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Essay on Contemporary Issues in Ethology: On the Problems Studied in Ethology, Comparative Psychology, and Animal Behavior
Author(s) -
Dewsbury Donald A.
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
ethology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.739
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1439-0310
pISSN - 0179-1613
DOI - 10.1111/j.1439-0310.1992.tb00951.x
Subject(s) - ethology , comparative psychology , relation (database) , psychology , animal behavior , control (management) , epistemology , cognitive science , social psychology , philosophy , ecology , biology , zoology , cognition , neuroscience , artificial intelligence , computer science , database
I review Tinbergen's “four problems of biology,” their antecedents, and their subsequent development in the hands of other writers. As they have been developed from writer to writer the “problems” have been transformed and altered in subtle ways, some of which appear counterproductive. I suggest that the divisions of the problems in terms of “proximate‐ultimate” and “how‐why” have had unfortunate consequences and I suggest a modest revision so that problems are considered in relation to the genesis, control, and consequences of behavior.