This paper explores ethologist Niko Tinbergen’s path from animal to human studies in the 1960s and 1970s and his views about human nature. It argues, first, that the confluence of several factors explains why Tinbergen decided to cross the animal/human divide in the mid 1960s: his concern about what he called “the human predicament,” his relations with British child psychiatrist John Bowlby, the success of ethological explanations of human behavior, and his professional and personal situation. It also argues that Tinbergen (...) transferred his general adaptationist view of animal behavior to the realm of human biology; here, his concern about disadaptation led him to a view of human behavior that was strongly determined by the species’ evolutionary past, a position that I call evolutionary determinism. These ideas can be seen in the work he carried out with his wife, Elisabeth Tinbergen, on autism. The paper concludes that Tinbergen’s vision of human nature constitutes another version of what anthropologist Clifford Geertz called in 1966 the “stratigraphic” conception of the human: a view of human nature as a composite of levels in which a universal ancestral biological core is superimposed by psychological and cultural layers that represent accidental variation at best and pathological deviation at worst. (shrink)

Textbooks have a low status in the history of science because they have been seen as mere repositories for scientific knowledge. But historians have recently shown how they play a number of roles that can illuminate different aspects of the history of science, from priority disputes to pedagogical practices. The essays in this Focus section aim to expand our vision of textbooks further by showing how they perform various hybrid functions in scientific development.

Konrad Lorenz's popularity in the United States has to be understood in the context of social concern about the mother‐infant dyad after World War II. Child analysts David Levy, René Spitz, Margarethe Ribble, Therese Benedek, and John Bowlby argued that many psychopathologies were caused by a disruption in the mother‐infant bond. Lorenz extended his work on imprinting to humans and argued that maternal care was also instinctual. The conjunction of psychoanalysis and ethology helped shore up the view that the mother‐child (...) dyad rests on an instinctual basis and is the cradle of personality formation. Amidst the Cold War emphasis on rebuilding an emotionally sound society, these views received widespread attention. Thus Lorenz built on the social relevance of psychoanalysis, while analysts gained legitimacy by drawing on the scientific authority of biology. Lorenz's work was central in a rising discourse that blamed the mother for emotional degeneration and helped him recast his eugenic fears in a socially acceptable way. -/- . (shrink)

ABSTRACT Konrad Lorenz's popularity in the United States has to be understood in the context of social concern about the mother‐infant dyad after World War II. Child analysts David Levy, René Spitz, Margarethe Ribble, Therese Benedek, and John Bowlby argued that many psychopathologies were caused by a disruption in the mother‐infant bond. Lorenz extended his work on imprinting to humans and argued that maternal care was also instinctual. The conjunction of psychoanalysis and ethology helped shore up the view that the (...) mother‐child dyad rests on an instinctual basis and is the cradle of personality formation. Amidst the Cold War emphasis on rebuilding an emotionally sound society, these views received widespread attention. Thus Lorenz built on the social relevance of psychoanalysis, while analysts gained legitimacy by drawing on the scientific authority of biology. Lorenz's work was central in a rising discourse that blamed the mother for emotional degeneration and helped him recast his eugenic fears in a socially acceptable way. (shrink)

This paper examines the contributions of Daniel S. Lehrman (1919–1972) to animal behavior studies. Though widely cited as a critic of the early ethological program presented by Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen, other significant aspects of Lehrman’s career and research have not received historical attention. In this paper, I offer a fuller account of Lehrman’s work by situating his debate with ethologists within the larger context of Lehrman’s early scholarly development under G. K. Noble and T. C. Schneirla, by examining (...) his scientific research on the ring-dove as well as his epistemological views about the best way to understand animal behaviour, and by presenting his leadership in institution and network-building of interdisciplinary approaches to animal behavior. This essay highlights Lehrman’s impact on the evolution of ethology, endocrinology, and developmental biology. (shrink)

