Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind

by Dorothy L. Cheney, Robert M. Seyfarth

Overview

In 1838 Charles Darwin jotted in a notebook, “He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.” Baboon Metaphysics is Dorothy L. Cheney and Robert M. Seyfarth’s fascinating response to Darwin’s challenge.
            Cheney and Seyfarth set up camp in Botswana’s Okavango Delta, where they could intimately observe baboons and their social world. Baboons live in groups of up to 150, including a handful of males and eight or nine matrilineal families of females. Such numbers force baboons to form a complicated mix of short-term bonds for mating and longer-term friendships based on careful calculations of status and individual need.
            But Baboon Metaphysics is concerned with much more than just baboons’ social organization—Cheney and Seyfarth aim to fully comprehend the intelligence that underlies it. Using innovative field experiments, the authors learn that for baboons, just as for humans, family and friends hold the key to mitigating the ill effects of grief, stress, and anxiety.
            Written with a scientist’s precision and a nature-lover’s eye, Baboon Metaphysics gives us an unprecedented and compelling glimpse into the mind of another species.
 “The vivid narrative is like a bush detective story.”—Steven Poole, Guardian
 
“Baboon Metaphysics is a distillation of a big chunk of academic lives. . . . It is exactly what such a book should be—full of imaginative experiments, meticulous scholarship, limpid literary style, and above all, truly important questions.”—Alison Jolly, Science
 
“Cheney and Seyfarth found that for a baboon to get on in life involves a complicated blend of short-term relationships, friendships, and careful status calculations. . . . Needless to say, the ensuing political machinations and convenient romantic dalliances in the quest to become numero uno rival the bard himself.”—Science News   “Cheney and Seyfarth’s enthusiasm is obvious, and their knowledge is vast and expressed with great clarity. All this makes Baboon Metaphysics a captivating read. It will get you thinking—and maybe spur you to travel to Africa to see it all for yourself.”—Asif A. Ghazanfar, Nature
 
“Through ingenious playback experiments . . . Cheney and Seyfarth have worked out many aspects of what baboons used their minds for, along with their limitations. Reading a baboon’s mind affords an excellent grasp of the dynamics of baboon society. But more than that, it bears on the evolution of the human mind and the nature of human existence.”—Nicholas Wade, New York Times

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226102429
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	08/04/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	358
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Dorothy L. Cheney is professor of biology and Robert M. Seyfarth is professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. They are the authors of How Monkeys See the World, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Read an Excerpt

Baboon Metaphysics

The Evolution of a Social Mind

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By Dorothy L. Cheney Robert M. Seyfarth

University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2007 The University of Chicago
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-10243-6

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Chapter One

The Evolution of Mind

Origin of man now proved.-Metaphysic must flourish.-He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke. -Charles Darwin, 1838: Notebook M

What goes through a baboon's mind when she contemplates the 80 or so other individuals that make up her group? Does she understand their social relations? Does she search for rules that would allow her to classify them more easily? Does she impute motives and beliefs to them in order to better predict their behavior? Does she impute motives and beliefs to herself when planning a course of action? In what ways are her thoughts and behavior like ours, and in what ways-other than the obvious lack of language and tools-are they different? These are questions that also vexed Charles Darwin.

We have taken our title from one of Darwin's most memorable remarks. He wrote it on August 16, 1838, almost two years after returning from his voyage on the Beagle and 21 years before the publication of The Origin of Species. It was a time of vigorous intellectual activity, when Darwin read voraciously on many subjects, both within and beyond the sciences, and met and talked with many different people, from family friends to prominent literary and political figures. Despite this active intellectual life, however, it seems unlikely that he or anyone else had ever combined the words "baboon" and "metaphysics" in the same sentence. What was Darwin thinking?

