About the Scholar: Pioneer Scholar Hao is from Beijing, China, where she attended Beijing National Day School
The Research:
Many of us have heard René Descartes’ famous phrase “I think, therefore I am.” Descartes wrote this when he set out to prove the existence of the human mind. But in the same philosophical work, Descartes denied that animals have minds. Hao broke down Descartes’ argument in order to shed light on how animals think and communicate.
Consulting research on ape communication, Hao explains that many animals use non-verbal, even grammatical languages to communicate. Her research teaches us that we shouldn’t be too quick to judge others as inferior to us because they communicate differently than we do.
Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia. It is a paradisematic country, in which roasted parts of sentences fly into your mouth.