This paper examines the development of British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby's views and their scientific and social reception in the United States during the 1950s. In a 1951 report for the World Health Organization Bowlby contended that the mother is the child's psychic organizer, as observational studies of children worldwide showed that absence of mother love had disastrous consequences for children's emotional health. By the end of the decade Bowlby had moved from observational studies of children in hospitals to (...) animal research in order to support his thesis that mother love is a biological need. I examine the development of Bowlby's views and their scientific and social reception in the United States during the 1950s, a central period in the evolution of his views and in debates about the social implications of his work. I argue that Bowlby's view that mother love was a biological need for children influenced discussions about the desirability of mothers working outside the home during the early Cold War. By claiming that the future of a child's mind is determined by her mother's heart, Bowlby's argument exerted an unusually strong emotional demand on mothers and had powerful implications for the moral valuation of maternal care and love. (shrink)

Starting in 1958, Harry Harlow published numerous research papers analyzing the emotional and social development of rhesus monkeys. This essay examines the presentation of Harlow's work in introductory psychology textbooks from 1958 to 1975, focusing on whether the textbooks erased the process of research, presented results without hedging, and provided a uniform account of Harlow's work and results. It argues that many textbooks were not passive vehicles of knowledge transmission; instead, they played a role similar to articles of meta-analysis and (...) literature reviews. (shrink)

Philosophers have started to use the history of science to address some of their philosophical concerns. In this paper I point out some aspects of contemporary practice that require further consideration in order to achieve a more fruitful integration of history and philosophy: one, the limitations of using case studies; two, the need to articulate how we should use history as evidence. Specifically, I argue that to make progress in the debate about realism we will have to pay more attention (...) to the role of historical evidence. (shrink)

T. H. Morgan (1866–1945), the founder of the Drosophila research group in genetics that established the chromosome theory of Mendelian inheritance, has been described as a radical empiricist in the historical literature. His empiricism, furthermore, is supposed to have prejudiced him against certain scientific conclusions. This paper aims to show two things: first, that the sense in which the term empiricism has been used by scholars is too weak to be illuminating. It is necessary to distinguish between empiricism as an (...) epistemological position and the so-called methodological empiricism. I will argue that the way the latter has been presented cannot distinguish an empiricist methodology from a non-empiricist one. Second, I will show that T. H. Morgan was not an epistemological empiricist as this term is usually defined in philosophy. The reason is that he believed in the existence of genes as material entities when they were unobservable entities when they were unobservable entities introduced to account for the phenotypic ratios found in breeding experiments. These two points, of course, are interrelated. If we were to water down the meaning of empiricis, perhaps we could call Morgan an empiricist. But then we would also fail to distinguish empiricism from realism. (shrink)

Can empathy be a tool for obtaining scientific knowledge or is it incompatible with the detached objectivity that is often seen as the ideal in scientific inquiry? This paper examines the views of Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz and American comparative psychologist Daniel Lehrman on the role of intuition and empathy in the study of animal behavior. It situates those views within the larger project of establishing ethology as an objective science. Lehrman challenged Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen, the main founders of (...) this field, to clarify their epistemological positions regarding how to deal with the subjectivity of the animals they studied as well as the scientist’s own subjectivity. I argue that there was a tension between their desire to eliminate the subjectivities of ethological researchers (and of their subjects) and the public perception that Lorenz had a remarkable ability to enter into the lives of the animals he studied. I explain why Lorenz rejected empathy as valid in scientific inquiry, showing that his epistemological position was grounded in his ideal of science and his proposed ontology for ethology. Yet, Lehrman insisted that full detachment was neither possible nor desirable. (shrink)