Mind and behavior in Darwin's time

The Cambridge English Dictionary defines metaphysics as "the part of philosophy that is about understanding existence and knowledge." Writing in the Westminster Review in 1840, John Stuart Mill offered a summary of views on the origin of knowledge that were being discussed by Darwin and his contemporaries. "Every consistent scheme of philosophy requires, as its starting point, a theory representing the sources of human knowledge, and the objects which the human faculties are capable of [understanding]. The prevailing theory in the eighteenth century ... was that proclaimed by Locke, and attributed to Aristotle-that all our knowledge consists of generalizations from experience." According to this theory, Mill continued, we know "nothing, except the facts which present themselves to our senses, and such other facts as may, by analogy, be inferred from these. There is no knowledge a priori; no truths cognizable by the mind's inward light and grounded on intuitive evidence." Locke believed that the mind acts simply to associate events that have been joined together through proximity and repetition. From these associations it generates behavior. Anything we think or do can ultimately be traced to our experience.

Mill continued: "From this doctrine Coleridge with ... Kant ... strongly dissents.... He distinguishes in the human intellect two faculties ... Understanding and Reason. The former faculty judges of phenomena, or the appearance of things, and forms generalizations from these: to the latter it belongs, by direct intuition, to perceive things, and recognize truths, not cognizable by our senses." In Kant's scheme, these perceptions exist a priori but are not completely innate because they require experience for their expression. For Kant, the mind was not a blank slate on which any sort of experience can write any kind of instructions. It is, instead, biased in the way it responds to features of the world-actively organizing experiences and generating behavior on the basis of preexisting schemes. To understand our thoughts, beliefs, and behavior, therefore, we must consider not only our own individual experiences but also the preexisting nature of the mind itself.

Empiricism and rationalism were hotly debated at the time. Mill reported that "between the partisans of these two opposite doctrines there reigns a bellum internecinum [in which] even sober men on both sides take no charitable view of each others' opinions." Darwin followed the debate, but with a more open mind and a much more zoological perspective than many of his contemporaries. While others debated the nature of the human mind, he also puzzled over the minds of bees, dogs, and baboons.

Darwin's interest in metaphysics was motivated by more than just idle curiosity-it was also fueled by excitement and personal ambition. By the late 1830s and 1840s, the theory of evolution by natural selection was beginning to take shape in his mind, and his notebooks are filled with many speculations about how his work might shed an entirely new light on the study of human knowledge.

Darwin had observed that every animal species engages in repeated, "habitual" behavior. Birds build nests, squirrels hoard seeds, and dogs raise the fur on their back when they feel threatened. He believed that these behaviors recurred because they were beneficial to the individuals involved and that, over generations, habitual behavior became "instinctive," or innate. Under the right conditions, instinctive behavior would appear automatically, even if the animal had never before had the appropriate experience. When they act by instinct, then, animals are not behaving according to Lockean reason, carefully weighing the information acquired from experience. Instead, they are governed by "hereditary tendencies" acquired over generations.

This is not to say that Darwin believed animals were slaves to their instincts, wholly devoid of learning or reason. Some of his contemporaries did hold such views, and used them to draw a sharp distinction between humans and other animals. The naturalist Edward Blyth (1837), for example, wrote that "whereas the human race is compelled to derive the whole of its information through the medium of its senses, the brute is, on the contrary, supplied with an innate knowledge of whatever properties belong to all the natural objects around." Darwin disagreed-both with the conclusion that animals' thoughts and behavior are entirely based on instinct and with the view that human thought and behavior are governed entirely by reason. "[It is] hard to say what is instinct in animals & what [is] reason, in precisely the same way [it is] not possible to say what [is] habitual in men and what reasonable.... as man has hereditary tendencies, therefore man's mind is not so different from that of brutes." Like many of his contemporaries, Darwin was searching for an explanation of mind and behavior that would combine innate, inherited tendencies (a bit of rationalism from Kant) with reasoning based on experience (a bit of empiricism from Locke). In this as in so much else, Darwin was a man ahead of his time.

