Paul "Pablo" Martin
Opening the Doors of Perception and Looking Beyond the Binary
Abstract: The great intellectual strides attributed to the ontological shift born of the Cartesian Divide have come at a cost. Constricting reality into binary and hierarchical structures often renders holistic points of view either superfluous or invisible and limit our analyses to only those observations that pass through our terministic screens (Burke, 1966). Instead, adopting contemporary physics’ understanding that the universe is an integrated whole comprised of dynamic relationships invites paradigmatically different observations to the world of animal scholarship. This paper explores two theoretical framings that demonstrate this: Milstein’s (2011) work on identification and consubstantiality in whale tourism as it relates to animal autopoiesis, and Schutten and Burford’s (2017) application of coherence that reveals orca behavior as a form of internatural communication. By applying such open and egalitarian perspectives in more of our efforts to understand non-human animals, human animals can continue to expand and refine their own perceptive capabilities.
Keywords: Animal Communication, Autopoiesis, Internatural Communication, Hierarchy
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