example, who are we to say that whales, dolphins, and porpoises are to
be included as “dumb beasts”? It would be far more objective and humble
to tell the truth—we don’t know about these animals because we haven’t
“been there yet.” We have not lived in the sea, naked and alone, or even
in mobile groups, without steel containers to keep out the sea itself.
For purposes of discussion let us make the following assumptions which
push counter to the current of bias running deep among us:
(1) Man has not yet been willing to investigate the possibility of
another intelligent species.
(2) Whales, dolphins, and porpoises are assumed to be “dumb beasts”
with little or no evidence for this presumption.
(3) We do not yet know very much about these animals—their
necessities, their intelligences, their lives, the possibility
of their communications.
(4) It is possible for man to investigate these matters objectively
with courage and perseverance.
(5) To properly evaluate whales, dolphins, porpoises, we must use
everything we have intellectually, all available knowledge,
_humanistic_ as well as _scientific_.
Our best knowledge of ourselves as a species, as humans, is in the
humanities and in the budding, growing sciences of man. In pursuit of
understanding of the whales, dolphins, and porpoises, we need, at least
at the beginning, a large view which is in the human sciences and in the
humanities. The sciences of animals are necessarily restrictive in their
view, and hence not yet applicable to our problems.
The history of the animal sciences shows that they have had grave
difficulties with the fact that the observers are present and human.
These sciences, like physics, chemistry, and biology, play the game as
if the human observer were not there and the systems were isolated from
man. This is fine strategy for “man-less nature” studies and quite
appropriate for such studies.
However, I submit to you another view, for a science of man and animal,
their relationships to one another. Modern man and modern dolphin and
whale may be best investigated in the framework of a new science one
might call “anthropo-zoology” or “zoo-anthropology.” This science is a
deep study of man, of the animal, of their mutual relations, present and
potential. In this discipline scientists encourage close relations with
the animal, and study the developing relation between man and so-called
“beast.”
For the last three years in the Communication Research Institute[23] we
have been pursuing an investigative path in this new science with the
pair “man and bottlenose dolphin.” We have encouraged and pursued
studies in classical sciences such as neurophysiology, animal
psychology, anatomy, biophysics, and zoology. We have also initiated and
pursued this new science of the man and dolphin relation; these
“homo-delphic” studies, if you will, are triply demanding: we must not
only know our animal objectively but we must know man objectively, and
ourselves subjectively. We cannot fight shy of involving ourselves in
the investigation as objects also. In this science man, and hence one’s
own self, are part of the system under investigation. This is not an
easy discipline. One must guard quite as rigorously (or even more so)
against the pitfalls of wishful thinking and sensational fantasy as in
other scientific endeavors. This field requires a self-candor, an inner
honesty, and a humility quite difficult to acquire. But I maintain that
good science can be done here, that the field is a proper one for
properly trained and properly motivated investigators.
REFERENCES AND NOTES
[1]Plinius Secundus. _Natural History._ III, Book IX.
[2]Aristotle. _Historia Animalium._ Books I-IX.
[3]Donaldson, Henry H. _The Growth of the Brain._ London: Walter Scott,
1895.
[4]Smith, G. Elliot, in Royal College of Surgeons of England, Museum,
_Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Physiological Series
of Comparative Anatomy_. London: Taylor and Francis, 1902, pp. 349,
351, 356.
[5]Scammon, Charles Melville. _The Marine Mammals of the North-Western
Coast of North America, Described and Illustrated: Together with an
Account of the American Whale-Fishery._ San Francisco: J. H.
Carmany, 1874, p. 78.
[6]von Bonin, Gerhardt. “Brain-Weight and Body-Weight in Mammals,”
_Journal of General Psychology_, XVI (1937), 379-389.
[7]Lilly, John C. _Man and Dolphin._ Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961;
London: Victor Gollancz, 1962.
[8]McBride, Arthur F., and Hebb, D.O. “Behavior of the Captive
Bottle-Nose Dolphin, _Tursiops truncatus_,” _Journal of Comparative
and Physiological Psychology_, XLI (1948), 111-123.
[9]Griffin, Donald R. _Echoes of Bats and Men._ Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday, 1959.
