PhilPaine.com

Both com­pact and com­pre­hen­sive, this is the first book you should read to enter into the inter­est­ing sci­ence of cog­ni­tive ethol­o­gy. Bekoff sum­ma­rizes the reduc­tion­ist stric­tures that ethol­o­gists had to con­front when the field began to form, and intel­li­gent­ly dis­cuss­es the moral and social impli­ca­tions of the sci­ence. The book, in effect, pro­vides a case study of the cult of “sci­en­tism”, which often infect­ed sci­ence in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. This occurred when fake pos­es of objec­tiv­i­ty, spu­ri­ous quan­tifi­ca­tion, and epis­te­mo­log­i­cal con­fu­sion led to non­sen­si­cal, but irri­tat­ing­ly tena­cious ortho­dox­ies.