Scale: Temporal
Towards a History on the Side of Animals
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52537/humanimalia.28272Keywords:
animal history, behavioural plasticity, temporality, ethology, biography, periodization, human–animal relationsAbstract
The temporal scale of animal behaviour, the fact that animals adapt, change, and generate histories over time, remains one of the most systematically neglected dimensions of the disciplines of both history and ethology. This paper traces the intellectual and historical roots of that neglect from Aristotle, through dominant Christianity, to the adynamic frameworks of twentieth-century behaviourism and Lorenzian ethology. It argues that, while the spatial scale of behavioural differences within a species is now well recognized, time continues to be considered a neutral backdrop rather than a real factor in animals’ lives. Recent developments, however, including Japanese ethological work on macaques in the 1950s and Jane Goodall’s biographical and sociological analysis of chimpanzees in the 1960s, suggest that a properly temporalized animal history is now genuinely possible. The paper makes a methodological proposal: that historians and ethologists work in tandem, cross-referencing documentary sources with ethological knowledge rather than subordinating one to the other. This would open animal research at the scales of species, social groups, and individuals to questions of behavioural periodization, cultural transmission, and biographical singularity. Animals, in short, are no more outside time than they are outside space.
Downloads
References
Aristotle. “History of Animals.” Translated by d’Arcy W. Thompson. In The Complete Works of Aristotle, edited by Jonathan Barnes, vol. 1, 774–993. Princeton University Press, 1984.
Bailly, Jean-Christophe. The Animal Side. Translated by Catherine Porter. Fordham University Press, 2011.
Baratay, Éric. Animal Biographies: Toward a History of Individuals. Translated by Lindsay Turner. University of Georgia Press, 2022.
Baratay, Éric, ed., Les animaux historicisés. Pourquoi situer leurs comportements dans le temps et l’espace? Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2024.
Baratay, Éric. L’Église et l’animal. Rev. ed. Cerf, 2015.
Baratay, Éric. Feline Cultures: Cats Create Their History. Translated by Drew S. Burk. University of Georgia Press, 2024.
Baratay, Éric, ed. Une histoire animale du monde. À la recherche du vécu des animaux de l’Antiquité à nos jours. Tallandier, 2025.
Bäumer, Änne. Geschichte der Zoologie. Vol. 2: Zoologie der Renaissance – Renaissance der Zoologie. Peter Lang, 1991.
Bloch, Marc. The Historian’s Craft. Translated by Peter Putnam. Knopf, 1959.
Bouton, Christophe and Philippe Hunemaux, eds. Temps de la nature, nature du temps. CNRS Éditions, 2018.
Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de. Histoire naturelle. Paris 1754.
Céard, Jean. La nature et les prodiges. L’insolite au XVIe siècle. Droz, 1977.
Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. 2 vols. London, 1871.
Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London, 1859.
Enenkel, Karl A. E., and Paul J. Smith, eds. Early Modern Zoology: The Construction of Animals in Science, Literature and the Visual Arts. Brill, 2007.
Fontenay, Élisabeth de. Le Silence des bêtes. La Philosophie à l’épreuve de l’animalité. Fayard, 1998.
Glardon, Philippe. L’Histoire naturelle au XVIe siècle. Introduction, étude et édition critique de La nature et diversité des poissons de Pierre Belon (1555). Droz, 2011.
Goodall, Jane. In the Shadow of Man. Rev. ed. Photographs by Hugo van Lawick. Introduction by Stephen Jay Gould. Houghton Mifflin, 1988.
Guyon, Jean. Lamarck, philosophe de la nature. PUF, 2006.
Kawamura, Shunzo. “The Process of Sub-Culture Propagation among Japanese Macaques.” Primates 2 (1959): 43–60. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01666110.
Kreutzer, Michel. L’Éthologie. PUF, 2017.
Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste. Recherches sur l’organisation des corps vivants [1802]. Fayard, 1986.
Laurent, Goulven. La Naissance du transformisme. Lamarck entre Linné et Darwin. Vuibert, 2001.
Le Roy, Charles-Georges. Lettres philosophiques sur l’intelligence et la perfectibilité des animaux [1764]. Paris, 1808.
Lorenz, Konrad. Trois essais sur le comportement animal et humain. Seuil, 1974.
Matsuzawa, Tetsuro and William C. McGrew, “Kinji Imanishi and 60 Years of Japanese Primatology.” Current Biology 18, no. 14 (2008): R587–R591. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2008.05.040.
McGrew, William C. “New Theaters of Conflict in the Animals Culture Wars: New Findings from Chimpanzees.” In The Mind of the Chimpanzee: Ecological and Experimental Perspectives, edited by Elizabeth V. Lonsdorf, Stephen R. Ross, and Tetsuro Matsuzawa, 168–78. University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Miklósi, Ádám and József Topál. “What Does It Take to Become ‘Best Friends’? Evolutionary Changes in Canine Social Competence.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 17, no. 6 (2013): 287–94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2013.04.005.
Pinon, Laurent. “Les Livres de zoologie de la Renaissance. Objets de mémoire et instruments d’observation (1460–1605).” PhD Diss., Université de Tours, 2000.
Plutarch. Trois traités pour les animaux. Translated by Jacques Amyot. Introduction by Élisabeth de Fontenay. POL, 1992.
Whiten, Andrew. “A Coming of Age for Cultural Panthropology.” In The Mind of the Chimpanzee: Ecological and Experimental Perspectives, edited by Elizabeth V. Lonsdorf, Stephen R. Ross, and Tetsuro Matsuzawa, 87–100. University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Éric Baratay (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
How to Cite
