sloreader's review
3.0
Marc Hauser's acutely delineated breakdown of the tools of perception - as well as his use of dozens of individual experiments and observations, by teams he participated with and those made by others - builds an impressive report on what we know about animal psychology, and also provides at least as many questions for where research needs to go from here. Hauser is a capable writer and does a good job of synthesizing the pure research with the philosophical background and ramifications of it. However, as a writer, he's no Richard Dawkins or E.O. Wilson; his prose is sometimes laborious and he often skimps on details of how experiments he describes were designed, leaving the reader to make up the difference. Even a simple diagram in many of these places would have helped a good deal. There is a lot of great information in this book, but it is not a beautiful read.
snarlet319's review
3.0
Good and thought-provoking, but possibly not a book for the casual reader. I had to work to recall some of the terminology he uses that I (probably) learned back as an undergrad. More philosophical than I was expecting. His analyses are fairly complete, and he's careful to state what he/the field doesn't yet know and what is based on just a few experiments that haven't been replicated. Glad I read it, but I probably won't read it again.
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