The Story of Captain, the Horse with the Human Brain

James, George Wharton, 1858-1923Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
113K words
Chapters
12

Tags

English Originals Children's Literature Nature ObservationLegendary LivesAdventure JourneyImaginationTruth Goodness BeautyLight ReadingHumor ReliefHeartwarming NarrativeExotic CultureAmerican West

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Story of Captain, the Horse with the Human Brain by George Wharton JamesAuthor: James, George Wharton, 1858-1923,Language: English, Class: QL: Science: Zoology, Release Date: May 1, 2015

Editor's review

This book centers on a horse named Captain. From the perspective of natural history and animal observation, George Wharton James records the remarkable understanding and responsiveness the horse displayed and places it in the early twentieth-century American debate over animal intelligence. Its value lies not in offering a scientific verdict but in preserving a period document: it shows how people of the time observed, described, and explained animal behavior that seemed human, and it lets today's readers reflect on the limits of anthropomorphic narration. The prose has the ease and attentiveness of old natural-history writing, making it a light read for understanding the history of ideas about animal behavior. Read it as a historical text rather than a modern conclusion of animal science; you will gain more by noticing how the author selects examples and assigns meaning to behavior than by asking whether the horse really had a human brain. It is short and suits reading in installments on a commute or in the afternoon.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the table of contents and preface first to understand the author's purpose, then move into the chapters.
  2. As you read, mark the author's descriptions of the horse's behavior and distinguish observation from subjective interpretation.
  3. After finishing, compare it with modern animal cognition research and note your own doubts and reservations.
  4. The English original is short; one or two chapters a day with notes works well.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12

FAQ

Is this book based on real events or is it fiction? Judging by the author and title, it is an observational account of a horse's behavior and has a documentary character, though the narration inevitably includes the author's anthropomorphic explanations. It is best read as a historical text, not as an experimentally verified modern scientific report.
Can I understand it without a background in zoology? Yes. The book is mainly narrative and observational, with few technical terms, so general readers can follow it smoothly. For a deeper reading, familiarize yourself with the basic background of the early twentieth-century debate over animal intelligence; it will make the author's position easier to grasp.
Why do you recommend reading it as a historical document? Because the book's claim about an animal's 'human brain' reflects ideas and narrative habits common at the time, not contemporary scientific consensus. Reading it in its historical context is both enjoyable and revealing about the limits and appeal of anthropomorphic writing.

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About the author

James, George Wharton, 1858-1923 Author

George Wharton James (1858–1923) was an American writer active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; eleven of his works are held in this collection. Public information about his life is limited, and biographical details are difficult to verify, but his subjects show a lasting interest in the natural landscapes and Native cultures of the American Southwest. Representative works such as The Indians of the Painted Desert Region describe the lives of the Hopi, Navajo and related peoples, while The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It and The Lake of the Sky introduce the Grand Canyon and surrounding scenery to visitors. He also wrote on California's missions and local places, as in The Old Franciscan Missions of California and Picturesque Pala, and produced the animal story The Story of Scraggles. His writing combines travel guide and humanistic record in plain prose, leaving popular accounts through which later readers can approach the region's life and landscape.