Tue Sep 30, 02025, 10:00PM UTC
Christine Webb
Christine Webb on "The Arrogant Ape: The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why It Matters"
Long Now Boston joins Harvard Book Store, the Harvard University Division of Science, and the Harvard Library in welcoming Christine Webb—primatologist at Harvard’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology—for a discussion of her new book The Arrogant Ape: The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why It Matters. This event will take place at the Harvard Science Center, Hall D, located at 1 Oxford St, Cambridge. Following the presentation will be a reception and book signing in the Cabot Science Library across the hall from the presentation room.
Event summary coming soon!
Darwin considered humans one part of the web of life, not the apex of a natural hierarchy. Yet today many maintain that we are the most intelligent, virtuous, successful species that ever lived. This flawed thinking enables us to exploit the earth towards our own exclusive ends, throwing us into a perilous planetary imbalance. But is this view and way of life inevitable? The Arrogant Ape shows that human exceptionalism is an ideology that relies more on human culture than our biology, more on delusion and faith than on evidence.
Harvard primatologist Christine Webb has spent years researching the rich social, emotional, and cognitive lives of our closest living relatives. She exposes the ways that many scientific studies are biased against other species and reveals underappreciated complexities of nonhuman life—from the language of songbirds and prairie dogs, to the cultures of chimpanzees and reef fishes, to the acumen of plants and fungi. With compelling stories and fresh research she gives us a paradigm-shifting way of looking at other organisms on their own terms, one that is revolutionizing our perception both of them and of ourselves.
Critiques of human exceptionalism tend to focus on our moral obligation towards other species. They overlook what humanity also stands to gain by dismantling its illusions of uniqueness and superiority. This shift in perspective fills us with a sense of awe and satisfies one of our oldest and deepest desires to belong to the larger whole we inhabit. What’s at stake is a better, sustainable way of life with the potential to heal and rejuvenate our shared planet.
Christine Webb is a broadly trained primatologist at Harvard’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, with expertise in social behavior, cognition, and emotion. She works with nonhuman primates in diverse settings and collaborates with scholars from the social sciences and humanities to reimagine the role of science in the growing charge to grant moral status to other animals. Her work has been covered by popular outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, and the BBC.
Christine Webb
