Religion and Animals: a Changing Scene 6CHAPTER

Religion and Animals: A Changing Scene 6CHAPTER Paul Waldau n 1903 W.E.B. Du Bois predicted, ties regarding the importance of the mals as beings possessing integrity “The problem of the twentieth cen- human individual. Various positive and value wholly independent of hu- Itury is the problem of the color signs at the end of the twentieth cen- man needs? line” (1969). One hundred years tury suggested that religions may yet However believers and their leaders later, we can hope that the twentieth play an important role in dispelling answer these questions, religions will century achieved important advances the dismissive caricatures of nonhu- play a decisive role in humans’ for human liberation—not only racial mans animals that prevail in, for encounters with the nonhuman others but also sexual and political. Will that example, industrialized societies. One in and near our communities. And moral trajectory—the expansion of of these signs was that religions’ role whatever choices any particular reli- fundamental protections now easily in the origin and persistence of both gious tradition and its believers make, seen as the hallmark of the last cen- negative views and positive evalua- a central problem inside and outside tury—continue? Will the problem of tions of other animals finally was well religion will be, without doubt, the the twenty-first century be the prob- described. Another was that many problem of the species line. lem of the species line? believers began the difficult task of For protections to evolve to include engaging their fellow believers in dia- nonhuman species, religions— logue regarding religions’ strengths 1900–1950: through their leaders, their institu- and weaknesses in addressing the tions, and above all their believers— issue of the value of the nonhuman The Dismissal must take seriously the important lives around them. role that they have played, and cer- Where will this vital discussion go of Nonhuman tainly will continue to play, in in the new century? Will it help peo- humans’ engagement with the lives ple see the myriad ways in which reli- Lives beyond our species line. Religions gious traditions have been vitally The science establishment of the have such a central role in the trans- involved in developing the often-dis- western industrialized countries mission of basic images and values missive views of nonhuman lives? Will began in the early twentieth century regarding living beings that, without the discussion bring to the fore- to recognize that nonhuman pri- their help, the problem of the species ground the animal-friendly features mates were subject to many of the line will not be solved in this century. found in every code of religious same diseases as were humans. The A central question for this century is ethics? Will religious leaders and remarkable physical (and, it was later whether influential religious institu- scholars fully delineate the contribu- recognized, psychological and social) tions will continue to convey images tions of religion—both good and similarities of nonhuman primates to that radically and absolutely dismiss bad—to people’s ability to take other humans, however, did not lead scien- nonhumans, or will religions offer animals seriously? Will many religious tists, on the whole, to recommend support for the broadening move- leaders continue to claim that it is similar ethical protections for these ment to include nonhuman animals only human lives that really matter? evolutionary cousins. in humans’ moral scope. Will religious traditions be formed An irony in the thoroughgoing dis- If religions notice other species and not solely by theologians but also by missal of all nonhuman lives so char- take them seriously, ethical sensibili- grassroots believers attempting to acteristic of the first half of the twen- ties regarding nonhuman animals commit their religion’s resources to tieth century was that turn-of- may blossom as fully as did sensibili- the fullest possible recognition of ani- the-century scientists had inherited a resurgent interest in the importance Religion and Animals: A Changing Scene 85 and complexities of nonhuman ani- in crucial ways and in important insti- explain actions of a living being by mal lives. The 1859 publication of tutions, scientific attitudes toward means of higher level functions than Darwin’s pivotal Origin of Species had other animals were about to go by behaviorism’s simplified stimulus- spurred much new interest in nonhu- through a regressive narrowing in the response paradigm. In biology intelli- man lives. In some quarters at least, twentieth century’s first fifty years. gence and other “higher level” cogni- commitments to take other animals tive functions often are far more seriously flowered relative to the The Narrowing economical as explanations than are absolute dismissal and caricature of John Watson (1913) published an explanations that rely on long chains nonhuman lives that had prevailed in essay that was to set the tone of sci- of