Introduction

Man has always been interesting to man as an object of study. Especially - his behavior. Hippocrates already proposed a system of character classification, the same one about phlegmatic choleric people, which we use now. But a truly intense interest in the study of human behavior appeared only at the end of the 19th century, and is inextricably linked with the name of Sigmund Freud. Freud was a brilliant person, who first spoke of the subconscious and the analysis of subconscious activity. Moreover, Freud, half a century ahead of the appearance of ethology, believed that the roots of the subconscious grow on the basis of the biological essence of man / 1 /.

In my work I will try to determine the place of ethology in modern human sciences, to tell in more detail about the outstanding Austrian scientist Konrad Lorenz and his ethological concept, presented in two of his most famous works - “Aggression: the so-called evil” and “The Eight Deadly Sins of Civilized Humanity.” .

1. Ethology of man

Freud, briefly summarizing his scientific achievements, put it this way: “I discovered that man is an animal.” He meant, of course, human behavior, for Lino and Darwin had determined the zoological affiliation of a person to the primacy order long before him. And for such statements, great scientific and personal courage was required, because very many people do not like the assumptions about the animal roots of human behavior now. However, speaking about the biological essence of subconscious processes, and their effect on humans, he did not even attempt to investigate their physical nature and genesis! Not surprisingly, therefore, his constructions did not look very convincing, and were constantly criticized. In 1928, M. Scheler wrote: “Questions:“ What is a person and what is his position ”- occupied me from the moment my philosophical consciousness was awakened and seemed more substantial and central than any other philosophical question” / 2 /.

And since a clear theoretical base was never built, then a complete science of human behavior did not work out. First of all, two directions stood out, two, if you will, kingdoms: humanitarian and natural.

The natural soon gave rise to eugenics, which “incidentally” pleased the autocratic regimes that had turned up and used it to ideologically support the policy of violence. As a result, not only she herself was seriously and permanently discredited, but also the natural science approach to the study of human behavior in general.

The intellectual community adopted the orientation on the inadmissibility of biological, racial-anthropological and similar interpretations of social behavior, including the inheritance of certain personal qualities. The attitude, politically justified and humanistically commendable, however, which, being taken to the extreme, became a serious brake on the development of the study of human behavior.

Well, the humanitarian kingdom has since flourished, crashed into innumerable schools, trends, trends and streams, each of which strove to offer its own classification of human characters and mental types, its own model of processes.

In modern humanitarian psychology, there are many such classification systems, most of which are completely independent of one another. For example, according to Leonhard, personalities are: demonstrative, pedantic, stuck, excitable, emotive (and so on); According to Fromm personalities are: receptive, exploiting, accumulating, market and productive; according to Jung - introverts-extroverts, mental, sensual, sensory and intuitive. And there are at least several dozen such systems proposed by any well-known psychologists. This abundance, diversity and incoherence clearly indicates the absence in the kingdom of humanitarian psychology of a generally accepted model of motivational and mental mechanisms that control human behavior / 1 /. Or simply put - understanding the reasons for this behavior. The unifying of all adherents of the humanitarian kingdom are actually two postulates:

Man is not an animal. That is, of course, the fact that a person belongs to the order of primates does not deny, and therefore has to be related to monkeys, but this fact is decisively taken beyond the framework of humanitarian psychology under the assumption that the biological evolution of man has ended, and since then man has only evolved socially . And in behavioral reactions, the influence of animal origin is negligible, and is limited mainly by the regulation of elementary physiological needs.

Everything is learning. Sometimes this postulate is formulated as the concept of “a clean slate”, which implies the almost complete absence of a person’s innate behavioral patterns, or at least their extreme fragility, which allows them to be easily replaced by some external influences. Like a blank sheet on which society and the environment write their rules of conduct. In other words, it is assumed that the character of a person completely (except maybe temperament) forms the environment in which he grew up and abides. Let me remind you that it was on this postulate that the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the formation of a new person was based. Say, as soon as we change production relations, the person will immediately change. Will become kind, humane, hardworking. In fact, for some reason it didn’t work out very well ... Everyone remembers the Nikitin’s touching song “A dog is a bite only from a dog’s life”, where this thesis was expressed in the most figurative form, but which is definitely false for dogs, and for humans, all his humanity - at least not very convincing. At the same time, over the century with the existence of practical psychology, she has accumulated tremendous practical experience, a large number of working methods have been empirically accumulated, which allows humanitarian psychology to be quite effective in solving many practical problems. Many - but not all. For example, attempts to explain unmotivated cruelty, a number of mania and phobias, and much more, which in the natural science paradigm are explained quite naturally and harmoniously, look extremely artificial in the humanitarian framework. And this is logical - after all, humanitarian psychology does not have a convincing theoretical foundation, and it is unlikely to be within the framework of its accepted paradigm. And this means that each new problem has to be solved by trial and error, the proposed methods have to be checked for a long time for the limits of their applicability, and so on and so forth / 3 /.

