Are we humans simply remodelled apes? Chimps with a tweak? Is the difference between our genomes so minuscule it justifies the argument that our cognition and behaviour must also differ from chimps by barely a whisker? If “chimps are us” should we grant them human rights? Or is this one of the biggest fallacies in the study of evolution? NOT A CHIMP argues that these similarities have been grossly over-exaggerated - we should keep chimps at arm’s length. Are humans cognitively unique after all?
Friday, 25 September 2009
Tracing The Origins of Human Empathy
Rather nice piece in the Wall Street Journal, by Robert Lee Hotz, which blends Frans de Waal's latest comments about empathy in apes and monkeys with allusion to the sort of brain research on empathy I discuss in a chapter in Not A Chimp called INSIDE THE BRAIN.