Treatises by :