No more than the nature of the energy-transformations, and the
essential morphology, does the behaviour of animals afford us the
means of setting up absolute distinctions between group and group.
Really tropistic behaviour is exhibited by the movements of the stems,
roots, and leaves of green plants, or in the movements of Bacteria,
and perhaps some unicellular animals. Typically instinctive behaviour
is exhibited by the individuals of societies of Insects and by many
solitary-living animals belonging to this class; and typically
intelligent behaviour is exhibited by the acting of the higher
Mammalia. Yet there is undoubtedly much that is truly instinctive
in the behaviour of Man, and something of the same nature as his
intelligence seems to inhere in the instinctively-acting mammal
or insect: how else could an instinctive action become capable of
improvement? We cannot doubt that intelligence is manifested by
a dog or by much that we see in the behaviour of ants. No rigid
distinctions between tropisms, such as we have mentioned above, and
the reflexes that may be taken to constitute instinctive behaviour,
can be established. Minute analysis, such as that carried out by
Jennings on the swimming movements of the Protozoa, leaves us quite
in doubt as to how these modes of behaviour are most properly to be
described; and all the controversy as to the nature of tropisms,
reflexes, instinct, and intelligence surely indicates that these modes
of behaviour have something that is common to all of them, and that
no clear and certain distinction can be said to separate one from the
other. Even those psychic processes which we call intellectual do not
seem to be different in kind from some that we attribute to the lower
animals: the Protozoan _Paramœcium_ studied by Jennings, or the crabs,
crayfishes, and starfishes studied by Yerkes and others really _learn_
to perform actions, but this learning is said to be the result of a
process of “trial and error.” The animal tries one series of movements
and finds that it fails, tries another and another with a similar
result, and in the end finds one that is effective. This is remembered,
and when the same problem again confronts the animal it is solved
after fewer trials, and finally, after experience, the end-result is
attained at once without previous trials. Now many of what we call
truly intellectual processes are certainly processes of precisely this
nature. Hypothesis after hypothesis _occurs_ to the scientific man (or
to the detective, or to the engineer confronted with some exceptional
difficulty), and one after another is tested by actual trial, or by a
process of reasoning (which is really the rapid and formal resuming of
previous experience), until a hypothesis verifiable, or _a priori_
verifiable, is found. What, for instance, are our mathematical methods
of integrating a function, or working a long division sum, but methods
of scientific “guessing,” and verification of the hypotheses so made?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account