Tuesday,
10 February 2004
Instinct in the 50s:
The British Reception of Konrad Lorenzs Theory of Instinctive
Behavior
Paul Griffiths
University of Pittsburgh
12:05 pm, 817R Cathedral of Learning
Abstract:
In the early 1950s the instinct concept developed by Konrad Lorenz
in the years leading up to the second world war seemed, from the
perspective of students of animal behavior in the United Kingdom,
to be both a genuine break with the past and a central theoretical
construct of the new ethology. An exception to this view was J.B.S
Haldane, who made substantial efforts to undermine Lorenzs
claims to originality. The enthusiasm for Lorenzs concept
in the United Kingdom was, however, shortlived. By the late 50s
the English speaking ethologists had rejected Lorenzs
approach in favor of one which stressed the interaction of heredity
and environment in the ontogeny of all behaviors.
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