“The animal creation is captive to matter, God has given freedom to man. The animal cannot escape the law of nature, whereas man may control it, for he, containing nature, can rise above it.”
`Abdu’l-Bahá
May 7, 2012. We have been examining what science says about whether or not we are animals.
It is perhaps the most important questions – it certainly is the most polarizing – in the science and religion discussion. And it is the root cause of the debates about – and the intense opposition to – evolution.
Other questions – does God exists, do we have souls, is there life after death, what is the purpose of life – were once thought to be amenable to scientific explanation. But for these it is increasingly clear that science – at least in its current stage of development – has little to say of relevance.
The question of whether or not we are animals, however, seems to be a question where science does have an important and legitimate role in providing answers.
Are We Or Are We Not Animals: The Status Quo Answer
“Are humans animals?” Do a Google search on this question and the first thing that comes up – meaning roughly that it is the most linked answer and the one likely to be first accessed – is this one on the Wiki Answer’s site:
Yes, humans are animals. The human’s phylum is Chordata (vertebrate). The human’s class is mammalia. It’s order is primate (the same as apes). It’s family is Hominidae (apes that have no tail and can gather food with their hands.) The Human’s sub-family is Homininae. It’s tribe is Hominini. It’s genus is Homo and it’s specie is scientifically named Homo Sapiens.
There is no indication that there any serious questions about the issue – no discussion of the non-scientific arbitrariness of defining humans entirely by reductionist biological considerations, no mention of any modern neurological, paleontological, sociobiological, economical, sociological, behavioral, or philosophical studies of the uniqueness of humans, no mention at all that the answer is contested. With the exception of the Wikipedia Site “Human“, all the other references at the top of the search are of the same ilk: “La ti dah, humans are animals!”
If you have any questions why modern religious Americans – especially those with enough sophistication to question potted answers – are suspicious of – and doubtful about – aspects of modern science that address human origins, this should answer them.
Think about it. Amazingly, a question about our nature – a question often posed at a high degree of sophistication, a question that addresses our purpose in life and the nature of our humanity – is answered in an embarrassing, unsophisticated low-brow way that not only ignores the relevant issues involved, but ignores the scientific subtleties.
And it is easy to see why a young high-school student – or anyone who unquestionably accepts supposed scientific authority – would assume that the answer was a genuine one, imprinted with scientific authority and its aura.
The Wikipedia site on Humans, it should be pointed out, is quite different. It provides a wealth of helpful access to materials on numerous different fields of human studies and exemplifies why encyclopedias like the Britannica are no longer around. And, it studiously avoids confrontational claims about humans as animals. It even usefully points out that the word “human”, which I’ve been carefully to use to avoid the older sexist term “man,” derives from the Latin hūmānus, the adjective form of homō or “man”.
But, then on a side bar, after being vanquished, our old bumbling, inarticulate friend makes its reappearance. We belong – the sidebar usefully informs us – to the kingdom of animalia. And then – to make things worse – it informs us that this is the “scientific” classification. Actually, it is not. It is the biological classification.
The Problem with the Current Answers
So the answer that science provides to our question is a twofold one. On one hand science proclaims that humans are animals for reasons biological. On the other hand, science contains multitudinous studies that show clearly that humans are quite different than animals. This twofold answer is garbled, self-contradicting, and confusing. Or it would be if both sides were presented to the public, which mainly they aren’t.
The part of science which claims that we are animals is particularly problematic. It not only contradicts our direct experience, but also the contradicts the great teachings of the world’s major religions and its major philosophies. It even contradicts the fundamental precepts of science itself in so far as science is based on the validity of rational and logical intellectual processes – something unique to humans.
This simplistic answer is really an answer to a biological question – and only an answer to a biological question. But it is more than often construed both by those asking it – and often by those answering it – on a much broader basis. In the broader sense, it is a question about who we are. And the biological answer doesn’t – and can’t – answer it.
