Niko Tinbergen and questions of instinct
2020
Beer, Colin
Niko Tinbergen characterized ethology as ‘the biological study of behaviour’ involving four kinds of question: causation, ontogeny, adaptive function and phyletic evolution (Tinbergen, 1963; Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie, 20, 410–433). He said the science should give equal attention to each and to their integration. This division was prefigured in his book The study of instinct (Tinbergen, 1951; Oxford University Press). The book offered a conception of instinct as a built-in motivational system analogous to a hydraulic mechanism. The assumption of innateness and the lack of physiological credibility of the instinct model met with adverse criticism, which Tinbergen conceded to a large extent. His later work concentrated on functional issues, which anticipated the direction dominating subsequent ethological studies. Nevertheless Tinbergen's four questions, and his insistence that they be given equal attention continue to present an agenda for ethological aspiration.
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