The book is about clever experiments conducted to show that primates, crows, elephants, etc. possess a sense of the future and the past, that they canThe book is about clever experiments conducted to show that primates, crows, elephants, etc. possess a sense of the future and the past, that they can a plan for the future, and that they unequivocally make tools. Moreover the experiments discussed here demonstrate that animals have a sense of compassion, altruism and reciprocity just like us (at our best). All of the experiments with primates are interesting, but the ones with caching birds, like Jays—who inhibit immediate gratification for the sake of future need—and the ones that proved Ravens know each others’ voices and have a hierarchical status system, I found especially intriguing. Then there’s Irene M. Pepperberg’s Alex, the Gray Parrot, who can verbally respond to addition and subtraction tasks done in his head. The studies about animal metacognition—thinking about thinking—are gobsmacking. Mainly the author’s targets here are the many psychologists, philosophers and other experts who argue that only humans are endowed with such imaginative and creative capacities. I liked that the author, who’s worked with primates for 30 years, has an acerbic view of humans that seems entirely missing in his discussion of primates. See note, page 219. All my highlights and notes give a peek at the content of this brilliant book....more
I’d forgotten the epistolary underpinnings here. It’s certainly past due for a rereading. Published 201 years ago, it’s hard to believe how honeyed thI’d forgotten the epistolary underpinnings here. It’s certainly past due for a rereading. Published 201 years ago, it’s hard to believe how honeyed the language is, how spare. Only the old fashioned vocabulary dates it, but that in a good way. I recall how Iain Pears so adeptly evoked the 17th century by way of a bit of judiciously used archaic vocabulary in An Instance of the Fingerpost, which is exquisite, being his Rashomon. Shelley’s writing stays on the surface; one doesn’t get lost in introspection or endless digressions. Fascinating to see again how the dark possibilities of science concerned Shelley. This foreboding is still with us as China begins using CRISPR to create GMO people. And check out this headline from CNN: “It's 2019, and scientists can now revive brain cells in a decapitated pig hours after death.” So Shelley’s cautionary tale has not dated. If anything it’s more pertinent now.
The speed with which the story unfolds is key to its success. My admiration is only renewed as I read. I mean, the focus of the story is faultless, and as it runs on it also, quite apart from the horror story, has a way of charming one such is the tidy economy with which it proceeds. Edmund White would call this a Chinese box narrative: a story (the monster’s) inside a story (Victor Frankenstein’s), inside a story (the arctic explorer Robert Walton’s). Now I see what I did not before, that the monster is epistemologically inconsistent. His fine diction and vocabulary have no source; how were they learned and when? He speaks of how miserably lonely he is, how wretched. This presumes a past, socialization, lived experience; if so, these may be inklings of his former life, which reanimation has blurred, as in a palimpsest.
It turns out that all the creature’s language was learned by eavesdropping on a family of cottagers. One is an Arab and as she is taught English so the monster learns too. Then he finds Plutarch, Goethe and Milton lying in the woods. It’s a wearying contrivance; yet somehow one is dragged along out of sympathy for the monster—especially when he rhapsodizes about reading. The parallels between the monster’s situation and Adam’s in Paradise Lost is brilliantly contrasted. The creature has no Eve. When we return to Dr. Frankenstein’s narrative, after his promise to the creature on the glacier, that he will create a female monster, we feel as we read that the the doctor’s dark mood and general depression and misery, effectively echo that espoused by his creation. This is deftly done. Nothing separates the two men in their basic need for companionship and love. The creature seems the more rational of the two, but he is also desperate in his loneliness, thus his threat against the mad doctor’s loved ones.
The doctor is clearly in denial throughout about the implications of his work. He’s naive and underestimates the cunning of his creation again and again. As for the monster, he is, after reading Milton, in rebellion against an unfair and cruel god—Frankenstein. But unlike human beings who believe in God, the monster’s god is of flesh and bones and all too responsive to the displeasure of his creation. Sustained throughout is the ability of both men—creature and creator—to suffer what is at bottom the same misery, though in the creature’s case it is the solitariness enforced by his monstrousness, for the doctor it is the personal loss of loved ones. Finally, in the doctor’s mad pursuit of his tormentor, onto the frozen Arctic Ocean, we see that he has indeed become what the creature wanted all along, a companion, though one borne of rage and vengeance. Still, one thinks, it’s more than the monster’s ever known before....more
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