Linking Animal Cruelty and Family Violence By Lisa Anne Zilney

the natural and social sciences each endorsed positivism: scientists behold either the biophysical or the social world, elaborate concepts that define the essential properties of objects, employ direct or indirect measures to gather data on object properties, and discover the principles to explain the workings of either biophysical or social phenomena. The product of science—knowledge—was used to create new technologies for the improvement of the biophysical and social environments. The human ability to create higher order technologies and manipulate the biophysical and social environments indisputably distinguishes us from our nonhuman brethren. This singular capacity was used to justify disciplinary boundaries and bolster the belief that humans, unlike other animals, operate independently of the principles and constraints of biology.

This position is challenged by recent discussions in which the voices from the humanities are heard. The humanities seek to understand and describe the human condition. To discover what it means to be “human,” they have traditionally examined the arts, language, literature, history, and philosophy, and, more recently, archeological evidence. Evidence indicates that citizens of earlier civilizations recognized that human and nonhuman animals occupy the same space. Many social scientists have recently challenged further the belief in human exemption from biophysical principles, asserting the functional interdependence of social and biophysical processes such that change in one realm produces changes in the other. Human action that negatively affects animals may, in turn, negatively affect humans. The subfield of human-animal studies brings together in new