Definitions are a means of clarifying a discussion.
Another way to clarify a discussion is to paraphrase it. In other words, to state the claim, quoting the author, and then to restate it in your own words, as you understand it. If you have a quote from a secondary source that also clarifies, it's a huge bonus because you are providing evidence for your statement.
For example:
De Waal notes that many people believed the earth was flat despite the fact that there were obvious signs in nature that demonstrated it to be a sphere. De Waal claims that the "unexpected often escapes attention" (183). In other words, if we're not looking closely, we may notice the obvious.
Take a claim, one of the claims you are focusing on, contextualize it, and then clarify it in your own words.
I will be focusing on chapter nine, and in that chapter de Waal purposes, “he [Maslow] thus forgot that dominance is a social phenomenon that resides in relationships, not individuals” (300), this claim ties into the rest of the book showing that animals and humans are very much alike with dominance in relationships and not just individuals.
ReplyDeleteIn Chapter 5, De Waal gives many example of how people often look past the obvious truth in front of them because they didn't have an open mind. On examples he gave was infanticide among animals. When humans first discovered this concept they were shocked and disgusted because it was an unusual thing to them. Considering humans do not kill their young, it was a hard concept to grasp for us. De Waal explains that, “Infanticide is increasingly regarded as a key factor in social evolution” (185). He argues that people did not keep an open mind and view things in different perpectives because they already formed the idea that infanticide was wrong. De Waal states that if people looked at in a different perspective they would have saw that it is some animals nature, so it is not wrong or disgusting to them.
ReplyDeleteIn chapter nine, De Waal agrees with Maslow’s belief that there is an “existence of a drive for dominance” (De Waal 299). However, Maslow forgot that “dominance is a social phenomenon that resided in relationships, not individuals” (300). This claim made by De Waal, describes how primates’ dominance comes about which, can change the way we perceive the achievement of dominance. Humans perceive a dominant being whether human or animal, as being the strongest, smartest, and intimidating. This however is not true because dominance does not come from individuals alone. Dominance comes from the relationships you have within your society. How can you achieve dominance if there is no one but you? In a society, the lower beings with allow dominance to be given to whoever they trust, not who they fear. So therefore, De Waal’s claim changes the way we see the role of dominance in animals.
ReplyDeleteI am focusing on chapter one and the main claim for my chapter is" We need to get over the fact that we aren't culturally alone and that animals have similarities with us. and the only way we will be able to see that is if we can get over anthropomorphism and reduction of animals". This claim is basically saying that we need to stop denying the fact that animals have culture. and the biggest reason why we cant see that right now is two reasons: reduction and anthropomorphims. In the beginning of chapter one, De Waal shares the number one scientific rule and thats when studying an animal, one must think of it in an objective fashion. Well if we are to think of these animals as a rock then no wonder why we dont think they have culture. thats just rediculous. and then secondly, De Waal says we need to stop anthropomorphism. If we keep comparing animals with human like qualities, we will never see there own culture. becuase we are just comparing it to ours and the mere thought that animals have culture identical to us is frightening to some. Well what we think as culutre is different for scientist. they have a different kind of culture and we keep comparing their culture to ours which is hy we cant see the similarites.
ReplyDeleteI'm focusing on chapter 5 and one of the claims I chose to talk about was "the possibility o f animal culture, succinctly defining the phenomenon as "socially transmitted adjustable behavior" (Imanishi 201), this goes hand in hand with De Waal's claim that new habits can be spread out of thin air. An example of this is when Imo chose to start washing her potatoes before eating them, and how from there other monkeys chose to imitate her and now many years later these new monkeys still do this.
ReplyDeleteMy claim that I will talk about is one of the claims in chapter 5. De Waal states, "Persistance of habits beyond the life of the initiator is one of the characteristics of culture" (211). In other words this is a definition in which de Waal uses to define what is culture. His definition is that any habit that is created from one of a species and is passed on to others and continues to be used even after the originator is gone constitutes as being culture.
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ReplyDeleteIn chapter five De Waal discusses the effect of biases and predispositions on scientific study. Through careful explanation and illustration, De Waal builds his claim that we couldn’t see the evidence of animal culture before because our brains were ignoring the evidence that did not support what we believed. This is a major piece of De Waal’s argument because it was a major reason for the initial rejection of his claims by the scientific community.
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