Do we understand De Waal, or do we just like his anecdotes?.

I recently finished reading Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal. On the surface, it is undoubtedly a delightful book: it’s filled with fascinating anecdotes about political chimpanzees, elephants that recognize themselves in mirrors, and empathetic bonobos. However, after closing the final page, I was left with an ambivalent feeling that I would like to share.
 

The Anecdote Trap.
The book is extremely pleasant. De Waal writes with a fluency that makes you feel like you're having a conversation over coffee. But therein lies, in my view, the greatest difficulty for the lay reader. Because it is a work by an author at the pinnacle of his career, the text is actually an intellectual battlefield.
 

The Invisible Enemy.
The problem for the average reader is that De Waal throws punches, but we don't always see at whom. If one doesn't know what radical behaviorism is, if one hasn't heard of Morgan’s Canon or the resistance of traditional comparative psychology, many of his statements can seem defensive or unnecessarily insistent.
For those reading for pleasure, the author might seem to be tilting at windmills, when in reality he is taking on scientific dogmas that dominated the 20th century. Without that prior theoretical framework, the reader risks:
1.    Coming away only with the "cute story" of the intelligent animal.
2.    Missing the deep significance of the ethical and biological discussion the author proposes.
 

The Key Word: Anthropodenial.
To understand De Waal’s sometimes combative tone, one must know his concept of "anthropodenial." This is the term he coined to criticize those scientists who—almost religiously—refuse to see human traits in animals. If you don't know that De Waal has spent 40 years dealing with colleagues who consider a chimpanzee to be nothing more than a "biological machine" without feelings, his arguments might seem redundant. In reality, he is trying to tear down an academic concrete wall.
 

The Book as a Mirror, Not a Window.
In the end, you discover that De Waal’s premise is not just a window to look outward (at animals), but a mirror to look at ourselves. The author poses a disarming question: if we are unable to understand the intelligence of a being that shares 99% of our DNA, what does that say about our own intelligence? Perhaps the "blind spot" is not in the chimpanzee's brain, but in our arrogance in believing ourselves to be a species outside of biology.
 

A Suggestion for the Next Reader.
If you are going to read this book, my recommendation is that you don't do it just for the anecdotes. Try to read between the lines and detect who De Waal is talking to when he takes a firm stand. Sometimes, popular science assumes we are all aware of the "hallway fights" of the university, and that can alienate the common reader.
 

A Book for Experts or the Curious?.
I believe this book is enjoyed in two very different ways:
•    For the expert: It is a political and scientific manifesto, a high-level debate between peers who know the rules of the game.
•    For the uninitiated (like me): It is a parade of surprises and wit, but one that leaves a void. Those piercing questions with which the book opens—about our own capacity to understand—perhaps require having first gone through a basic manual of ethology.
 

Conclusion: The Naive Gaze.
Sometimes, ignorance in a subject allows us to approach these readings with a "sense of wonder" that the expert has already lost. But for that surprise not to be merely superficial, we need to know exactly which current the author is swimming against.

In the Spanish entry, I made some additional comments on specific points, which can be found at the following link: https://reuniendoletras.blogspot.com/2021/09/entendemos-de-waal-o-solo-nos-gustan.html