The Aesop's Fable Paradigm

"The Aesop's Fable Paradigm is interdisciplinarity at its best: a genuine dialogue between the sciences and the humanities that not only undermines the notion of an unbridgeable divide between "the two cultures" but also offers fascinating insights into the sociology of science. In addition to its important scholarly insights, we are given an insider's view on how scientific work actually gets done, which makes it an excellent teaching resource. As an added bonus, the book is a pleasure to read: it's both playful and witty, but also deadly serious, and it never pulls its punches."—Louise Barrett, University of Lethbridge

"An impressively collaborative, interdisciplinary (and quite often funny!) set of essays that illustrate concretely not only how scientists anthropomorphize animals and draw on folkloric constructs in their research design and conclusions, but also how scientists need folklorists to help them sort it out. A must-read for anyone interested in the overlaps and little-understood connections between folklore and science."—Lisa Gabbert, author of Winter Carnival in a Western Town: Identity, Change, and the Good of the Community

"Like the coyotes and badgers of native Western folklore that collaborate to ferret prey from their safe burrows, a scientist and a folklorist unite to ferret comparative psychology from its reliance on non-diagnostic experiments into a more enlightened era of self-reflection.The Aesop's Fable Paradigm provides an opportunity for engaging scholars with the challenges of designing a study of animal cognition that probes species-unique cognitive processes rather than continuing to debate how human-like nonhumans can be"—Jennifer Vonk, Oakland University