The consequences of this mix-up of answers and questions are manifold – ranging from the wide-spread belief that science proves that the purpose of human life is the pursuit of liberty, happiness, and the satisfaction of our animal desires, to mechanistic human and healing sciences that ignore human reality or consider it as of no import, to the growing conviction that the evolutionary sciences are cynically manipulative attempts to impose an anti-religious agenda in the false guise of science. None of these, of course, are true.
So, we have to ask the questions: On what basis – and on whose authority – does science validate the claim to offer the definitive answer to our question?
And who decides that the scientific, philosophical, and religious grounds for contesting this 18th century answer can be ignored?
The Future Role of Science in Addressing the Question of Whether or Not We Are Humans
Here is my conclusion: The idea that man is an animal is an arbitrary 18th century viewpoint based on the simple-minded assumptions that (1) a thing is what it is constructed from, (2) that a thing is what it was originally, and (3), that only simple material things are real.
While those assumptions – derived in great part from the extraordinary success of 18th century Newtonian physics – were revolutionary, challenging, and fruitful in numerous ways in their time (and still are in many circumstances) – they fall far short in light of modern empirically-based, systems-based, interaction-based, information-oriented, complexity-oriented studies that distinguish between behavior of parts and behaviors of the whole.
If my conclusion is correct – and it appears to be – what is it that science can do?
Here is a proposal. What science can do – and can provide – is the following:
- A clear set of criteria by which we can distinguish whether or not humans are unique.
- A clear description of the experiments that can be done to provide the relevant data for deciding whether humans are unique.
- A forum and sets of discussions that allows exchange of ideas about what the uniqueness criteria should be and whether or not the criteria have been met.
- Informed discussion of whether a proposed criteria is scientific or not.
- Studies of the usefulness of past, current, and future definitions of human uniqueness in science
Of course, there are a number of other things to be added to the list.
Exploring what science cannot do is equally important. Science cannot:
- Impose its own categories. Science can show where there are clear distinctions – where human behavior departs significantly from animal behavior – but it cannot force doubters to conclude that humans are or are not to be classified as part of the animal kingdom.
- Science cannot provide resolution – at least at its current stage of development – of very complex, high level phenomena like intelligence, human social organization, motivation, human purpose, etc. So it cannot answer high level metaphysical questions – the purpose of life, etc. – in anything like a meaningful way.
- Science by itself cannot impose meaning. It cannot tell us whether a particular arbitrary definition of some category or another is meaningful in an ultimate metaphysical sense, although it can tell us whether people think it is meaningful. Recognizing this would go a long way towards rescuing science from pretensions to religious authority.
And these ideas are just for starters. Obviously those who care about science can try to stop it from spreading misinformation – as it is doing now – about the nature of humans.
Next Week
This time, I really am going to stop on the topic of whether or not we are animals. But obviously, I have to come back to it later given how important it is.
Next time, I will discuss a different aspect of evolution, science, and religion – randomness and the idea that it rules out God as a creator. For a quantum physicist such as myself, this is an area in biology where my experience in doing statistical physics gives me an advantage.
…………………………
This is the 13th in a series of blogs on evolution and religion. The author, Stephen Friberg, is a Bahá’í living in Mountain View, California. A research physicist by training, he authored Religion and Evolution Reconciled: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Comments on Evolution with Courosh Mehanian. He worked at NTT in Japan before joining the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley.
10 comments
Skip to comment form ↓
Steve
June 7, 2012 at 12:21 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Your statement: “On the other hand, science contains multitudinous studies that show clearly that humans are quite different than animals”.
Couldn’t this just as easily be phrased as: “On the other hand, science contains multitudinous studies that show clearly that dolphins are quite different from animals”?
Or perhaps more generically as “Science has shown that some animals are different from other animals?”
Your phrasing seems to tip your hand about your core beliefs.
Maya Bohnhoff
June 7, 2012 at 1:13 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
You know, Steve, if a dolphin had written that, it might be logically meaningful, but I think clarity is found in the fact that Stephen doesn’t stop there, but goes on to explain what he means. First of all, he is not saying we are not physically animals, but rather that we have an additional element or faculty that differentiates us just as the animal’s ability to move at its own volition (among other things) differentiates it from a plant.