Darwin also realized that, whatever the exact balance between innate behavior and reason in any particular instance, his theory of evolution had important implications for the study of metaphysics. After all, thoughts and instincts came from the mind, and the mind could be studied like any other biological trait. It was different in different species, reflecting the particular adaptations of each, and it could change gradually over time, being transmitted from one generation to the next. In his notebook M (M for metaphysics), Darwin wrote: "We can thus trace causation of thought ... [it] obeys [the] same laws as other parts of structure."

With growing excitement, Darwin began to see that his theory might allow him to reconstruct the evolution of the human mind and thereby resolve the great debate between rationalism and empiricism. The modern human mind must acquire information, organize it, and generate behavior in ways that have been shaped by our evolutionary past. Our metaphysics must be the product of evolution. And just as the key to reconstructing the evolution of a whale's fin or a bird's beak comes from comparative research on similar traits in closely related species, the key to reconstructing the evolution of the human mind must come from comparative research on the minds of our closest animal relatives. "He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke."

Twentieth-century views: behaviorists and their critics

In the first half of the 20th century, research on the mind and behavior was dominated by modern-day empiricists like E. L. Thorndike, J. B. Watson, and B. F. Skinner, who together developed the doctrine of behaviorism. Like Locke, they believed that organisms come into the world with little a priori knowledge: behavior is the product entirely of experience. As an animal moves through its world, it encounters stimuli and responds to them. If its response is followed by something pleasant, like food, the response will be repeated whenever the animal encounters the same stimulus again. In this way, the animal quickly develops an array of behaviors that are well suited to its needs.

As the intellectual descendants of Locke, behaviorists believed that the mind is concerned primarily with the formation of associations: mechanical principles of attachment that develop as a result of experience. They saw the mind not as an active "thinking" organ, predisposed to organize incoming stimuli in certain ways, but instead as a rather passive arena in which stimuli from the environment are combined according to simple rules, thereby producing behavior. The behaviorists concluded that a few simple but powerful laws, like Pavlov's Law of Association and Thorndike's Law of Effect, could account for all behavior, in every species and every circumstance. They believed in the principle of equipotentiality. As Skinner famously remarked, "Pigeon, rat, monkey, which is which? It doesn't matter once you have allowed for differences in the ways they make contact with the environment, what remains of their behavior shows astonishingly similar properties."

The behaviorists saw little point in considering mental activities like thoughts, feelings, goals, or consciousness, for reasons that were both methodological and deeply philosophical. On the practical side, mental states like thoughts or emotions are private. They cannot be observed or measured, nor can one predict how they might be changed by experience. Under these circumstances, the mental activities of animals can hardly play a role in any scientific discipline. Even in humans, where introspection prompted some behaviorists to admit-grudgingly-that mental states might exist, the exact nature of these states are unknowable because they can never be verified by more than one person. Once again, this makes mental states unsuitable for scientific study. Some behaviorists went even further. In his 1974 book About Behaviorism, Skinner distinguished between "methodological behaviorists" who accepted the existence of mental states but avoided them because they could not be studied scientifically, and "radical behaviorists" like himself, who believed that "so-called mental activities" were an illusion-an "explanatory fiction." For Skinner, thoughts, feelings, goals, and intentions played no role in the study of behavior because they did not, in fact, exist.

Although behaviorism dominated 20th-century psychology, it was not without its critics. Perhaps the best way to understand them is to consider some classic observations and experiments that challenged the behaviorists' worldview.

Song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) and swamp sparrows (Melospiza georgiana) are two closely related North American birds with very different songs. Males in both species learn their songs as fledglings, by listening to the songs of other males. But this does not mean that the mind of a nestling sparrow is a blank slate, ready to learn virtually anything that is written upon it by experience. In fact, as classic research by Peter Marler and his colleagues has shown, quite the opposite is true. If a nestling male song sparrow and a nestling male swamp sparrow are raised side-by-side in a laboratory where they hear tape-recordings of both species' songs, each bird will grow up to sing only the song of its own species.

