Adam's Task: Calling Animals by Name - Hardcover

Hearne, Vicki

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0434314218 ISBN 13: 9780434314218

Publisher: Heinemann, 1987

Synopsis

A classic book that offers a stunningly original exploration of the social contact between domestic animals and people.

About this title

From the Publisher

From "AUDUBON MAGAZINE," which chose it as one of the thirteen most significant books about nature publishing during the last hundred yers, to Susan Sontag, who hailed it as a "fascinating, incisive work of moral imagination," admirers of "Adam's Task" have praised it is one of our era's most original and brilliant books about language, domestic animals (dogs, cats, horses), and ourselves. Drawing on the discourses of philosophy and animal training, Vicki Hearne makes a case, in boldly anthromorphic terms, for attributing to the creatures we love, train, and play with, the potential for a "moral understanding" of their relationship to us--the potential, in other words, for nobility and dignity. With a new introduction by Donald McCaig.

From the Back Cover

Adam's Task offers an innovative and metaphysical approach to training animals. Based on studies of literary criticism, philosophy, and extensive hands-on experience in training, Hearne asserts that animals (at least those that commonly cohabitate or interact with humans) are far more intelligent than we assume. In fact, they are capable of developing an understanding of "the good," a moral code that influences their motives and actions. In response to her studies and experiments, Hearne developed an entirely new system of animal training that contradicts modern animal behavioral research and yet, as her examples show, is astonishingly effective.

Edition details

• Publisher: Heinemann
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0434314218
• ISBN 13: 9780434314218
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 274