Abstract

Suddendorf explores “the gap” between humans and other animals, with a particular emphasis on our great ape relatives. Both for nonscientists and those scientists or philosophers whose work is not centrally preoccupied with such questions, the book provides a tidy compendium of experimental results organized around a number of precisely defined areas of competence. He takes language, mental time travel, theory of mind, intelligence, culture and morality to be definitive of human cognitive prowess and judiciously evaluates the comparative evidence he has assembled in respect of each of them .What is especially refreshing about his interpretations is that they come off as measured and dispassionate just when one imagines the pull of optimism would be strongest. At no point does he rely on hand-waving explanations or recapitulate familiar pieties about man and beast.