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Article ID: CBB079918903

Science, sensitivity and the sociozoological scale: Constituting and complicating the human-animal boundary at the 1875 Royal Commission on Vivisection and beyond (2021)

Holmes, Tarquin (Author)

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
Volume: 90
Pages: 194-207
Publication date: 2021
Language: English

URI: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003936812100159X

DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2021.10.003

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Science and ethics Pain Animal rights Vivisection Animal psychology Human-animal relationships 19th century Great Britain Richard Holt Hutton Huxley, Thomas Henry Royal Commission on Vivisection (1875)

Arnold Arluke and Clinton Sanders (1996) have argued that human societies index both humans and animals as belonging to particular rungs of the social hierarchy. They term this multispecies ranking the “sociozoological scale”. This paper will investigate how claims at the 1875 Royal Commission on Vivisection about the sensitivity of particular species and breeds not only reflected assumptions about human social hierarchy but also blurred the boundaries between the human and the animal in the process. It will further be shown how these claims were informed by 18th and 19th century humanitarianism, classism, scientific racism and evolutionary theory, and how these influences combined in claims-making about the relative capacity of particular animals to sense pain and ethical duties towards them that followed from this sensitivity. Particular attention will be given to the opposing efforts of commissioners Thomas Henry Huxley and Richard Holt Hutton to demarcate human and animal sensitivity and exempt companion animals from vivisection respectively. The paper concludes by considering the sociozoological orders constituted by the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act, particularly through its focus on calculating pain, and the legacy and limitations of this constitution.

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