Commentary
Human Ethology, Volume 35, 10-15, published March 9, 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22330/he/35/010-015
ABSTRACT
The connections between the scientific attempts to understand the world and the practical attempts to control it to our ends are well known. Currently what is more talked about is how technological capability emerges from scientific understanding. But of course the connection goes the other way too, scientific advances are inspired, informed and motivated by practical needs and skills. One need look no further that a central concept in Ethology, namely Darwin’s natural selection, so named to contrast it with “artificial selection”, better known as animal or plant breeding, which humans have done for millennia.
Medicine provides a clear example of this interaction. Curious clinicians have always looked at the consequences of their treatments in their attempts better to understand and help their patients. A “treatment” is after all a Tinbergian natural experiment where the clinician introduces a perturbation, the treatment, into the otherwise natural environment, internal and/or external, of the patient and assesses the effect. Engineering provides another example, bridge building has long been one of the frontier pushing technologies – which sometimes go a bridge too far and the bridge collapses, but much is learnt. Both these technologies are, like most areas of human activity influenced by powerful egos which can distort information, prolong inaccuracy and maintain dangerous treatments, or can push through advances.
What about Human Ethology? What are the practical issues that might motivate, inspire and influence it and what might it be used for.
ISSN: 2224-4476
