Traces of an Omnivore | Paul Shepard | Brilliant exploration of man's place in the natural world

Traces of an Omnivore | Paul Shepard | Kicking the family dog

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Traces of an Omnivore

	Traces of an Omnivore Paul Shepard Island Press, 1996 - 255 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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Paul Shepard is one of the most profound and original thinkers of our time. He has helped define the field of human ecology, and has played a vital role in the development of what have come to be known as environmental philosophy, ecophilosophy, and deep ecology -- new ways of thinking about human-environment interactions that ultimately hold great promise for healing the bonds between humans and the natural world. "Traces of an Omnivore" presents a readable and accessible introduction to this seminal thinker and writer.Throughout his long and distinguished career, Paul Shepard has addressed the most fundamental question of life: Who are we? An oft-repeated theme of his writing is what he sees as the central fact of our existence: that our genetic heritage, formed by three million years of hunting and gathering remains essentially unchanged. Shepard argues that this, "our wild Pleistocene genome," influences everything from human neurology and ontogeny to our pathologies, social structure, myths, and cosmology.While Shepard's writings travel widely across the intellectual landscape, exploring topics as diverse as aesthetics, the bear, hunting, perception, agriculture, human ontogeny, history, animal rights, domestication, post-modern deconstruction, tourism, vegetarianism, the iconography of animals, the Hudson River school of painters, human ecology, theoretical psychology, and metaphysics, the fundamental importance of our genetic makeup is the predominant theme of this collection.As Jack Turner states in an eloquent and enlightening introduction, the essays gathered here "address controversy with an intellectual courage uncommon in an age that exults the relativist, the skeptic, andthe cynic. Perused with care they will reward the reader with a deepened appreciation of what we so casually denigrate as primitive life -- the only life we have in the only world we will ever know."

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Brilliant exploration of man's place in the natural world

Paul Shepard is perhaps as profound a thinker as any who have lived in his exploration of human nature and the role of mankind in the natural world. These essays offer a well-balanced introduction to his ideas. For 'introduction' do not read 'easy'; the writing can be very compact and even a Rhodes Scholar may be well-advised to keep a dictionary handy. But the reader's effort is more than rewarded; you will not find a more lucid, insightful and inspired exploration of human-environment relationships anywhere. Reading Paul Shepard will change the way you see the world. This is not new-age happy-clapper environmental-babble; Paul Shepard is a serious scholar, and his insights and criticisms will hit disconcertingly close to home even for self-described nature-lovers. Shepard's essays can alternately be categorized as Environmental Philosophy, Sociology, Human Ecology, Comparative Anthropology... But the diversity of subjects merely reflects the vast range of disciplines from which Shepard convincingly assembles evidence to support a single powerful premise: that humankind is a wild species adapted to a way of life requiring intimate contact with the natural world for healthy existence, and that the problems of modern society stem ultimately from the alienation between man and the world, an alienation created and enforced by the dominant world cultures. Humbling and inspiring... a must-read for anyone who cares about the human species or the world we inhabit. You will return to these essays again and again.

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Kicking the family dog

Jack Turner's Introduction to this volume of essays bemoans the lack of attention Paul Shepard's work has received. According to Turner, part of this obscurity is due to Shepard's radical views and his work being "formidably intellectual." Perhaps another part is Shepard's assault on humanity's domestication of various animals. Few admire a man who kicks the family dog. "On Animal Friends" is a deeply thought out treatise on the history and
full genetic and philosophical implications of what domestication has done to humans and other animals alike.

Shepard is a challenging read. Not for problems of clarity - his prose flows easily under the reader's eyes. His ideas, however, chain your attention. You are brought to a halt as what he argues forces reflection on many novel ideas. A major figure in ecological studies for many years, these wide-ranging essays address a variety of topics. The underlying theme is humanity's Pleistocene roots. How far, Shepard asks, have history and evolution actually brought us? What forces have we applied to separate ourselves from the rest of Nature? What traditions do we hold dear and how many of these should we consider modifying or abandoning as we efface our environment? These questions have been asked before, but Shepard poses them in fresh contexts and offers challenging answers.

Although among America's leading environmentalists, he kept himself apart from "mainstream" thinking typifying the movement. These essays demonstrate a far broader outlook than espoused by many of his colleagues. Here, he addresses esthetics, theoretical psychology and the virtues of hunting. His views are unexpected and his handling of the topics flawless. He criticizes his fellows without hesitation - in one case calling Paul Martin's idea that the extinction of large fauna was caused by Pleistocene humans "preposterous."

You will come away from this book unsettled. That is how it should be and precisely what Shepard intended. You will not, however, close this book unsatisfied. Shepard offers his messages [and there are many in this collection] with persuasive language. Your mind will be opened with every page. Take up this book in confidence of a wise choice. The rewards are plentiful.

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