Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword by Aubrey Manning
- Preface
- 1 On aims and methods of ethology
- 2 Tinbergen's four questions and contemporary behavioral biology
- 3 Causation: the study of behavioral mechanisms
- 4 Tinbergen's fourth question, ontogeny: sexual and individual differentiation
- 5 The development of behavior: trends since Tinbergen (1963)
- 6 The study of function in behavioral ecology
- 7 The evolution of behavior, and integrating it towards a complete and correct understanding of behavioral biology
- 8 Do ideas about function help in the study of causation?
- 9 Function and mechanism in neuroecology: looking for clues
- References
- Index
1 - On aims and methods of ethology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword by Aubrey Manning
- Preface
- 1 On aims and methods of ethology
- 2 Tinbergen's four questions and contemporary behavioral biology
- 3 Causation: the study of behavioral mechanisms
- 4 Tinbergen's fourth question, ontogeny: sexual and individual differentiation
- 5 The development of behavior: trends since Tinbergen (1963)
- 6 The study of function in behavioral ecology
- 7 The evolution of behavior, and integrating it towards a complete and correct understanding of behavioral biology
- 8 Do ideas about function help in the study of causation?
- 9 Function and mechanism in neuroecology: looking for clues
- References
- Index
Summary
Received 16 March 1963
Ethology, the term now widely in use in the English speaking world for the branch of science called in Germany „Vergleichende Verhaltensforschung” or “Tierpsychologie” is perhaps defined most easily in historical terms, viz. as the type of behaviour study which was given a strong impetus, and was made “respectable”, by Konrad Lorenz. Lorenz himself was greatly influenced by Charles Otis Whitman and Oskar Heinroth — in fact, when Lorenz was asked at an international interdisciplinary conference in 1955 how he would define Ethology, he said: “The branch of research started by Oskar Heinroth” (1955, p. 77). Although it is only fair to point out that certain aspects of modern Ethology were already adumbrated in the work of men such as Huxley (1914, 1923) and Verwey (1930), these historical statements are both correct as far as they go. However, they do not tell us much about the nature of Ethology. In this paper I wish to attempt an evaluation of the present scope of our science and, in addition, to try and formulate what exactly it is that makes us consider Lorenz “the father of modern Ethology”. Such an attempt seems to me worthwhile for several reasons: there is no consistent “public image” of Ethology among outsiders; and worse: ethologists themselves differ widely in their opinions of what their science is about.
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- Information
- Tinbergen's LegacyFunction and Mechanism in Behavioral Biology, pp. 1 - 24Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
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