Animal Constructions and Technological Knowledge: (Postphenomenology and the Philosophy of Technology)

Animal studies literature, and its public consumption have sparked interest in questions about humanity. Most scholars aim these studies to help us sort out how we should regard other creatures and how we should understand ourselves in light of their capacities. This book offers something a little different, investigating the conceptual limits of tool-use and technology through the lens of technological knowledge. Making sense of animal studies can be tricky because of long-held and culturally pervasive beliefs and messages about human triumph over nature (where animals are considered to be part of nature). Animal Constructions and Technological Knowledge, considers animal tool use, techniques, and construction within the context of theories about what constitutes technology and what constitutes knowledge. With reference to an engaging variety of animal case studies, primarily from research on apes, dolphins, and crows, this book shows how concepts from philosophy of technology can be used to make better sense of the animal cases. These animal cases also help us to refine our philosophical concepts, creating more careful distinction and uniting different accounts of technological knowledge.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Humans Thinking About Other Animals Chapter 3: Technological Knowledge Chapter 4: Ape and Primate Cases Chapter 5: Cetaceans Chapter 6: Birds Chapter 7: Spiderwebs, Beaver Dams, and Other Contrast Cases Chapter 8: Human Bias and Technological Knowledge

About the Author :
Ashley Shew is assistant professor at Virginia Tech.

Review :
Shew’s book, especially its two-axis graph, demonstrates the benefits that could be achieved if animal scientists and philosophers of technology begin to communicate and collaborate with each other more regularly. I highly recommend it. The author’s ambitions demand not only fluency with interdisciplinary research methods, but acute sensitivity to each of the disciplines it mobilizes. Animal Constructions is a philosophical text wholly committed to representing science and technology on their own terms while speaking to a primarily humanities-based audience, a balance its author strikes gracefully…. Animal Construction and Technical Knowledge is not only a substantive offering to philosophy of technology, but a set of tools whose true power may only be revealed in time. Animal Constructions and Technological Knowledgeis accessible to a wide audience, but is most important for historians and philosophers of technology. The profound implications related to understanding of both technologies and animals due to emerging evidence in the life sciences make this work of particular importance to graduate students in fields such as the history, sociology, and philosophy of technology. Ecologists and biologists may find directions for future empirical research. Animal Constructions and Technological Knowledge is a highly innovative and fascinating philosophical exploration of the technical capacities of non-human animals. Ashley Shew reveals how their often-surprising abilities to invent, build, and use tools can be mapped alongside the more familiar forms of technical construction, thinking, and knowledge possessed by human beings. Shew's analyses profoundly challenge us to reconsider the long-held notion of technology as an exclusively human phenomenon, while at the same time uncovering striking differences that appear among the technical expressions of an immense range of animal minds and bodies. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand technology or animal nature, and humanity's roots in both. Ashley Shew has written a fascinating and provocative book. Drawing on extensive empirical research, she argues that animals too have technology. The implications for philosophy of technology are revolutionary.