Common wisdom might say, the truth is the the truth, facts are facts, and storytelling is storytelling. Yet, when we look again, we see something that we didn’t before, glimmers of new ideas spring from stone, fiction shifts to fact and facts shift to fiction. So much of who we are and how we see the world is on how we look at things. Yet, curiosity, empathy, ambition and countless other emotions drive us through the day, changing the perspective with which we view the world.
The Newest Musings
Called a Bird Brain? Say Thank You
“He’s a bird brain” was meant as an insult for generations. Apologies, please. That bird may be smarter than you think. In fact, there is at present, in my opinion, a major re-thinking about animal intelligence, as well as of animal cultures, in general. I touched on this in my essay book, Truth and Fantasy. There is far too much written on the subject to review it here. Although there have been differing opinions on interpretation, look, for example, at Irene Pepperberg’s book on the grey parrot, Alex. In her many years of working with Alex, she reports an incredible ability of the parrot to understand and reason. This is just the tip of the iceberg. The article by Darren Incorvaia in the New York Times Science Section this week caught my attention about the self-awareness of roosters. The article also includes information about self-awareness of primates. If a rooster sees other chickens in the area, it crows as a warning that a hawk is in the neighborhood. However, if there are no chickens in sight, the rooster stays quiet, not to draw attention to himself. The remarkable finding is that if [...]
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