As I’ve said elsewhere on this site, we give tacit acceptance of our differences from other animals by the simple fact that we do not expect them to adhere to the same moral codes that we do ourselves. We do not, for example, consider it a sin or a crime if one animal savages another or kills its young—regrettable, yes, upsetting, yes, but not a sin or a crime. We may take our dog to obedience school to teach him not to steal treats from small children, but we do not expect him to “write that law on his heart” as scriptures suggest we humans do. Even in a completely secular household, a chid is expected to do more than simply obey blindly in hope for reward or fear of punishment. We expect the child to internalize the knowledge that stealing is wrong because it violates another person. We expect him to internalize the knowledge that being cruel to animals is wrong because it causes hurt to an innocent.
There’s much more to it, of course. The fact that humans hold animals to different standards than we do other humans is just one aspect of this—as is the uniquely human ability to argue the existence or non-existence of things and entities we cannot see … and do it using sophisticated tools the inner workings of which most humans have a dim understanding of.
I think it’s telling that in our (again, uniquely human) mode of communication, we are using characters to form words that have multiple meanings depending on context and that can be grouped together in various ways to provide meaning that is not found in the characters, the words, or the sentences themselves, but rather in the concepts they represent.
To say Stephen “tips his hand” implies that he was trying to conceal them. I’m pretty sure that’s not the case.
Stephen Friberg
June 7, 2012 at 4:36 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Hi Steve:
An interesting take.
Can you “reveal” your core beliefs? Maybe we could have an interesting discussion.
Stephen
Lori K
August 15, 2012 at 5:09 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Hello everyone its around 740 eastern time.. first let me just say I am not as sophisticated as you all when it comes to this topic, however this question has been haunting me. Are humans animals? Mainly because I haf a discussion with mybroyher who is currently teaching in South Korea about animals and the fact that they only mate with their same type.. dog with dog cat with cat monkey with monkey ape with ape. Etc.. but because I guess there’s free will “people” can mix and match.. I am a first year student at Suny Empire State and the owner of a Salon. So I am coming to you guys ad a student attempting to gain some insight.
Regards,
Lori K,
NY
Stephen Friberg
August 15, 2012 at 8:27 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Hi Lori:
Roughly speaking, there are two answers. From physiological point of view, i..e, one from the standpoint of how our body works, we are animals. We share a wide range of response with other animals emotionally too.
Where opinions differ – not so much practically but metaphysically – is how our mind and soul make us different. One school of thought – sometimes called secularism or sometimes called naturalism – holds that we are so closely related to the animals that we shouldn’t think of ourselves as different. Animals have social lifes, use tools to a limited extent, communicate, etc. We do too, although to a much greater degree.
The great religions of the world – and practically speaking, most people – view humans as distinct and different from animals. We have dramaticallly different intellectual powers, the ability to modify and shape our reality, to transcend nature, and, according to not only the religions of the world, but also our great philosophies, we can grow and develop spiritually. This means that we can learn moral and ethical principles – and ultimately that we can pull together and address world problems by moral growth.
Hope this helps a bit. Feel free to ask more questions.
Stephen
Maya Bohnhoff
August 22, 2012 at 12:16 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Hi, Lori,
I don’t think anyone would argue that humans can mate with dogs or cats to produce viable offspring. Most human societies take a dim view of humans mating with other animals. In fact, it’s illegal in most countries. And that, in itself, raises an issue about how deeply we really believe that we are just spiffier animals.
The reality is that, regardless of what we SAY about being just animals, we ACT as if we were different. Like animals we eat other animals … but more and more of us feel badly about that and opt to eat only plants. We have thousands of laws on the books that detail how our social organizations (which are crafted, rather than instinctive) are run and how we treat each other. Some of those laws also deal with how other animals are to be treated. We have laws that make it illegal to kill someone. We are especially horrified and angry when someone kills a child. But if a dog kills another dog, or another dog’s puppies, we do not put them on trial and may not punish them at all because we know, instinctively, perhaps, that the dog is not capable of comprehending the killing of another dog’s puppies as a “crime”.
