Lola : $b or, The thought and speech of animalsKindermann, Henny
Science
Lola : $b or, The thought and speech of animals
Kindermann, Henny
Animal intelligence; Dogs -- Folklore
From this central fact, proved over and over again without any possible
doubt to be true of the "thinking" animals, there have been developed
two distinct groups of consequences: (1) the prodigious mathematical
performances occurring as by magic among the Elberfeld horses at a
certain point of their "education": (2) the apparent manifestations of
thought through the typtology or rapping out of words, culminating in
the "philosophic" achievements of Rolf and Lola.
For the reasons just mentioned the first group of consequences seems to
me to admit largely of biological (i.e. biopsychical) explanation;
however, anything which eventually does not fit into the biological
explanation may be made to enter without any effort into the second
method of explanation which, in view of the facts, it seems to me that
we must adopt for the second of the two groups of consequences above
referred to.
That mathematics can be "lived" rather than "known"--or, if any one
prefers the term, "realized"--by an organism which is without any
psychical accompaniment whatever of the human type, is a fact which I
find credible. But when Rolf speaks to me of the origin of the soul, or
makes up poetry; when Lola complains to me of honour lost, etc., the
thing is not credible to me in any way except by paying attention to
nothing except the feeling, which is so difficult to avoid, that what
is here speaking to me, versifying and complaining, is a psychical
"quid," absolutely human and only human; a "quid" which therefore is
(after all) not the animal's, although manifested in some way through
it. The difficulty naturally consists in deciding precisely how this
happens. But it does not seem to me altogether impossible to arrive at
a proper hypothesis.
I have already said that we must discard, because of its inability to
explain a great part of the facts, the most easy and simple
hypothesis--that of some mechanical signal (e.g. by means of a supposed
pressure of the hand under the cardboard, or by the hand itself which
is held out to the animal, in the case of the dogs which have so far
been experimented with). Here we also have to remember the proposition
laid down by Miss Kindermann herself that "She did not wish to let
herself be carried away by sentiment," and that she would seek all
possible proofs which were good logically. Having excluded the
hypothesis of deceit, it is a further proof of the sheer impotency of
the theory of signals, when regard is had to the available amount of
the material observed and recorded in the authoress, if we ask how is
it possible to imagine that she (knowing very well, as she says, the
suspicion resting on the method) in a year or more of work with Lola
should not herself have perceived that she herself had been producing
by mechanical means the rapped answers of her pupil?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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