Evoluzione e modificazione del comportamento: Le professioni teoriche del padre dell'etologia

by Konrad Lorenz

Tema centrale dell'etologia è il fenomeno dell'adattamento e i due processi in cui si produce: quello a breve termine dell'apprendimento individuale, e quello a lungo termine della selezione naturale che, in tempi evoluzionistici, modella il patrimonio genetico della specie in modo che tutte le caratteristiche dell'organismo - compreso il suo comportamento - siano idonee all'ambiente naturale in cui vive. Gli effetti dell'apprendimento individuale sono evidenti, mentre invece quelli della selezione naturale sono più sottili, più difficili da determinare nelle condizioni di laboratorio: questo a portato a trascurare le componenti innate o istintive, e a ritenere che ogni comportamento potesse trovare spiegazione in una qualche forma di condizionamento. Contro tale tesi Lorenz sottolinea qui la fondamentale importanza dei processi selettivi, che non solo conservano le risposte vantaggiose per la sopravvivenza, ma che soprattutto hanno fatto evolvere i complessi meccanismi fisiologici alla base di ogni manifestazione comportamentale. l'autore Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) studiò biologia e medicina a Vienna, lavorando poi presso l'Istituto di anatomia dell'Università. Professore di psicologia comparata a Konisberg (1940), dal 1954 diresse l'Istituto di fisiologia del comportamento Max-Planck-Institut di Seewiesen. Nel 1973 le sue fondamentali scoperte sull'organizzazione e la formazione di moduli comportamentali individuali e sociali gli valsero, insieme a Nikolaas Tinbergen e Karl Von Frisch, il premio Nobel per la medicina. Disponibili in italiano presso altri editori: "L'anello di re Salomone" (Adelphi, Milano 1967), "L'altra faccia dello specchio" (Adelphi, Milano 1974), "Il cosiddetto male" (Garzanti, Milano 1975).

Genres: Psychology, Science

156 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.