The Term "Higher Animals"

So glibly do the phrases 'higher animals' and 'lower animals' trip off our tongues that it comes as a shock to realize that, far from effortlessly slotting into evolutionary thinking as one might suppose, they were - and are - deeply antithetical to it. We think we know that chimpanzees are higher animals and earthworms are lower, we think we've always known what that means, and we think evolution makes it even clearer. But it doesn't. It is by no means clear that it means anything at all. Or if it means anything, it means so many different things as to be misleading, even pernicious.

Notes:

Is meaningless and confuses people.

Folksonomies: evolution science communication terminology

Taxonomies:
/society/racism (0.498216)
/business and industrial/biomedical (0.495254)
/food and drink (0.486729)

Keywords:
higher animals (0.944201 (negative:-0.070618)), evolutionary thinking (0.744653 (positive:0.542580)), different things (0.692705 (negative:-0.516331)), lower animals (0.666317 (neutral:0.000000)), means (0.469842 (negative:-0.343841)), tongues (0.439724 (neutral:0.000000)), chimpanzees (0.436121 (neutral:0.000000)), earthworms (0.429231 (negative:-0.287937)), phrases (0.425296 (positive:0.531697)), shock (0.422155 (negative:-0.472657)), Term (0.411124 (neutral:0.000000)), people (0.410290 (negative:-0.586063))

Concepts:
Human (0.915256): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Charles Darwin (0.831455): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc | yago
Life (0.808717): dbpedia | freebase
Cognition (0.777392): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Thought (0.747600): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Evolution (0.747376): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Extinction (0.722968): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Photosynthesis (0.687717): dbpedia | freebase

 The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Dawkins, Richard (2010-08-24), The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, Free Press, Retrieved on 2011-05-19
Folksonomies: evolution science


Schemas

17 MAY 2011

 Comparing Ourselves to Other Animals

Examples of authors referring to animals in nature for insights into human nature.
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