weekly quote: #9 Craig Stanford November 23, 2007
Posted by ocmpoma in : other , trackbackCraig Stanford’s book Significant Others deals with learning more about ourselves through studying our nearest biological relatives — the other apes. Near the end of the text, he makes an argument for how much we stand to learn, if we can muster the will to pay attention — and how mustering that will would require learning to remain interested in the familiar:
“If chimpanzees could know that humans had sent a spacecraft to Mars to search for signs of life, surely they would be impressed by our interplanetary tool use. Yet I think they would be appalled at our infatuation with the unknown versus the barely known. If Pathfinder happened to snap a photo of an ape-like creature loping across Ares Vallis, or find its fosilized remians, our society would go into a frenzy. The scientists and the media would ooh and aah and the president would seize the political moment by appropriating billions of dollars to send more probes, and maybe even astronauts, to learn what Martian apes could tell us about ourselves. All the while, the chimpanzees in their night nests would edge closer to extinction, their secrets less exotic but no less crucial to understanding our place in the universe.”
From page 205 of my edition, in chapter fourteen, “The Ape’s Gift”.
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