The constraints that channel singing in one direction rather than another cannot be explained by differences in experience, because each bird has heard both songs. Nor can the results be due to differences in singing ability, because both species are perfectly capable of producing each other's notes. Instead, differences in song learning must be the result of differences in the birds' brains: something in the brain of a nestling sparrow prompts it to learn its own species' song rather than another's. The brains of different species are therefore not alike. And the mind of a nestling sparrow does not come into the world a tabula rasa-it arrives, instead, with genetically determined, inborn biases that actively organize how it perceives the world, giving much greater weight to some stimuli than to others. One can persuade a song sparrow to sing swamp sparrow notes, but only by embedding these notes into a song sparrow's song. It is almost impossible to persuade a swamp sparrow to sing any notes other than its own. Philosophically speaking, sparrows are Kantian rationalists, actively organizing their behavior on the basis of innate, preexisting schemes.

In much the same way, human infants have their own sensory and cognitive biases. From the first days of life, they attend more readily to faces than to other visual stimuli and more readily to speech than to other auditory stimuli. This latter bias can apparently be traced to a preference for the intonation contours in spoken language: two-day-old babies show distinctive cerebral blood flow when they hear a normal sentence but not when the same sentence is played backward. Humans and sparrows are not alone in preferring their own species' sounds: when a rhesus macaque monkey (Macaca mulatta) hears a call given by a member of its own species, its brain exhibits activity that is markedly different from that shown in response to other sounds. Indeed, rhesus calls activate in the rhesus brain the same areas activated by human speech in the human brain.

Some of the most striking evidence for an innate predisposition to learn one's own species' communication comes from children who are born blind or deaf. Although they cannot see the objects in the world to which spoken words refer, blind children develop language at roughly the same age and in the same manner as children who can see. Data from children born deaf are even more striking. Lila Gleitman, Susan Goldin-Meadow, and their colleagues studied several deaf children born to hearing parents who did not themselves know ASL, the American Sign Language for the deaf. Although raised in loving, supportive environments, these children were deprived of any exposure to language. Nonetheless, they spontaneously invented a sign language of their own, beginning with single signs at roughly the same age that single words would ordinarily have appeared. And during the following months and years, as they developed more complex sentences, the children produced signs in a serial order according to their semantic role as subject, verb, and object.

The songs of sparrows, the calls of monkeys, and the language of human children could hardly be more different, yet they all lead to the same conclusion: Each species has a mind of its own that, like its limbs, heart, and other body parts, has evolved innate predispositions that cause it to organize incoming sensations in particular ways. The mind arrives in the world with constraints and biases, "prepared" by evolution to view the world, organize experiences, and generate behavior in its own particular way. And because each species is different, the behavior of different species is unlikely to be explained by a few general laws based entirely on experience. Although there may well be some general features of learning that are shared by many species, the behaviorists' principle of equipotentiality ("pigeon, rat, monkey ...") is understandable but incorrect.

But what of the behaviorists' second major premise, that the "mind" and "mental states"-if they exist at all-are private and unmeasurable, and cannot be studied scientifically? This view was also challenged, most prominently by the psychologist Edward C. Tolman (1932), who argued that learning is not just a mindless link between stimulus and response. Instead, animals acquire knowledge as a result of their experiences.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Baboon Metaphysics by Dorothy L. Cheney Robert M. Seyfarth Copyright © 2007 by The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

1. The Evolution of Mind
2. The Primate Mind in Myth and Legend
3. Habitat, Infanticide, and Predation
4. Males: Competition, Infanticide, and Friendship
5. Females: Kinship, Rank, Competition, and Cooperation
6. Social Knowledge
7. The Social Intelligence Hypothesis
8. Theory of Mind
9. Self-Awareness and Consciousness
10. Communication
11. Precursors to Language
12. Baboon Metaphysics

Appendix
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

Pursuing the understanding and existence of knowledge (metaphysics) in the best tradition of Darwinian naturalists with a philosophical interest, Cheney and Seyfarth probe the depth of baboon and other caterrhine primate social behavior that is the central context of the evolution of minds of social primates, including humans. In this engaging, thoughtful work, the authors range widely and plumb topics deeply. . . . Their dedication to field observations of baboons and other primates for decades, coupled with field experiments, renders this work unique. The book is a sagacious milestone that deserves the close attention not only of biologists and primatologists, but also of psychologists and social scientists.

