Abstract
NO topic of biological discussion is better able to revive old controversies and established cleavages in opinion than the methodology of animal psychology. It owes this propensity to the fact that the comparative study of behaviour is not, and never has been, integrated into a single consistent science. The subject is so wide, its interests so many and varied, that not only may its methods range from those of physiology to those of systematic ‘nature study’, but also, as was shown in the discussion on the “Interpretation of Animal Behaviour” which took place in Sections D (Zoology) and J (Psychology) at the recent Aberdeen meeting of the British Association, many of its disciples may prove to be both lacking in knowledge of the interests, and of necessity opposed to the outlook, of investigators engaged in trying to advance the same branch of knowledge along paths different from their own. If it did nothing else, the Aberdeen discussion at least clearly denned for animal psychology the opposition between the vitalistic, teleological and subjective points of view on one hand, and the objective and mechanistic on the other.
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References
"The Advancement of Science, 1934". British Association.
ibid.
NATURE, 134, 340, Sept. 8, 1934.
"New Introductory Lecture on Psycho-Analysis".
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Interpretation of Animal Behaviour. Nature 134, 996–998 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/134996a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/134996a0
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Interpretation of Animal Behaviour
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