Monkeys Who Think… and the neuroscientist who loves them. Portrait of Marc Hauser (Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think). “To its advocates, the rise of cognitive ethology reflects a regaining of
consciousness after a dark half century of behaviorist orthodoxy, which
held that all behavior, animal or human, was the result not of mental events
but of conditioned responses to external stimuli. Cognitive ethologists trace
their assumptions back to Charles Darwin, who insisted that animals and
humans exhibit no less evolutionary continuity in their minds than in their
kidneys, hearts, and toes. The field’s critics, however, suspect that talk of
animal thinking and intention may owe less to Darwin than to the
embarrassing and dubiously anecdotal mentalism of his protégé Georges
Romanes, a popular lecturer who saw logisticating dogs and conniving
felines under every Victorian armchair.” Lingua Franca
