FARLEY MOWAT NEVER CRY WOLF

FARLEY MOWAT NEVER CRY WOLF

SIX EPISTEMOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO WOLVES:

"There is a way of being wrong that is right." -Ed Abbey Desert Solitaire

1 MYTHOLOGICAL: fairy tales, myths, fabrications about wolves

2 ANTHROPOCENTRIC: view that all in nature serves man and is subordinate to the needs of man

3 ANTHROPOMORPHIC: projecting human characteristics onto wolves

4 SCIENTIFIC: hypothesis-field testing-analysis approach to knowing the wolf

5 INDIGENOUS: native view of wolves as great hunters and sacred keepers of the predator - prey relationship

6 ECOCENTRIC: a view of wolves as integral to the sustainability of an intact ecosystem

6: catfish in toilet

14-16: How is the Canadian gov.'s view that wolves kill too many caribou and ruin hunting anthropocentric? Use the definition above:

24-5: What is the effect of myths / children stories that wolves are ruthless: (mythological view): Little Red Riding Hood, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, Three Little Pigs?

---------42-44: How does Mowat succumb to the mythological fear of wolves...when they are huskies that find him under the canoe? (mythological). Use the definition above:

60: What is the significance of the scientific description of wolf as predator? (scientific view). Use the definition above: -- see 227 as well.

65-66: How does Mowat shift between two incomplete ways of seeing wolves as in love (anthropomorphic)...93: wolves are not promiscuous (anthropomorphic) and "engines of destruction" (mythological)? Use the definitions above:

74-77: Why does one need to clear the mind of false perspectives and keep an "open mind" about wolves?

80-82: How is the view of wolves not as nomadic, but as territorial ecocentric? Use the definition above:

-----------95: wolf communications are beyond societal man, but not all communications beyond Eskimo (ecocentric)

125: How is the indigenous parable a view of the "carrying capacity" in an ecosystem and the importance of wolves important to valuing wolves? (indigenous) see 146 as well.

52, 126-7: trappers killed caribou, not wolves

146: Eskimos and wolves parent by village, by pack (indigenous)

180-2: How does Mowat's realization that the carrying capacity requires wolf celibacy and variations in litter sizes an ecocentric and athropomorphic view? Use the definition.

194-5: flushes caribou naked and is attacked by Eskimos

198-200: How is Mowat's realization of the wolf hunting techniques: flush for weak, relay runners, ambush and conclusion: "without the wolf there would be no caribou" ecocentric? Use the definition.

227: Why is it important that 48% of wolf diet was rodents / mice (How is this a scientific view to replace the former one on page 60?)---

234: demonizes the wolves they kill / wolf snaps at the ski of a plane (mythological)

237: How is the trophy hunting for caribou racks (anthropocentric)? and the hunters' taking of the strongest males the opposite of what wolves do in their hunting of the caribou?

242-6: returns to wolf den and remembers lost world and lost native self...

a world he almost entered but was excluded by his (alien) self