Читать книгу Diet for a New America 25th Anniversary Edition - John Robbins - Страница 26

Still the blindness continues. Those who say that animals can’t suffer in any meaningful way often claim that any pain sensations the animals might feel have no meaning because they are too stupid to know that they hurt. However, it seems to me remarkably limited for us to assume that because an animal does not display intelligence as we know it, it is therefore stupid.

It is just like man’s vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.

—MARK TWAIN

Even among our own species, we often don’t recognize forms of intelligence that are perhaps a little different from the norm. Albert Einstein’s parents were sure he was retarded because he spoke haltingly until the age of nine and even after that would respond to questions only after a long period of deliberation. He performed so badly in his high school courses, except mathematics, that a teacher told him to drop out, saying, “You will never amount to anything, Einstein.”³⁶ Charles Darwin did so poorly in school that his father told him, “You will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.”³⁷ Thomas Edison was called “dunce” by his father and “addled” by his high school teacher and was told by his headmaster that he “would never make a success of anything.”³⁸ Henry Ford barely made it through school with the minimum grasp of reading and writing.³⁹ Sir Isaac Newton was so poor in school that he was allowed to continue only because he was a complete flop at running the family farm.⁴⁰ Pablo Picasso was pulled out of school at the age of 10 because he was doing so badly. His father hired a tutor to prepare him to go back to school, but the tutor gave up on the hopeless pupil.⁴¹ Giacomo Puccini, the Italian opera composer, was so poor at everything as a child, including music, that his first music teacher gave up in despair, concluding the boy had no talent.⁴²

If we can be so far amiss in recognizing types of intelligence that are a bit different from the norm and yet belong to members of our own species who are destined to make great contributions, it seems likely we might fail to recognize some forms of intelligence that belong to beings of other species.

Researchers have done exhaustive studies of animal and human brains. Most of these studies have been motivated by a desire to find a biological basis for the belief that there is a profound difference between human and animal forms of intelligence.

No cut-and-dried dividing line has emerged. Comparing the “structure and function of the human brain with the brains of other animals,” scientists have found that humans and other animals differ less than is commonly thought.

Surprisingly, the similarities are greater than the differences…A striking similarity between the human and non-human mammalian brain is seen in the electrical activity patterns of electroencephalograph (EEG) readings. A dog, for example, has the same states of activity as man, its EEG patterns being almost identical in wakefulness, quiet sleep, dreaming, and daydreaming. As for the chemistry of the central nervous and endocrine systems, we know that there is no difference in kind between human and other animals. The biochemistry of physiological and emotional states (of stress and anxiety, for example) differ little between mice and men.43