Christine Webb

Confronting Human Exceptionalism — Population Balance The myth of human exceptionalism casts humans as separate from and superior to the rest of life. Primatologist Christine Webb, author of The Arrogant Ape , shows how science and culture reinforce thi...

www.populationbalance.org/podcast/chri...

The Books Times Readers Were Most Excited About This Year

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/b...

THE ARROGANT APE made the list again! 🫶 Get your first edition now, second printing underway.

I am so sorry and horrified. Glad you are safe - sending love.

THE ARROGANT APE has been named a New York Times Notable Book of 2025.

Floored to be on this list and in such good company. And grateful to all who helped make it possible 🫶

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/b...

Smart new book takes an axe to the myth of human exceptionalism Christine Webb's provocative and moving book The Arrogant Ape explores our unjustifiable sense of superiority in the living world, laying out the evidence against it, says Elle Hunt

Christine Webb's provocative and moving book The Arrogant Ape explores our unjustifiable sense of superiority in the living world, laying out the evidence against it, says Elle Hunt

love mosses! Thanks

A world beyond human exceptionalism is worth imagining. Join us at @TEDxBoston this weekend.

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thanks so much!!

UK publication day!

www.littlebrown.co.uk/titles/chris...

Thursday!

law.yale.edu/yls-today/ya...

Thanks!!

Glad you enjoyed!!

Thanks!! 🦟🦗🐝

Life and our relationship with the world is never the same. My students’ experiences and my own have encouraged me to collect these ideas in THE ARROGANT APE. (2/2)

I witness my students undergo major transformations as they learn to see past the basic ways their sense of the world has been framed by human exceptionalism. As the wool is pulled from their eyes, they come to experience Nature as more alive, animate, and aware. (1/2)

Thanks so much 🙏

If we build AI to think like humans, are we just teaching it to repeat our blind spots?

Primatologist Christine Webb talks bias in AI and what we can learn from mosses.

#Philosophy

Tonight!

Register here sites.google.com/nyu.edu/wild...

Thank you Delphine!

A different way of looking at organisms, one that is possible if we overcome notions of human exceptionalism and think about species on their own terms, is revolutionizing our perception of them and of ourselves (3/3).

Their discoveries reveal underappreciated complexities of nonhuman life–from the languages of songbirds and prairie dogs, to the cultures of chimpanzees and reef fishes, to the acumen of plants and fungi (2/3).

Pioneering scientists past and present have broken from the pressures and limitations of human exceptionalist thinking. Charles Darwin, Lynn Margulis, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Frans de Waal–their work looms large in my own research (1/3).

yes this is a post to let you know event season starts tonight
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Mark Mazower TONIGHT!
@alexandrahorowitz.bsky.social & @christinewebb.bsky.social in convo Monday
Stephanie Cowell on her Brontë novel Tuesday
@bernardharcourt.bsky.social on Foucault Wednesday
& more!

The process of building and sustaining that relationship can be enacted only by individuals who are motivated by another vision and experience of what the good life might be, who can reimagine this richer relationship and are already bringing it into being (2/2).

Corporate greed and deception, capitalist economics, and a lack of political will certainly play an outsize role. But we don’t just need an overhaul of these institutions; we need a new relationship to the world (1/2).

The Books Times Readers Are Most Excited About This Fall

The Arrogant Ape is #2 for non-fiction books New York Times readers say they’re most eager to dive into this season.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/b...

Thank you!! Yes - I discuss the history of human exceptionalism including the role of The Enlightenment in Chapter 3 (and revisit some of its actors - like Descartes - throughout)