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The pun may be

January 30, 2003 by Michael Boyle

The pun may be

the lowest form of humour, but nevertheless, there is an “award-winning pun” (as a friendly correspondent put it) in this New Yorker review of the Genius Stanley Coren’s The Pawprints of History. To wit: “Ever since, many psychologists and animal behaviorists, reluctant to be twice fooled, have followed Descartes in his refusal to attribute to animals any conscious intelligence whatever. Only recently have animal behaviorists realized that science, in heeding Cartesian dogma more than the demonstrable ingenuity of animals such as Clever Hans, had got its logic backward: it had put Descartes before the horse.”

When reading this passage, you must remember that denial ain’t just a river in Egypt. Puns are funny!

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