The contributors writing from an array of academic disciplines rethink human relationships with other animals The question of what it means to be human is at the core of Western philosophical and scientific inquiry. As conceptualized in the Western tradition, humanity has been understood and defined in opposition to the animal, said to lack the rationality and language that we adduce as the clearest evidence of our difference from beasts. Recent scientific research and rigorous examinations of taxonomy, however, have raised controversial questions regarding the relationship between humans and animals. Man and Beast poses these central philosophical and scientific questions from a different perspective, not simply asking where the line is or ought to be drawn between man and beast but examining and analyzing the stakes in transgressing or maintaining species barriers.