Choice

"Cheney and Seyfarth found that for a baboon to get on in life involves a complicated blend of short-term relationships, friendships, and careful status calculations; all of which must be weighed up against each baboon's personal needs and requirements. Needless to say, the ensuing political machinations and convenient romantic dalliances in the quest to become numero uno rival the bard himself. Baboon Metaphysics is a fascinating window on a world seemingly parallel to our own, while examining why science still considers the human brain unique."

Science News

"As large, dog-snouted animals with ferocious teeth, baboons seem quite distant from us, yet they are genetically quite close to humans. There was even a time when these primates were seen as the best ancestral model for humans. Indeed, using a field technique perfected over the years with vervet monkeys and later with baboons, Cheney and Seyfarth reveal them to be accomplished social schemers. . . . As this lively book illustrates, these monkeys may show limitations in what they understand or care about, but they are absolutely unsurpassed at knowing every little detail of the relationship network of which they are a part.”—Frans de Waal, New Scientist

New Scientist - Frans de Waal

"Accessible enough for most general readers, 'Baboon Metaphysics' does not assume prior knowledge of baboons, biology, or philosophy. Anyone dedicated enough can pick it up and digest its fascinating contents . . . [and] anyone seeking appreciation of the complexities of both animal and human life will find it here."

Reviewer's Bookwatch - T.B. Robbins

In one of his notebooks, Charles Darwin wrote, ‘Origin of man proved.—Metaphysic must flourish.—he who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.’ Robert M. Seyfarth and Dorothy L. Cheney—pioneers in the study of primate psychology—take up the challenge. . . . Any way you look at it, the authors say, most of the problems facing baboons can be expressed in two words: other baboons. The authors aim to understand the intelligence that underlies this social organization.

Scientific American

"This is an impressive story not just because of the care that went into the observations and experiments they record, but also in the philosophical implication of their thinking about the mental life of baboons. . . . Cheney and Seyfarth have set out to observe—and by a set of ingenious experiments, test—the mental processes of baboons as exhibited by their grasp of social complexity. . . . One thing is clear: whereas human self-importance once placed human beings outside nature, everything that has followed from research of the kind done by Jane Goodall and Cheney and Seyfarth makes it impossible to think in such terms any longer."

New York Review of Books - A. C. Grayling

Baboon Metaphysics is a distillation of a big chunk of academic lives: the wife-and-husband team of Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth plus a flock of their students and friends. It is exactly what such a book should be—full of imaginative experiments, meticulous scholarship, limpid literary style, and above all, truly important questions.

Science - Alison Jolly

"Cheney and Seyfarth have produced a book that should be on the reading list of every scientist, student, and lay reader who searches for a seasoned, documented, and highly interesting thesis of what they have learned during decades of well-planned and executed research about the mind, thought, and intelligence of baboons."

International Journal of Primatology

"The vivid narrative is like a bush detective story. . . and the authors' conclusions have intriguing implications for the evolution of language in humans."

Guardian - Steven Poole

""Baboon Metaphysics "is a distillation of a big chunk of academic lives: the wife-and-husband team of Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth plus a flock of their students and friends. It is exactly what such a book should be--full of imaginative experiments, meticulous scholarship, limpid literary style, and above all, truly important questions." -- Alison Jolly "Science"

"As large, dog-snouted animals with ferocious teeth, baboons seem quite distant from us, yet they are genetically quite close to humans. There was even a time when these primates were seen as the best ancestral model for humans. Indeed, using a field technique perfected over the years with vervet monkeys and later with baboons, Cheney and Seyfarth reveal them to be accomplished social schemers. . . . As this lively book illustrates, these monkeys may show limitations in what they understand or care about, but they are absolutely unsurpassed at knowing every little detail of the relationship network of which they are a part." -- Frans de Waal "New Scientist"