The natural science direction after abandoning eugenics temporarily departed from the study of human behavior, limiting itself only to the study of animal behavior. However, this was not useless for studying human behavior, for in the natural sciences there was a different postulate: "Man is an animal endowed with reason." And quite, I must say, an arrogant animal. For obvious reasons, the behavior of animals causes much less public interest than human behavior, and therefore the study of animal behavior has long been the lot of lovers. Nevertheless, the appearance in the 30s of the 20th century of the fundamental articles by Konrad Lorenz, from which ethology actually begins, caused a small storm in the scientific world. Lorenz for the first time, and very convincingly showed on the example of birds, that the high complexity of behavior, the presence of flashes of abstract thinking and good learning abilities do not replace instinctive behavioral motivations at all, but act together with them, sometimes contradicting, sometimes complementing and modifying them. His observations of the life of gray geese were simply shocked by the similarity of some moments of their behavior with human ones. Inevitably, the question arose again about the applicability of the conclusions of ethology to humans, to which Lorentz himself and his followers answered unconditionally positively, although the "antibiological attitude" acted, and generally speaking, continues to act now. By the way, one of the prominent representatives of the natural sciences, the founder of sociobiology Wilson was even accused of fascism and racism at one time. However, the explanations proposed by Lorentz for the principles of the activity of the subconscious were so convincing and logical that some of the first readers of Lorentz's articles described their sensations from what they read as a sensation of open eyes after long blindness, like similar enthusiastic sensations. The recognition of the convincing ethological paradigm can be considered a 1970 award to Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaus Tinbergen of the Nobel Prize for the creation of ethology.

Unfortunately, these enthusiasms did not penetrate into the Soviet Union, where ethology, along with genetics, has long been considered bourgeois pseudoscience, and it is still very little known, even among experts. In Soviet times, this was inevitable, because ethological notions did not fit with Marxism, but the low prevalence of ethology in modern Russia can be explained only by the inertia of existing notions.

However, not everything was cloudless in the ethological kingdom. First of all - then comparative psychology already existed in the USA, it was also zoopsychology, which dealt with approximately the same, that is, the study of animal behavior, but at the same time was based on the same paradigm as the psychology that studies man. In fact, this scientific direction directly competed with ethology, diligently interpreting the same observational facts as the result of learning. Between ethologists and zoopsychologists, a serious debate broke out / 4 /. In parallel with ethology, and partly under the influence of its ideas, such scientific directions as sociobiology and evolutionary psychology arose. Sociobiology, declaring itself the successor of all sciences about man, including ethology, considers man the most “globally”, that is, he studies the most general laws and relationships between biological and social in the behavior of both man and any living creature. But it must be said, from the sociobiological sky-high heights and latitudes, the specifics of instinctive manifestations are poorly visible; Sociobiology itself does not deal with instincts, speaking about them only insofar as.

Evolutionary psychology looks similar, by the way, it is hardly possible to separate sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists into two camps - their spheres of scientific interests and the paradigmatic basis are so close. The key concepts of evolutionary psychology are “adaptation” and “external environment”. Evolutionary psychology considers the behavior of living beings as one of the ways to adapt to a changing external environment. However, despite the closeness of interests with ethology (which also considers instincts as a form of evolutionary adaptation), evolutionary psychology also does not go too deep into the specifics of instinctive behavior, almost philosophically considering the general laws of adaptation. Thus, all these scientific areas have their own niche, and therefore they are all needed in their own way.

How do ethological scientists distinguish instinctive behavior from the whole range of behavioral acts? In much the same way that linguists recreate ancient, extinct languages. That is, the behavioral patterns of animals (or humans) belonging to a wide variety of populations, cultures, species are compared, and the same types are identified among them. Nonconformist behavior that is contrary to the norms and customs accepted in this society is especially indicative in this sense, and among people it is also behavior that contradicts consciously (reasonably) declared intentions. Having identified such behavior, the ethologist is trying to understand what its current or former expediency for the species is, to understand how it arose. Such generalized-typical, species-appropriate (at least in the past) behavior is recognized as instinctive. Comparing the behavior of representatives of the most diverse zoological species, from the simplest to the highest, scientists discover amazing parallels and patterns that testify to the existence of common behavioral principles concerning all representatives of the animal kingdom, including humans.

