Abstract
THIS little book consists of three lectures on certain features of the psychology of animals, excluding man. In the first, Dr. Bierens de Haan insists on the independence of animal psychology as a science, dissociating it from subsistence on the kindred sciences of physiology and human psychology. He defines as its aim the study of subjective phenomena in animals, from the highest to the lowest, and offers evidence that even the amœba experiences these phenomena. The animal is discussed as a knowing subject in the second lecture and as a feeling and striving individual in the third. Dr. Bierens de Haan evidently regards mental evolution in animals as having reached a level much more approximating to man's than is generally accepted. He considers that in higher animals there can be “an implicit understanding of the connexion of causes and effects”, a psychological process equivalent to a primitive form of conceptual thought in man. Whether one agrees or not with his conclusions, they are a welcome stimulus to research in the many problems in this science still awaiting solution.
Animal Psychology for Biologists.
Dr.
J. A. Bierens
de Haan
By. Pp. 80. (London: University of London Press, Ltd., 1929.) 4s. 6d. net.
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Animal Psychology for Biologists . Nature 124, 790 (1929). https://doi.org/10.1038/124790d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/124790d0