stimulus-response relations. western scientific and religious cir- entific research into other animals’ When the minds of other animals cles before Darwin’s groundbreaking cognitive abilities for the next half- are ignored, it becomes easier to achievement. century. Watson’s approach, which treat them as mere machines or inan- Curiosity about other animals’ lives involved a denial of the mental life of imate things. The result of such a rad- manifested itself in many ways, from other animals, was unusual in several ical dismissal of the more complex increased observation to invasive senses. First, a denial of mental life features of other animals’ lives is that studies such as those done in the begs obvious questions. As the Oxford humans use them as experimental 1870s by the British physician David historian Keith Thomas has noted, tools or unfeeling resources. Such Ferrier, who looked at the relation- “That there are some footsteps of use, and in particular its problems ship of humans to other primates reason, some strictures and emissions from the standpoint of both (Blum 1994). Ferrier’s idea of a sys- of ratiocination in the actions of informed, sensitive science and ethi- tematic study of primate-human rela- some brutes, is too vulgarly known cally integrated religion, is well sym- tionships was to take apart the brains and too commonly granted to be bolized by Tom Regan’s film We Are of nonhuman primates in order to say doubted” (1984, 124: n.8). All Noah (1986b), which refers to the something about the similarity of Second, from the scientific per- use of thousands of nonhuman ani- humans to other primates. Whole spective, Watson’s views, which were mals as experimental subjects on a lives in context, which of course must the foundation of behaviorism, left boat dubbed “the Atomic Ark” in the be part of any truly systematic study, much to be desired. Behaviorism, U.S. military’s 1946 Bikini Island also were engaged increasingly, as which in its strictest form emphasizes nuclear test in the Pacific. exemplified by R.L. Garner’s study in the stimulus-response model and the 1890s of free-living chimpanzees holds that all behavior is learned The Opening (Wrangham et al. 1994). The exten- through either classical or operant Of course not every development in sive works of George Romanes —Men- conditioning, is very ideological, in science in the first half of the twenti- tal Evolution in Animals (1885) and the narrowest sense of that term. eth century reflected a dismissal of Animal Intelligence (1886)—went Many contemporary scientists hold other animals from humans’ ethical through multiple editions. While that behaviorism involves an explana- horizon. R.M. Yerkes published The often based on anecdote rather than tory monism—that is, an unnecessar- Great Apes in 1927, but, when doing the rigorous observation standards of ily narrow attempt to provide an his research, he was astonished to find late twentieth century ethology, exhaustive causal account of even the only travelers’ accounts (Galdikas Romanes’s work and that of others most complex living organism built 1995). Garner’s attempt in the 1890s reflected deep interest in the lives of arbitrarily upon stimulus-response to study nonhuman great apes in the the animals described and an open- generalizations drawn solely from an field was to be the only real attempt ness to the possibility that some non- isolated part of that being’s complex- before Nissen’s attempt in 1930— humans were, like humans, possessed ity. In this regard, behaviorism can in which lasted all of four months of social, cognitive, and individual fact be unscientific, because the (Goodall, in Wrangham 1994). Thus complexities. explanatory monism neglects a signif- for Yerkes the available sources of As Ferrier’s work shows, by no icant range of data. information were travelers’ tales means all of what was happening in Historically behaviorists drew their [S]uch as those by T.S. Savage and the study of nonhuman animals at the inspiration from the philosophical J. Wyman in the Ivory Coast in end of the nineteenth century was of paradigm of positivism, which led it 1842....[These] provided almost a moral or otherwise sensitive nature. to be unnecessarily reductive. Behav- everything that was known of Darwin’s co-originator of the notion iorism’s explanatory monism violates chimpanzee behavior in the wild of natural selection, A.R. Wallace, both observation and such cherished (although the African peoples who shot orangutans in order to study methodological principles as that of lived in or near the forests could them—and sadly this was typical of parsimony. Sometimes it is simply have told us more) until the flurry Victorian naturalists (Galdikas more consistent with observation and of field studies began after the Sec- 1995). Such insensitivity was perhaps considerations of parsimony to ond World War in the early sixties a harbinger of attitudes to come, for 86 The State of the Animals II: 2003 (Goodall, in Wrangham, xv).

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