Anatomy and the Problem of Behaviour

Abstract

THE anatomy into which behaviour does not enter, at least unconsciously, is generally regarded as an academic study incapable of formulating general conclusions and therefore sterile. The anatomical method which has proved most valuable in the hands of British investigators is that which seeks to establish a comparative correlation between structure and function. It is therefore hard to understand why the same method which has proved so suggestive in comparative anatomy has not been pursued more vigorously by embryologists, in order to elucidate the meaning of neurological structures, since this method is even more accessible to professed zoologists than to human anatomists in England. Dr. Coghill, the author of these three lectures, is a member of the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology at Philadelphia; but the lectures were delivered in London. He has made a parallel study of the development of behaviour and of the nervous system of Amblystoma with signal success for his purpose.

Anatomy and the Problem of Behaviour.

By G. E. Coghill. (Lectures delivered at University College, London.) Pp. xii + 113. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1929.) 7s. 6d. net.