Celebrating Tinbergen's influence on human ethology (Letter from the Editor)

Citation

Roberts SC (2013) Celebrating Tinbergen's influence on human ethology (Letter from the Editor). Human Ethology Bulletin, 28 (4), pp. 1-2. http://media.anthro.univie.ac.at/ishe_journal/index.php/heb/article/view/97/66

Abstract
First paragraph: This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Tinbergen's (1963) paper "On aims and methods of Ethology". The paper, dedicated to Konrad Lorenz on his 60th birthday, presented a very personal, and perhaps therefore, particularly insightful, view of Tinbergen's thinking about the field of ethology as a whole - its "nature", in his words. In so doing, he constructed a simple, but hugely influential, framework within which a rich diversity of methodological and theoretical approaches could be seen as essential components of a larger enterprise - a comprehensive, integrated understanding of an animal's behavior. As is now well-known, his view of ethology, "the biological study of behavior", incorporated four interconnected strands - what causes a behavior, how does it develop, what is its functional signifcance, and how did it evolve.

Journal
Human Ethology Bulletin: Volume 28, Issue 4

People

Professor Craig Roberts

Professor of Social Psychology, Psychology