Apes, Language, and the Human Mind - Softcover

Savage-Rumbaugh, Sue

Softcover

ISBN 10: 019514712X ISBN 13: 9780195147124

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2001

Synopsis

Current primate research has yielded stunning results that not only threaten our underlying assumptions about the cognitive and communicative abilities of nonhuman primates, but also bring into question what it means to be human. At the forefront of this research, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh recently has achieved a scientific breakthrough of impressive proportions. Her work with Kanzi, a laboratory-reared bonobo, has led to Kanzi's acquisition of linguistic and cognitive skills similar to those of a two and a half year-old human child. Apes, Language, and the Human Mind skillfully combines a fascinating narrative of the Kanzi research with incisive critical analysis of the research's broader linguistic, psychological, and anthropological implications. The first part of the book provides a detailed, personal account of Kanzi's infancy, youth, and upbringing, while the second part addresses the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological issues raised by the Kanzi research. The authors discuss the challenge to the foundations of modern cognitive science presented by the Kanzi research; the methods by which we represent and evaluate the abilities of both primates and humans; and the implications which ape language research has for the study of the evolution of human language. Sure to be controversial, this exciting new volume offers a radical revision of the sciences of language and mind, and will be important reading for all those working in the fields of primatology, anthropology, linguistics, philosophy of mind, and cognitive and developmental psychology.

About this title

Review

'...the ape-language studies of Savage-Rumbaugh and others are, in their methods if not their conclusions, classically Cartesian. From them we have learned an extraordinary amount about the cognitive and communicative skills of apes immersed in human society.' (Robert Seyfarth, Nature)

'...The study of Kanzi's comprehension is fascinating, in part because it creates so many interesting questions about the extent of his synactic and cognitive abilities and their similarity to human abilities.' (Robert W. Mitchell, Trends in Cognitive Sciences Vol 3, No. 6)

About the Author

Sue Savage-Rumbaugh is at Georgia State University. Stuart G. Shanker is at York University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 019514712X
• ISBN 13: 9780195147124
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256