[COP3] Thinking with Animals by Lorraine Daston and Gregg Mitman

Linkage between human and animls:

I found some useful quotes from the book Thinking with Animals by L.Daston and G.Mitman. Start to write something about my point.

'Anthropomorphism' has long been considered a bad word in science.' (Kennedy et al. 1992) It is believed that Anthropomorphism is neither based on the first impression or necessarily nonscientific. Nowadays, from pets to wild life, from plants to toys, human being convinced that they have emotions and personalities and which allow us to share our daily life with them. Although Anthropomorphism is not an appropriate word to use in science, it could also be interpreted as Creativity personally. Xenophanes an ancient Greek philosopher attributed this abstract thoughts of animals to how do human came up with the concept of god which is believed to be the closest saying of Anthropomorphism back in ancient time.

''Ethiopians say the their gods are flat-nosed and dark,
Thracians that theirs are blue-eyed and red-haired
If oxen and horses and lions had hands
and were able to draw with their hands and do the same things as men,
horses would draw the shapes of gods to look like horses
and oxen to look like oxen, and each would make the
gods’ bodies have the same shape as they themselves had.''

H. Diels and W. Kranz (eds.), Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, pp. 38–58, 1st Edition, Berlin, 1903, B, 16, 15.  

'We are animals; we think with animals. What could be more natural?'(Daston and Mitman, 2005) It is unavoidable that Human being apply Anthropomorphism in daily life because we genetically tend to be connected emotionally with someone or something and empathy is fundamental to human existence. (Hook.E 2003) 'From Aristotle to Darwin down to the present, naturalists have credited bees with monarchies, ants with honesty, and dogs with tender consciences, all on the basis of firsthand observation.'(Daston and Mitman, 2005) In order to think like animal, human beings give animals or objects
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I found Thinking with Animals by Lorraine Daston and Gregg Mitman book very useful. I did not know that there are books about Anthropomorphism and hence I also found other similar books from the library. It has rich content that conclude a lot of information about Anthropomorphism from historical facts to case studies on animals. It is very important to look at how people in the real world investigate Anthropomorphism as a scientific subject and how it is applied in different professional area. The linkage between my dissertation and those information is very important. The book also mention Darwin and Aristotle such vital people through human history, by mentioning so would definitely become strong points to support my thoughts. At the moment I think the theory of them enable me to look at Anthropomorphism on non human characters at a different perspective. Not only focusing on the techniques and practical side of it but also provide some powerful evidence to explain why we anthropomorphise. This would help readers to understand the topic contextually and theoretically.