The concepts of evil, crime, sin etc. we only apply to ourselves because on some level, we know we are not just animals. We are — or at least, we are evolving to be — something more. We are becoming human.
The Baha’i writings accord the human being a three-fold nature: animal, human, and divine. It’s what the scriptures mean when they say God created us in His image. We have animal bodies and a divine spirit and the result of that combination is a human being. A being unique in the world. A being capable of holding a conversation about abstract ideas such as souls and God and his own nature using symbols he invented to convey these ideas across thousands of miles using a technology he also invented.
How likely is it, I have to wonder, that in all the millions of years it took for life to evolve here that only one of the billions of species on the planet should have developed anything like this?
Phinizy Spalding
December 28, 2012 at 9:17 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
The reason there is no serious debate about this issue on several sites is because this issue is settled. We are animals. We know this. It is an utter waste of time to continue asking questions we already know the answer to. If we spent our time focusing on this question, we would not make progress. It would be like the dark ages all over again.
Be thankful that not all humans are as simplistic as you. If they were, the world would not be modern.
Stephen Friberg
December 28, 2012 at 7:13 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Hi Phinizy:
From a physiological point of view, the debate is reasonably well settled. Excepting brain functionality and perhaps some hardwired sensory capabilities, our functionality is not unique enough to say that we aren’t animals.
Where I don’t see the debate as settled – and where the interesting discussions are continuing to happen – is with respect to human intellect and its uniqueness. And that debate is lively and ongoing.
Humans, of course, have abilities to plan, build powerful technologies, philosophize, and even to debate and disagree. My view is that makes human different than animals, in the same way that being able to move about and sense the environment means that animals are different than plants. It is that intellectual ability, of course, which makes the world modern.
It was the dark ages – ruled as it often was by violence and blind faith – that refused to acknowledge the importance of everybody’s ability to think for themselves. It is when people like Galileo, Bacon, Descartes and others started to insist on the importance of independent thought that the modern world as we know it began to start to take shape.
So, in many ways, fighting to believe in humans as distinct from animals is a fight to recognize the importance of all people thinking for themselves, and for human dignity. So, from my point of view, to give up the debate – to meekly and quietly accept a view of humanity that downgrades or attempts to displace the importance of the human intellect – is to deny everything good we have learned in the process of becoming modern.
Would you have us blindly believe we are animals? Are we to go, animal-like, back to primitive times?
Stephen Friberg
December 28, 2012 at 7:44 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
BTW, John McL gave you a reply, but not directly. You might want to check it out by logging back on the site.
John McL.
December 28, 2012 at 3:02 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Dear Phinizy Splading,
I feel that as a scientist I have to respond to your comments because I don’t think that they present a fair assessment of the article. First of all, as I understand the article the author is not denying that humans are biologically pretty much the same as other animals, but rather, that humans possess many distinct characteristics that are not observed even in our closest biological relatives. This is undeniable. To say that, “this issue is settled. We are animals. We know this.” is premature, and may be based on your beliefs rather than on science. That is, if by this you mean “simply animals and no more”, then to say that the issue is settled is absolutely not true, regardless of the beliefs of those who state this. I think that there is a great burden of proof on those who hold this belief to satisfactorily explain the many profound differences. Further, you state, “It is an utter waste of time to continue asking questions we already know the answer to. If we spent our time focusing on this question, we would not make progress.” Well, actually, human knowledge is ever advancing, and one of the key responsibilities of scientists, and the general public, is to ask questions, even to ask about those things we think “we already know the answer to.” Especially non-trivial questions such as this one! Regarding challenging accepted “knowledge” about important questions, what would you prefer, the Ptolemaic or Copernican model of the solar system? You have to admit that the Ptolemaic explanation was not satisfactory, and did not explain the empirical observations as well as the new model. Should we have stopped scientific investigation with Newtonian physics since everyone knew that this was the last word in physics? And yes, I am thankful that simplistic explanations are challenged on this site!