"Cheney and Seyfarth found that for a baboon to get on in life involves a complicated blend of short-term relationships, friendships, and careful status calculations; all of which must be weighed up against each baboon''s personal needs and requirements. Needless to say, the ensuing political machinations and convenient romantic dalliances in the quest to become "numero uno" rival the bard himself." Baboon Metaphysics" is a fascinating window on a world seemingly parallel to our own, while examining why science still considers the human brain unique."--"Science News"

"Lovers'' quarrels and murder, greed and social climbing: baboon society has all the features that make a mainstream novel a page-turner. The question Cheney and Seyfarth ask, however, is more demanding: how much of baboon behavior is instinctive, and how much comes from actual thought? Are baboons self-aware? To find answers, the authors spent years observing a clan of baboons in Botswana''s Moremi Game Reserve. Like most primates, baboons are social creatures, living in large groups of 100, where individual rank--and the ability to claim food or a mate--is based on a complex web of birth and consort relationships. Cheney and Seyfarth pepper their descriptions with surprisingly apt literary comparisons, such as the example of a baboon who runs afoul of a higher-ranking member and receives much the same treatment as an unwitting character in an Edith Wharton novel. Along the way we get a good look at the state of current primate research on intelligence and learn why scientists think the human brain is still unique. While describing important research about baboon cognition and social relations, this book charms as much as it informs."--Publishers Weekly

"The vivid narrative is like a bush detective story. . . and the authors'' conclusions have intriguing implications for the evolution of language in humans." -- Steven Poole "Guardian"

Pursuing the understanding and existence of knowledge (metaphysics) in the best tradition of Darwinian naturalists with a philosophical interest, Cheney and Seyfarth probe the depth of baboon and other caterrhine primate social behavior that is the central context of the evolution of minds of social primates, including humans. In this engaging, thoughtful work, the authors range widely and plumb topics deeply. . . . Their dedication to field observations of baboons and other primates for decades, coupled with field experiments, renders this work unique. The book is a sagacious milestone that deserves the close attention not only of biologists and primatologists, but also of psychologists and social scientists.

0;"Baboon Metaphysics "is a distillation of a big chunk of academic lives: the wife-and-husband team of Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth plus a flock of their students and friends. It is exactly what such a book should be2;full of imaginative experiments, meticulous scholarship, limpid literary style, and above all, truly important questions.1;2;Alison Jolly, "Science" -- Alison Jolly "Science"

0;In one of his notebooks, Charles Darwin wrote, 6;Origin of man proved.2;Metaphysic must flourish.--he who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.7; Robert M. Seyfarth and Dorothy L. Cheney--pioneers in the study of primate psychology2;take up the challenge. . . . Any way you look at it, the authors say, most of the problems facing baboons can be expressed in two words: other baboons. The authors aim to understand the intelligence that underlies this social organization.1;2;"Scientific American"

0; "Baboon Metaphysics "is a distillation of a big chunk of academic lives: the wife-and-husband team of Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth plus a flock of their students and friends. It is exactly what such a book should be2;full of imaginative experiments, meticulous scholarship, limpid literary style, and above all, truly important questions.1;2; Alison Jolly, "Science" -- Alison Jolly "Science"

"Cheney and Seyfarth have produced a book that should be on the reading list of every scientist, student, and lay reader who searches for a seasoned, documented, and highly interesting thesis of what they have learned during decades of well-planned and executed research about the mind, thought, and intelligence of baboons."

