Evolution and Modification of Behavior

by Konrad Lorenz

En este libro Lorez emprende un análisis penetrante de los conceptos de lo “innato” y lo “aprendido” en el comportamiento. Ninguno de los dos términos, “innato” o “aprendido” es aplicable a pautas de comportamiento completamente desarrolladas sino sólo a la procedencia de la información que constituye el requisito previo para que el comportamiento se adapte al medio. Tal información entra en el sistema orgánico ya sea a través de la especie, que la ha adquirido por mutación y selección, o a través del individuo, que la ha adquirido en la acción recíproca con su medio ambiente habitual. Por una parte, puede haber pautas de comportamiento que deben el estar adaptadas exclusivamente a información adquirida en la evolución de la especie, en tanto que, por otra parte, todo comportamiento adaptativo presupone necesariamente un mecanismo programado sobre la base de la información filogenéticamente adquirida. Ni el intercambio entre la adaptación filogenética y la modificación adaptativa ni las formas análogas en que ambas extraen información del medio –dice Lorenz- pueden eximir a los psicólogos de distinguir entre dos procesos filogenéticamente diferentes ni de rastrear hasta sus fuentes la información que está en la base de toda adaptación del comportamiento.

Genres: Psychology, Science

128 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1967

About the author

Konrad Zacharias Lorenz was an Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch. He is often regarded as one of the founders of modern ethology, developing an approach that began with an earlier generation, including his teacher Oskar Heinroth.
Lorenz studied instinctive behavior in animals, especially in greylag geese and jackdaws. Working with geese, he investigated the principle of imprinting, the process by which some nidifugous birds (i.e. birds that leave their nest early) bond instinctively with the first moving object that they see within the first hours of hatching. Although Lorenz did not discover the topic, he became widely known for his descriptions of imprinting as an instinctive bond. In 1936 he met Dutch biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen, and the two collaborated in developing ethology as a separate sub-discipline of biology. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Lorenz as the 65th most cited scholar of the 20th century in the technical psychology journals, introductory psychology textbooks, and survey responses.

Reviews

[Steven Peterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Konrad Lorenz was a major figure in ethology, the study of animal behavior. This work is one of his major theoretical efforts, put forward in a slender volume.

This is an effort to defend the concept of "innate" and to defend his "classical" ethological position. In the process, he attacks a number of other theoretical perspectives, such as behaviorists, modern ethologists, and earlier ethologists.

One issue that I have is his mischaracterization (or misunderstanding)of Daniel Lehrman as a behaviorist. Anyone who reads Lehrman's work knows that he is NOT a behaviorist. Just so, his critique of "modern ethologists." He simplified their respective positions and, in essence, attacks a straw man.

At the same time, this is a useful volume, as it elucidates Lorenz' own views in a straightforward manner.

[Omar M. Khateeb]

An interesting book on how to modify behavior. It's a little dense despite being a small book. One take away I got was that the more complicated an adapted process, the less chance there is that a random change will improve its adaptiveness. Random change must, with overpowering probability, result in their disintegration.