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539 kr
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In the early days of ethology, most of the major developments were in the realm of ideas and in the framework in which animal behavior was studied. Much of the evidence was anecdotal, much of the thinking intuitive. As the subject developed, theories had to be tested, language had to become more public than it had been, and quantitative descriptions had to replace the preliminary qualitative accounts. That is the way a science develops; hard headed analysis follows soft-headed synthesis. There are limits, though, to the usefulness of this trend. The requirement to be quantitative can mean that easy measures are chosen at the expense of representing the complexly patterned nature of a phenomenon. All too easily the process of data collec tion becomes a trivial exercise in describing the obvious or the irrelevant. Editors and their referees require authors to maintain high standards of evidence and avoid undue speculation-in short, to maintain professional respectability. In the main, this process is admirable and necessary, but somewhere along the line perspective is lost and a body of knowledge, with all the preconceptions and intellectual baggage that comes with it, becomes formally established. New ideas are treated as though they were subversive agents-as indeed they often are.
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In the preface to the first volume of this series we set out our aims, which were to encourage fresh perspectives in ethology and provide a forum for new ideas. We still feel that in the perfectly proper search for high stan dards of evidence, methodology has tended to remain the master rather than the servant of most aspects of ethological work. It is easy for us all to forget that the kinds of data we collect are largely determined by the kinds of questions we ask. Even an ethologist with the professed goal of providing a straightforward account of behavior must incorporate into his or her descriptions a great many assumptions about the organization of that be havior. Inevitably some facets of what went on will have been selected at the expense of others. This is sometimes done, for example, in the service of a theory that the fundamental unit for description is the fixed action pattern. Our point is not that constraints on the collection of data are bad but that the theory which gives rise to the selection of evidence should not be neglected. In the first volume, the choice of topics and authors was based upon our views about the exciting or developing issues in ethology. This volume represents a more opportunistic approach: the articles were selected from among the many offered to us as best conforming to our aims. Neverthe less, certain themes do emerge.
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Sociobiology is the play of the season. Its success is mellsured by its immense popularity and perhaps by the controversy it has generated as well. Unfortunately, neither its popularity nor the resulting controversy seems likely to assure progress toward understanding sociobiological issues. The play has too many actors and, it seems, the casting has been poor; the players are unable to maintain their roles. At center stage, of course, is E. O. Wilson and his monumental opus Sociobiology. 1 In the wings, and making periodic entrances, are an assort ment of brilliant, committed, and aggressive adversaries. On cue, one of them steps out and decries the self-fulfilling nature of sociobiological prophesies. The arguments of the adversaries are varied. They warn that if all nonhuman primate societies tolerate aggression and man is also a pri mate, then aggression may come to be considered "normal" and therefore acceptable. Their dire warnings may also have real impact on policy, alter ing, for example, a research program intended to examine longitudinally the relation between a supernumerary chromosome and certain behavioral disorders. The rationale is that since the afflicted infants would have to be identified and the study obviously does assume that psychopathology is linked to the chromosome aberration, the attitudes of the child's parents could well contribute to abnormal behavior that might otherwise not appear.
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When we began this series we wanted to encourage imaginative thinking among ethologists and those working in related fields. By the time we had reached Volume 3, we were advised by our publishers to give each volume a theme. Although we accepted the advice, it ran somewhat counter to our own wish to give our authors full rein. It also meant that we could not accept submitted manuscripts if they lay too far outside the topic for the next volume. We did, however, cheat a little, and faithful followers of the series will have noticed that some of the contributions were not exactly on the stated theme. Anyway, our publishers have now agreed that we can make honest people of ourselves by once again ac cepting a broad range of manuscripts for any volume. We shall also solicit manuscripts on particular topics that seem to be timely and appropriate, and each volume will continue to have a subtitle that relates to the theme of the majority of the papers in the volume. We hope that with our more permissive policy now explicit, potential contributors will feel encouraged to submit manuscripts to either of us at the addresses given at the end of this Preface. When planning the present volume, we wanted our contributors to build bridges between studies of behavior and the neurosciences. In recent years, the majority of people working on behavior seem to have been exclusively concerned with functional and evolutionary approaches.