The study and nature of human-animal relationships is not only a “hot” area of interdisciplinary research by scholars representing many diverse areas, but also of great interest to numerous humans who “meet” nonhuman animals (animals) in a wide variety of contexts. Indeed, a scientific field of inquiry called anthrozoology focuses on the myriad ways we encounter animals and the various ways we interact with them.
For these and many other reasons, I am thrilled that one of anthrozoology’s finest, the eclectic Dr. Paul Waldau’s new book titled The Animal Invitation: Science, Ethics, Religion and Law in a More-than-Human World, is now available for consumption by people directly and indirectly interested in learning about and improving how we interact with a wide variety of animals ranging from household companions to wild neighbors to individuals of species most of us will never see up close and personal. On a personal note, Paul has been my mentor for many decades.
Marc Bekoff: Why did you write The Animal Invitation?
Paul Waldau: I wanted to memorialize the growth and development of my views while I directed two graduate programs that offered science-based degrees focused on animal protection issues. Teaching gifted students for several decades led me to recognize that any truly enlightening approach to “the animal question” must be multi-disciplinary. Such an approach produces dynamic learning not only in science but also in three other key areas—ethics, religion, and law. These insights prompted the subtitle Science, Ethics, Religion and Law in a More-Than-Human World.
MB: How does your book relate to your background and general areas of interest?
PW: The book allowed me to explore three important forces in my life: 1) a family background and daily life that constantly introduced me to nonhuman animals and cultural diversities. 2) insights available through working with other scholars and activists. 3) insights that emerge when one does a comparative study of religions, legal systems, science-based explorations, and moral and ethical traditions
MB: Who do you hope to reach?
PW: General readers who want to explore (i) their local world and (ii) the wider worlds so evident in diverse geographical locations affected by distinctive cultural heritages; activists who focus on (i) education; (ii) animal protection; or (iii) ecological issues; and educators who want to teach their students how to take charge of their own learning.
MB: What are some of the topics you consider, and what are some of your major messages?
PW: To explore the limits of educational approaches focused on a single discipline, I ask a series of basic questions about how much better we would educate future generations if we exposed students to essential ideas about animals from different disciplinary approaches. Below are four basic questions I ask in The Animal Invitation. Together, these questions show that tackling the animal question through a single discipline isolates the researcher and yields fewer insights than a multidisciplinary approach.
Question for those who study science: How much better would our scientific exploration be if, as we go about each of our many different science fields that in some way explore nonhuman animals, we already knew a great deal about (i) what our ethical systems have suggested about other animals, (ii) what our religious traditions have claimed, and (iii) what our legal systems have in the past done and now might attempt because they play such a prominent role in every modern nation-state?
Question for those who study ethics: What might we learn about ethics if, for the purpose of seeing this human capacity as well as possible, we search our human legal systems, our religious and wisdom traditions, and our many sciences to fathom what humans can know of our nonhuman neighbors and our own animal features?
Question for those who study religious traditions: Can we better fathom our religious and wisdom–spirituality traditions if we have also noticed, taken seriously, and dispassionately explored the animal features evident in how humans have pursued and now in science, ethics, and law?
Question for those who study law: How much better will our species understand what different human communities have attempted through the law if, as we attempt such an understanding, we have already explored our own animal features seriously as they connect us to what is claimed about nonhuman animals in our sciences, ethics, and religions?
MB: How does your work differ from others that are concerned with some of the same general topics?
PW: An interdisciplinary approach reveals not only key questions for everyone, but also:
- How narrow our discussions of ethics, of animal law, and of both social sciences and physical sciences will remain if they do not become interdisciplinary,
- How discussions of the history and present state of religious belief systems will fall far short if they concentrate solely on human matters
- How science-based discussions have historically remained narrow and unaware of key nonhuman animal insights that many of our predecessor human cultures have achieved regarding that each human life is irretrievably part of a more-than-human world that constitutes our larger community.
All of these insights are needed for humans to recognize that our own membership in the larger animal community is a key to each human’s full actualization.
MB: Are you hopeful that as people learn more about the importance of connecting with other animals, they will treat them with more respect, dignity, and compassion?
PW: I am hopeful for five reasons. First, the past half-century shows how humans can recognize both our own animality and our nonhuman kin among the Earth’s bountiful living communities.
Second, each of the four disciplines discussed gives us important reasons to engage fully with the fact that every human today lives, as did all our ancestors, irretrievably in a more-than-human world.
Third, spirituality in humans’ religious traditions can, with work, match the keen insights our indigenous ancestors, as well as those alive today in still-existing indigenous traditions, developed to guide both their local community and individuals.
Four, today’s legal systems, through the extraordinary expansion of animal law courses in law schools around the world, may soon provide increased awareness that our kind of living being can, if we choose (and as our ancient ancestors chose), use legal systems to honor the fact that the larger community of all living beings constitutes our greater self.
Finally, our remarkable physical and social sciences today have begun to engage beyond the species line in ways that confirm that human beings are by no means the only remarkable animals in the Earth community.