0;Darwin, a witness to the stereotyped behaviours of numerous animals, could not abide Locke7;s view and sought an explanation of the mind that combined the roles of innate tendencies and experience. This tension pervades this wonderful book on the social intelligence of non-human primates and what they might tell us about the evolution of the human mind. Few are in a better position to address the question than Cheney and Seyfarth. . . . Their enthusiasm is obvious, and their knowledge is vast and expressed with great clarity. All this makes "Baboon Metaphysics" a captivating read. It will get you thinking--and maybe spur you to travel to Africa to see it all for yourself .1;2;Asif A. Ghazanfar, "Nature"

"Accessible enough for most general readers, ''Baboon Metaphysics'' does not assume prior knowledge of baboons, biology, or philosophy. Anyone dedicated enough can pick it up and digest its fascinating contents . . . [and] anyone seeking appreciation of the complexities of both animal and human life will find it here." -- T.B. Robbins "Reviewer's Bookwatch"

"Darwin, a witness to the stereotyped behaviours of numerous animals, could not abide Locke's view and sought an explanation of the mind that combined the roles of innate tendencies and experience. This tension pervades this wonderful book on the social intelligence of non-human primates and what they might tell us about the evolution of the human mind. Few are in a better position to address the question than Cheney and Seyfarth. . . . Their enthusiasm is obvious, and their knowledge is vast and expressed with great clarity. All this makes "Baboon Metaphysics" a captivating read. It will get you thinking--and maybe spur you to travel to Africa to see it all for yourself."--Asif A. Ghazanfar, "Nature"

"In one of his notebooks, Charles Darwin wrote, 'Origin of man proved.--Metaphysic must flourish.--he who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.' Robert M. Seyfarth and Dorothy L. Cheney--pioneers in the study of primate psychology--take up the challenge. . . . Any way you look at it, the authors say, most of the problems facing baboons can be expressed in two words: other baboons. The authors aim to understand the intelligence that underlies this social organization."--"Scientific American"

"Lovers' quarrels and murder, greed and social climbing: baboon society has all the features that make a mainstream novel a page-turner. The question Cheney and Seyfarth ask, however, is more demanding: how much of baboon behavior is instinctive, and how much comes from actual thought? Are baboons self-aware? . . . While describing important research about baboon cognition and social relations, this book charms as much as it informs."--"Publishers Weekly"

From the Publisher

This is an impressive story not just because of the care that went into the observations and experiments they record, but also in the philosophical implication of their thinking about the mental life of baboons. . . . Cheney and Seyfarth have set out to observe—and by a set of ingenious experiments, test—the mental processes of baboons as exhibited by their grasp of social complexity. . . . One thing is clear: whereas human self-importance once placed human beings outside nature, everything that has followed from research of the kind done by Jane Goodall and Cheney and Seyfarth makes it impossible to think in such terms any longer.

— A. C. Grayling

New York Review of Books

Accessible enough for most general readers, 'Baboon Metaphysics' does not assume prior knowledge of baboons, biology, or philosophy. Anyone dedicated enough can pick it up and digest its fascinating contents . . . [and] anyone seeking appreciation of the complexities of both animal and human life will find it here.

— T.B. Robbins

Reviewer's Bookwatch

Baboon Metaphysics is a distillation of a big chunk of academic lives: the wife-and-husband team of Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth plus a flock of their students and friends. It is exactly what such a book should be—full of imaginative experiments, meticulous scholarship, limpid literary style, and above all, truly important questions.”

— Alison Jolly

Science

The vivid narrative is like a bush detective story. . . and the authors' conclusions have intriguing implications for the evolution of language in humans.

— Steven Poole

Guardian

As large, dog-snouted animals with ferocious teeth, baboons seem quite distant from us, yet they are genetically quite close to humans. There was even a time when these primates were seen as the best ancestral model for humans. Indeed, using a field technique perfected over the years with vervet monkeys and later with baboons, Cheney and Seyfarth reveal them to be accomplished social schemers. . . . As this lively book illustrates, these monkeys may show limitations in what they understand or care about, but they are absolutely unsurpassed at knowing every little detail of the relationship network of which they are a part.—Frans de Waal, New Scientist

— Frans de Waal

New Scientist