This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 203.158.56.88 (talk) at 14:31, 30 December 2013 (order). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 14:31, 30 December 2013 by 203.158.56.88 (talk) (order)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) | This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libelous. Find sources: "Marian Dawkins" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Marian Ellina Stamp Dawkins (born 13 February 1945) is professor for animal behaviour at the University of Oxford, where she heads the Animal Behaviour Research Group. She has published several books, one of which has been translated into German, and many peer-reviewed papers. Her research interests include vision in birds, animal signalling, behavioural synchrony, animal consciousness and animal welfare.
She is skeptical about consciousness of nonhuman animals. In her book Why Animals Matter: Animal Consciousness, Animal Welfare, and Human Well-being (2012) she wrote "there is no proof either way about animal consciousness and that it does not serve animals well to claim that there is". She responded the criticism to her position as "wrongly interpreted", and says that "my concern is to make the case for animal emotions as watertight as possible and thereby to strengthen it. That is the way science progresses and always has."
Personal life
She married evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins on 19 August 1967. They divorced in 1984.
Bibliography
- Animal Suffering: The Science of Animal Welfare. Chapman and Hall. 1980.
- Unravelling Animal Behaviour. Longman. 1986.
- Through Our Eyes Only?: The Search for Animal Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1993.
- She was coauthor with Aubrey Manning of the fourth and fifth editions of An Introduction to Animal Behaviour. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1993 and 1998.
- Living with The Selfish Gene. One of the collected essays in Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think. Editors: Alan Grafen, Mark Ridley. Oxford University Press. 2006
Criticism
Her book Why Animals Matter: Animal Consciousness, Animal Welfare, and Human Well-being received significant amount of criticism since its release. Evolutionary biologist Marc Bekoff vigorously criticized Dawkins for denying a large body of solid scientific data. Jennifer O'Connor, a staff writer of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, considered the book 'appears to be nothing more than a defense for those who want to continue to use, abuse and exploit animals'. Jim Robertson, the author of 'Exposing the Big Game: Living Targets of a Dying Sport' wrote "This new and unwelcomed project makes me wonder if she's (Dawkins is) not actually an emotional automaton programmed to react to stimuli but lacking the ability to think and feel". The book is rated 1.5 out of total 5 stars on Amazon.com.
She was also criticized for unprofessional academic conducts such as personal attack and misrepresentation of the opinions of the academic opponents.
References
- "Staff:Academic Marian Dawkins". University of Oxford, Department of Zoology. Retrieved 1 July 2011.
- Dawkins, Marian Stamp (2012) Convincing the Unconvinced That Animal Welfare Matters Huffington Post, 8 June 2012.
- Dawkins, Marian Stamp (2013) What do animals want? Edge, 31 October 2013.
- Book reviews http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199747512/ref=cm_cr_dpvoterdr?ie=UTF8&thanksvoting=cr-vote-RN2RMW41H7IP3#RN2RMW41H7IP3.2115.Helpful.Reviews
- ^ http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201205/animal-consciousness-and-science-matter
- Criticisms of Why Animals Matter: Animal Consciousness, Animal Welfare, and Human Well-being from the readers: http://www.amazon.com/review/RN2RMW41H7IP3/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0199747512&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=283155&store=books#wasThisHelpful
 | This article about a British scientist is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it. |