Similar methods of exploring the world are very fruitful, and are widely used in other sciences. For example, astronomers know much better the internal structure of the Sun than geologists know the internal structure of the Earth. And all because there are a lot of stars, and they are all different - comparing them with each other, you can understand a lot. But the Earth is one, and there is nothing to compare it with. So is the study of man. By confining ourselves to studying only himself, we risk remaining as limited in his understanding.

However, studying human ethology is not easy. In addition to the objective difficulties arising from the powerful influence of reason, which disguises and modifies many instinctive manifestations, researchers regularly encounter public rejection of the ethological method as applied to man. It seems unacceptable and even insulting to many people the fact of comparing human behavior with animals. And this also has an ethological explanation. It consists in the action of the instinct of ethological isolation of species, which is described in detail in the book of V. Dolnik "Naughty Child of the Biosphere." The essence of this instinct can be expressed in the form of the motto "love yourselves - love the stranger"; “Strangers” in our case are monkeys, the hostile attitude to which extends to the thesis of the relationship between our behavior and their behavior. It would seem that Darwin’s theory, despite the ongoing (due to the same hostility) to this day attempts to refute it, has been firmly and irrevocably accepted by the scientific community, and most educated people completely agree with their descent from monkeys. However, the idea that this or that feeling is the voice of instinct still causes strong protests among many people, for the most part not finding a rational explanation. Meanwhile, the root of this hostility is precisely in the subconscious rejection of our relationship with monkeys.

It should also be carefully emphasized that ethology does not pretend to be a comprehensive and comprehensive explanation of all the features of human and animal behavior. It plows up a very powerful, very important, and hitherto almost untouched layer of deeply subconscious processes of instinctive behavior. But she does not consider either the physiological subtleties of the functioning of the nervous system, or the laws of the functioning of the mind, or the shallow layers of the subconscious, considering them only to the extent of minimum necessity. This is all the competence of other disciplines / 3 /.

2. Conrad Lorenz

The Austrian zoologist and ethologist Konrad Zacharias Lorenz was born on November 7, 1903, in Vienna, he was the youngest of the two sons of Emma (Leher) Lorenz and Adolf Lorenz. Lorenz’s grandfather was a master in the manufacture of horse harnesses, and his father, who remembered his hungry childhood, became a successful orthopedic surgeon who built an elegant, albeit somewhat clumsy, estate in Altenberg near Vienna, decorated with huge art paintings and Roman statues. Wandering through the fields and swamps around Lorenz Hall, Lorenz became infected with what he would later call "excessive love for animals."

Growing domestic ducks, the young Lorenz first discovered imprinting, a specific form of training observed in the early stages of life, through which animals establish social connections and recognize each other. “From a neighbor,” Lorentz later recalled, “I took a one-day-old duckling and, to my great joy, discovered that he had developed a reaction everywhere to follow my person. At the same time, an indestructible interest in waterfowl arose in me, and as a child I became an expert on the behavior of its various representatives. ”

Soon, the boy gathered a wonderful collection of animals, not only domestic but also wild, who lived in the house and in the vast territory around it, as in a real private zoo. This allowed Lorentz to get acquainted with different types of animals, and now he was not inclined to see in them simply living mechanisms. As a researcher, standing on the positions of objectivity in science, he was far from thinking of interpreting the behavior of animals in the image and likeness of human thoughts and feelings. He was more interested in instinctual problems: how and why is the behavior of animals that do not have a human mind characterized by complex and adequate circumstances?

Having received primary education in a private school, which was led by his aunt, Lorenz entered the "Schottengimnazium" - a school with a very high level of teaching. Here, Lorentz’s observation habits were reinforced by teaching zoological methods and principles of evolution. “After graduating from high school,” Lorenz subsequently wrote, “I was still passionate about evolution and wanted to study zoology and paleontology. However, I obeyed my father, who insisted on my medical studies. ”

In 1922, Lorenz was enrolled in Columbia University of New York, but after 6 months he returned to Austria and entered the medical faculty of the University of Vienna. Although he had little desire to become a doctor, he decided that a medical education would not harm his beloved vocation - ethology, the science of the behavior of animals in natural conditions. L. recalled the university professor of anatomy Ferdinand Hochstetter, who gave "excellent training on methodological issues, having taught to distinguish similarities caused by common origin, from those due to parallel adaptation." L. "quickly realized ... that the comparative method should be as applicable to behaviors as to anatomical structures."

