The Future of Post-Human Ethology
Two Volume Set

Book Abstract

Are animals really so different from (and lower than) humans that Alexander Hamilton once suggested that “man is a reasoning…animal”? (TE 2015)

This positive view about humans can be contrasted with an opposing observation by Mark Twain, who once wrote: “Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute.” (TE 2015a)

Contrary to these opposing views (and other ones as will be discussed in the book), ethology (in relation to animalness and humanness) is neither possible (or impossible) nor desirable (or undesirable) to the extent that the respective ideologues (on different sides) would like us to believe of course, this re-examination of the opposing views does not mean that ethology is useless, or that those diverse fields (related to ethology)—like behaviorism, neuroanatomy, ecology, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, neuroethology, communication studies, cultural studies, comparative psychology, physiology, neurobiology, phylogenetics, sociobiology,, zoology, anthropology, veterinary science, animal psychology, animal welfare science, developmental psychology, ontogenetics, cultural anthropology, anthrozoology , and so on—should be dismissed. (WK 2014) Indeed, neither of these extreme views is plausible.

Instead, this book offers an alternative (better) way to understand the future of ethology in regard to the dialectic relationship between animalness and humanness—while learning from different approaches in the literature but without favoring any one of them (nor integrating them, since they are not necessarily compatible with each other). More specifically, this book offers a new theory (that is, the hybrid theory of ethology) to go beyond the existing approaches in a novel way.

This seminal project here will fundamentally change the way that we think about animalness and humanness (especially, though not solely, in the context of ethology), together with other debates as will be discussed in the rest of the book, from the combined perspectives of the mind, nature, society, and culture, with enormous implications for the human future and what I originally called its “post-human” fate.