Aún en nuestros días es fácil comprobar la existencia de filósofos, y también de científicos, que creen que los límites de la razón se identifican con los de su propia concepción del mundo. Desgraciadamente, el ocultamiento y la tergiversación de datos es, todavía hoy, una práctica usual. Actitud que no es más que la vertiente práctica de una postura intelectual dogmática e intolerable. Por eso resulta estimulante encontrar un hombre cuya vida y pensamiento podría definirse como la antítesis del dogmatismo, (...) un pensador dispuesto a defender las ideas por su fecundidad y no por su adecuación al saber establecido. Un autor que supedita la certeza a la audacia en la construcción de teorías, un hombre sin miedo a equivocarse, pues para él, son las teorías más audaces, incluso las erróneas, las que nos enseñan. Nadie está libre de cometer errores; lo grande es aprender de ellos. Este ejemplo ha sido para los filósofos y científicos del siglo xx, K. R. Popper. Como reconocimiento a sus valiosas aportaciones a la historia del pensamiento se celebró en Madrid, del 6 al 9 de noviembre de 1984, un simposio internacional sobre su obra. (shrink)

This paper examines the process that led to the identification of chromosomes as carriers of genes. It focuses on the role played by explanations in theory construction and analyzes the status given to the entities and processes introduced through such explanations. I argue that the theory of the gene was a functional explanation that, as such, could not offer decisive support for the existence of genes. However, I maintain that functional explanations set the conditions of identification needed to discover the (...) physical structure that has a certain function in a given system. In this case, the theory of the gene helped to select the chromosomes as the physical structure responsible for the Mendelian segregation of genes. In its turn, the theory of chromosome inheritance helped to reduce the permissive character of the theory of the gene, regulating its further development. (shrink)

Cytogenetics was born of the confluence of two so-far independent fields: cytological studies and breeding studies, which merged through the identification of genes with chromosomes. In this paper I argue that genes were introduced as functional entities. Functional explanations are presented here as a subclass of inferences to the best explanation and I argue that abductive arguments do not offer conclusive proof for the existence of the entities postulated through them. However, functional explanations usually follow a scheme laid out by (...) Fodor (1968): there is a first phase where hypothetical entities are postulated and individuated through their effects; there is a second phase where the physical structures responsible for these effects are sought. I analyze the development of both phases in the construction of the chromosome theory of Mendelian inheritance. I will argue that first-phase theories are important to set conditions of identification for the functions played by a certain structure in a given containing system. (shrink)

In this paper I claim that the goal of mapping and sequencing the human genome is not wholly new, but rather is an extension of an older project to map genes, a central aim of genetics since its birth. Thus, the discussion about the value of the HGP should not be posed in global terms of acceptance or rejection, but in terms of how it should be developed. The first section of this paper presents a brief history of the project. (...) The second section distinguishes among four kinds of issues relevant to an evaluation of the HGP: those economic and organizational issues related to the feasibility of the project; the ethical questions arising in the development of the project and the application of the data gathered; the empirical issues relevant to the scientific value of the project; and conceptual issues like reductionism and determinism relevant to understand the nature and scope of the project. In a third section, I analyze in detail whether the HGP and, more generally, molecular biology is reductionistic. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have argued that psychiatric delusions threaten Donald Davidson's rationalist account of intentional agency. I argue that a careful look at both Davidson's account and psychiatric delusions shows that, in fact, the two are perfectly compatible. Indeed, a Davidsonian perspective on psychiatric delusions proves remarkably illuminating.

v. 1. Recuperări ; Receptarea pragmatismului ; Pragmatismul până la Peirce.

Stephen Schiffer has recently claimed that the currently popular “hidden‐indexical” theory of belief reports is an implausible theory of such reports. His central argument for this claim is based on what he refers to as the “meaning‐intention” problem. In this paper, I claim that the meaning‐intention problem is powerless against the hidden‐indexical theory of belief reports. I further contend that the theory is in fact a plausible theory of such reports.

Three views of demonstrative reference are examined: contextual, intentional, and quasi-intentional. According to the first, such reference is determined entirely by certain publicly accessible features of the context. According to the second, speaker intentions are criterial in demonstrative reference. And according to the third, both contextual features and intentions come into play in the determination of demonstrative reference. The first two views (both of which enjoy current popularity) are rejected as implausible; the third (originally proposed by Kaplan in Dthat) is (...) argued to be highly plausible. (shrink)