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Subtitle: A Personal investigation into the
Animal Origins and Nature of Man, Antheneum, N.H., 1961, 380 pgs., index,
bibliography, illustrations
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Reviewer comment:
This is the first of Robert Ardrey's 4-volume series about the origins of
mankind and human nature in relation to its animal predecessors. The Wikipedia
entry for Ardrey's biography contains an excellent discussion of all his books.
Ardrey lectured in anthropology in the early 1930's and also learned
statistics. Then he switched to writing screen plays in Hollywood and stage
plays. As he notes, he became a dramatist. In this career he became a student
of humanity in all its vagarities. His dramatic style permeates his books. He
narrates two dramas simultaneously, describing his two sets of persona in full
detail. One drama is the evolution of animals over a million years and then of
the evolution into humans over hundreds of thousands of years. The other drama
( full of dramatic events and fully developed persona) is the evolution of
scientific investigation, beliefs, and controversies. The refusal of adherents
to the accepted paradigms in all fields from biology and anatomy to social
science and political theory is a typical example Thomas Kuhn could have used
in this revolutionary book - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
and
He is describing a revolution - the overthrow of the accepted theories in the
entire scientific and popular belief sytem. His books themselves were then a
revolution demanding that he base his conclusions on a massive base of
scientific study that was taking place as he wrote about it. He was writing in
the 1950 - 1975 period in which an opposite revolution of youth was occuring.
Today that youth cadre are the mentors of today's even more radical
revolutionary youth who ignore all the evidence that Ardrey dscusses.
In order to set his stage he narrates the evolution of the scientific studies
and theories from their beginnings about 1900 by describing both the scientific
efforts and their authors. This reqired that he obtain and study many obscure
reports and documents.
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Chapter 1 - The New Enlightenment:
This opening chapter can serve as the opening for each of Ardrey's books. In it
he describes his early life and education in both the schools and the streets
of Chicago in the 1930's. He learned the then current concepts of anthropology
and statistics. After that he turned to drama, writing both stage and screen
plays. In Hollywood he joined the current liberal (leftist) majority.
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Chapter 2 - One Tiger to a Hill
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Chapter 3 - The Society of Animals
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Chapter 4 - Who Pecks Whom
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Chapter 5 - Love's Antique Hand
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Chapter 6 - The Romantic Fallacy
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Chapter 7 - A Roomful of Bones
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Chapter 8 - Time Was
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Chapter 9 - The Bad-Weather Animal
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Chapter 10 - The Hyena Alibi
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Chapter 11 - Cain's Children
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References
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Robert Ardrey - The Territorial
Imperative
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Robert Ardrey - The Social Contract
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Robert Ardrey - The Hunting Hypothesis
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Austrlopithecus - Wikipedia entry
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Thomas Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions
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Amity Shlaes - Great Society
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