Animal Constructions and Technological Knowledge

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. * Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy *
Animal Constructions and Technological Knowledge is 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. * The Quarterly Review Of Biology *
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. -- Shannon Vallor, William J. Rewak, S.J. Professor, Santa Clara University
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. -- Andrew Feenberg, Simon Fraser University