[10]Kellogg, Winthrop N. _Porpoises and Sonar._ Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1961.
[11]Lilly, John C., and Miller, Alice M. “Vocal Exchanges between
Dolphins; Bottlenose Dolphins ‘Talk’ to Each Other with Whistles,
Clicks, and a Variety of Other Noises,” _Science_, CXXXIV (1961),
1873-1876.
[12]Schevill, William E., and Lawrence, Barbara. “Auditory Response of a
Bottlenosed Porpoise, _Tursiops truncatus_, to Frequencies above 100
KC,” _Journal of Experimental Zoology_, CXXIV (1953), 147-165.
[13]Lilly, John C. “Vocal Behavior of the Bottlenose Dolphin,”
_Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society_, CVI (1926),
520-529.
[14]Norris, Kenneth S., Prescott, John H., Asa-Dorian, Paul V., and
Perkins, Paul. “An Experimental Demonstration of Echo-Location
Behavior in the Porpoise, _Tarsiops truncatus_: (Montagu),”
_Biological Bulletin_, CXX (1961), 163-176.
[15]Lilly, John C. “Interspecies Communication,” _McGraw-Hill Yearbook
of Science and Technology 1962_. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962, pp.
279-281.
[16]Lilly, John C. “Some Considerations Regarding Basic Mechanisms of
Positive and Negative Types of Motivations,” _American Journal of
Psychiatry_, CXV (1958), 498-504.
[17]Lilly, John C. “Some Aspects of the Adaptation of the Mammals to the
Ocean,” in John Field, ed., _Handbook of Physiology_. Washington:
American Physiological Society (in press).
[18]Lilly, John C., and Miller, A. M. “Operant Conditioning of the
Bottlenose Dolphin with Electrical Stimulation of the Brain,”
_Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology_, LV (1962),
73-79.
[19]Lilly, John C. “Some Problems of Productive and Creative Scientific
Research with Man and Dolphin,” _Archives of General Psychiatry_
(1963, in press).
[20]Lilly, John C. “Critical Brain Size and Language,” _Perspectives in
Biology and Medicine_ (in press).
[21]Skinner, Burrhus F. _Verbal Behavior._ New York:
Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1957.
[22]Lewis, Morris M. _How Children Learn to Speak._ New York: Basic
Books, 1959.
[23]Support for the program of the Communication Research Institute, St.
Thomas, Virgin Islands, is from the National Institute of Mental
Health and the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and
Blindness of the National Institutes of Health; from the Coyle
Foundation; from the Office of Naval Research; from the U. S. Air
Force Office of Scientific Research; and from private gifts and
contributions to the Communication Research Institute.
_William Andrews Clark Memorial Library Seminar Papers_
_Editing Donne and Pope._ 1952.
Problems in the Editing of Donne’s Sermons, by George R. Potter.
Editorial Problems in Eighteenth—Century Poetry, by John Butt.
_Music and Literature in England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries._ 1953.
Poetry and Music in the Seventeenth Century, by James E. Phillips.
Some Aspects of Music and Literature in the Eighteenth Century, by
Bertrand H. Bronson.
_Restoration and Augustan Prose._ 1956.
Restoration Prose, by James R. Sutherland.
The Ironic Tradition in Augustan Prose from Swift to Johnson, by Ian
Watt.
_Anglo-American Cultural Relations in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries._ 1958.
The Puritans in Old and New England, by Leon Howard.
William Byrd: Citizen of the Enlightenment, by Louis B. Wright.
_The Beginnings of Autobiography in England_, by James M. Osborn. 1959.
_Scientific Literature in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England._
1961.
English Medical Literature in the Sixteenth Century, by C. D.
O’Malley.
English Scientific Literature in the Seventeenth Century, by A. Rupert
Hall.
_Francis Bacon’s Intellectual Milieu._ A Paper delivered by Virgil K.
Whitaker at a meeting at the Clark Library, 18 November 1961,
celebrating the 400th anniversary of Bacon’s birth.
_Methods of Textual Editing_, by Vinton A. Dearing. 1962.
Transcriber’s Notes
—Silently corrected a few typos.
—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
is public-domain in the country of publication.
—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
_underscores_.