{"id":6836,"date":"2016-12-19T07:50:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-19T07:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6836"},"modified":"2016-12-19T07:50:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-19T07:50:00","slug":"making-nature-how-we-see-animals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2016\/12\/19\/making-nature-how-we-see-animals\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Nature \u2014 how we see animals"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is what the Wellcome Collection<\/a> says about its new exhibition: Making Nature \u2014 how we see animals<\/em> ...<\/p>\n

The question of how humans relate to other animals has captivated philosophers, anthropologists, ethicists and artists for centuries. This exhibition will bring together over 100 objects from literature, film, taxidermy and photography to examine the historical origins of our ideas about other animals and the consequences of these for ourselves and our planet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As someone with a keen interest in our troubled relationships with other animals (and with each other), it looked like it was probably an essential visit. \u00a0That was until I read Charles Foster's review<\/a> in a recent\u00a0Spectator \u2014 then I definitely knew it was. \u00a0If you're going, as I did the other\u00a0week (another mental preparation for that Defra meeting), you might read this first. \u00a0It begins:<\/p>\n

\u2018What is man, that thou art mindful of him?\u2019 asks the Psalmist. \u00a0It\u2019s a good question. \u00a0God Himself doesn\u2019t give a very satisfactory answer. \u00a0In one breath he insists that humans are a little lower than the angels, made in His own image, but also (in a formulation as bleak and more terse than any modern reductionist\u2019s) that they are made of dust, and to dust they will return. \u00a0Darwin tells us a similar story. \u00a0We don\u2019t have to flip back too many pages in our family albums, he says, before we see furry, feathered and scaly faces. \u00a0But then he draws an exuberantly branching tree of life, rooted in stardust, and tells us that we\u2019re perched on the topmost bough. \u00a0It\u2019s not surprising that we\u2019re confused. \u00a0This confusion is at the bottom of all our neuroses. \u00a0Our predominant feeling is the queasiness of ontological vertigo. \u00a0We know ourselves too well, and read the newspapers too diligently, to believe that we\u2019re gods. \u00a0And yet our pride, and our love of literature and old churches, convince us that we\u2019re not mere beasts. \u00a0We see human deaths as more morally significant than animal deaths. \u00a0We hold ourselves to different standards: we can tolerate cannibalism in wolves, but not in ourselves. \u00a0We\u2019ll do anything to reduce the queasiness. \u00a0...<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed we will. \u00a0Foster says that one way of asserting some reassuring control over the wildness out there \u2014 and hence the wildness in us \u2014 is to classify and to\u00a0collect and lock up (in zoos), to\u00a0experience\u00a0electronically (courtesy of David Attenborough et al), to\u00a0embody them in soft toys. \u00a0Foster's review ends:<\/p>\n

This is a bracingly philosophical exhibition: a rigorous exposition of the phenomenologist\u2019s axioms that context matters profoundly, and that each of us creates a universe. If you know you\u2019re a wild thing, go along to meet some more of the family and to see what others think of them \u2014 and so of you. If you don\u2019t know you\u2019re a wild thing, go along to realise that you are. \u00a0\"\u2018The most dangerous worldview,\u2019 wrote von Humboldt, \u2018is that of those who have never viewed the world.\u2019 \u2018Or themselves,\u2019 I\u2019m tempted to add. But my addition is unnecessary, as\u00a0Making Nature\u00a0so brilliantly shows.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Get yourself down to the Euston Road ...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is what the Wellcome Collection says about its new exhibition: Making Nature \u2014 how we see animals ... The question of how humans relate to other animals has captivated philosophers, anthropologists, ethicists and artists for centuries. This exhibition will...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}