Humans are particularly interesting; our culture is incredible, there's no doubt about that. In many respects, no other species matches ours. But in quite a few respects, they do, and that can help us, perhaps, to better understand our own culture. We look at the ways humans are similar to other animals, and at the ways they differ, rather than just saying, "We have culture and you don't."
Hal WhiteheadI don't think in biology it's very controversial at all. Whether certain behavior is culture or is not culture is argued. I think virtually all biologists would agree that some animal behavior is culture. Bird song is a good example.
Hal WhiteheadCulture is not usually one of the criterion for personhood, but it has been argued that culture is sort of a medium for a lot of these criteria, such as empathy, and so on.
Hal WhiteheadThe actual communicative value of what we say is usually quite small. I've lived for times in small, isolated fishing villages, where everyone knows everyone each other and everyone knows what's going on and everyone's watched the same TV programs and, really, there's not a whole lot of new information to convey. But there's still a lot of talking. What's said doesn't seem to matter; that you say it, and who you say it to, and how you say it is what matters.
Hal WhiteheadA bunch of individuals do the same thing because they learned from watching each other or somebody else. That's what we would call culture.
Hal WhiteheadI was very lucky. I was just finishing my PhD at Cambridge in 1981. This opportunity came up because whaling was drawing to an end. There was the prospect of a moratorium, and one of the arguments that was brought up, especially by Japanese whalers, was that, if we didn't have whaling, we would know nothing of whales. All the science depends on having dead animals, they argued, so that's one of the benefits of the whaling industry.
Hal Whitehead