It is possible to describe humankind in the objective terms favored by orthodox zoology and biology. You can describe the human being in scrupulously behavioral terms, stressing his anatomy, physiology, and evolution. It can be quite illuminating to do so, and not untrue. For example, you can describe human sexuality this way (Desmond Morris does an excellent job of this in chapter 2 of The Naked Ape). This is the scientific approach and we are sternly warned that we humans are subject to it as much as anything else in nature. But all the while we are aware of the inner world of our species, because it is us and we know ourselves from the inside. We protest: the objective scientific picture is not the whole truth. There are subjective descriptions as well, also true. Sometimes this is dismissed by traditional zoologists—as just so much waffle and tripe. Maybe we will one day get beyond it. But it is also sometimes taken to reflect our specialness: we alone have these two sides; we have a dual nature, a double life. But other animals don’t, or only a very minimal one. If we are being objective, animals are just what is revealed from the “scientific” perspective; and no one protests, because we are not those animals. They can’t protest: “We are more than your science allows!” The point I want to make is that there is a fallacy in all this: for it is not objective to limit oneself to “objective facts” such as behavior and physiology; it is subjective. Why? Because it privileges the human viewpoint—the way we see things. It does not respect objective reality. We have a subjective perspective on other animals, determined by our perceptual, cognitive, and imaginative faculties; but there is a reality about them that we perceive only dimly, if at all. That reality exists in the objective world, whether we can get to it or not (and we often can’t). It might be described as a subjective reality, but it is still an objective fact. Behaviorism is not objective but subjective: it contains our point of view not reality as it exists independently of us. The so-called scientific point of view is not really objective at all. It denies, or neglects, the reality of the zoological world.

Thus, I aim to promote a “humanistic zoology”. Just as we can have a humanistic study of man, so we can have a humanistic study of beast—a study that recognizes and respects the inner life of animals of other species. Of course, the idea is not to humanize other animals—to see ourselves in them. It is to see them as they are in their full reality. This is difficult because we don’t know them from the inside, as we know ourselves. We know very little about what it is like to live the life of a lion, say. We try to imagine it, but we don’t get very far. Still, we should try to gain what insight we can for the sake of the science (let alone the ethics). Let’s not define (and confine) science in terms of our own make-up and limitations; science is about objective reality not about reality as we see it. Zoologists should write books about the inner life of the hyena or kangaroo—psycho-zoological books. There should be departments of humanistic zoology. I think it could be very interesting (Jane Goodall would have had a lot to say). Richard Dawkins should step in (The Unselfish Rat). Don’t leave it to writers of children’s fiction; get scientific about it. I volunteer to take on the butterfly.¹ Please don’t say that “humanistic zoology” is a contradiction in terms; it doesn’t mean “anthropocentric zoology”. It means something like “respecting the lived reality of a creature, human or other”.