While working on his dissertation for a medical degree, L. began to systematically compare the characteristics of the instinctive behavior of animals. At the same time, he served as a laboratory assistant at the Department of Anatomy of the University of Vienna. After receiving in 1928 a medical degree L. transferred to the post of assistant of the Department of Anatomy. However, he was still interested in ethology, not medicine. He began to work on a dissertation in zoology, while reading a course on the comparative behavior of animals / 5 /.

Until 1930, two established but opposing points of view prevailed in the science of instincts: vitalism and behaviorism. Vitalists (or instinctivists) observed the complex actions of animals in their natural habitat and marveled at the accuracy with which the animal instinct corresponded to the achievement of nature's goals. They either explained instincts with the vague concept of “wisdom of nature”, or believed that the behavior of animals is motivated by the same factors that underlie human activity. Behavioral advocates, on the other hand, studied animal behavior in the laboratory, testing animals' ability to solve experimental problems, such as finding a way out of the maze. Behavioralists attributed animal behavior to chains of reflex reactions (similar to those described by Charles S. Sherrington), linked together through classical conditioning studied by Ivan Pavlov. Behavioralists, whose studies were concentrated mainly on actions acquired through training, were confused by the very notion of instinct - a complex set of innate rather than acquired reactions / 1 /.

Initially, L. was inclined to behaviorism, believing that instincts are based on a chain of reflexes. However, in his research, evidence grew that instinctive behavior was intrinsically motivated. For example, normally animals do not show signs of mating-related behavior in the absence of members of the opposite sex and do not always show these signs even in their presence: to activate instinct, a certain stimulation threshold must be reached. If the animal has been in isolation for a long time, the threshold decreases, i.e. the effect of the stimulus may be weaker, until in the end the animal begins to show signs of mating-related behavior even in the absence of the stimulus. L. reported on the results of his research in a series of articles published in 1927 ... 1938.

It was only in 1939 that L. recognized the importance of his own data and came to the point of view that instincts are caused not by reflexes, but by inner impulses. Later that year, L. met Nicholas Tinbergen at a symposium in Leiden; their “views coincided to an implausible degree,” L. later said. “In the course of our discussions, some concepts took shape that later proved fruitful for ethological research.” Indeed, the concept of instinct, which was developed by L. and Tinbergen over the next few years, formed the basis of modern ethology.

L. and Tinbergen expressed a hypothesis according to which instinctive behavior begins with internal motives that force the animal to search for a certain set of environmental or social stimuli. This so-called indicative behavior is often highly variable; as soon as an animal encounters some “key” stimulants (signaling stimuli, or triggers), it automatically performs a stereotypical set of movements called a fixed motor pattern (PDF). Each animal has a distinctive system of PDP and associated signaling stimuli, which are characteristic of the species and evolve in response to the requirements of natural selection.

In 1937, L. began to give lectures on animal psychology in Vienna. At the same time, he was studying the process of domesticating geese, which includes the loss of acquired skills and the increasing role of food and sexual stimuli. L. was deeply concerned about the likelihood that such a process could take place in humans. Shortly after the accession of Austria to Germany and the invasion of German troops by L., he did what he would later recall as follows: "After listening to bad advice ... I wrote an article about the dangers of domestication and ... used the worst examples of Nazi terminology in my essay." Some of L.'s critics call this page his scientific biography racist; others tend to consider it the result of political naivete.

Two years after receiving a position at the Department of Psychology of the University of Koenigsberg (now Kaliningrad), L. was mobilized into the German army as a military doctor, despite the fact that he had never been engaged in medical practice. Sent to the Eastern Front in 1942, he was captured by the Russians and worked for many years in a prison hospital. Repatriated only in 1948, when many friends and relatives considered him long dead.

In the first years after returning to Austria, L. could not get any official position, but still, thanks to the financial assistance of friends, he continued his research in Altenberg. In 1950, he and Erich von Holst founded the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology.

Over the next two decades, L. was engaged in ethological research, concentrating on the study of waterfowl. His status as the founder of modern ethology was undeniable, and as such, he played a leading role in disputes between ethologists and representatives of other scientific disciplines, in particular the psychology of animal behavior.

Some of L.'s most controversial views are expressed in his book The So-called Evil: On the Nature of Aggression (Das sogenannte Bose: zur Naturgeschichte der Aggression, 1963). As the name implies, L. considers aggression to be nothing more than “evil,” because, despite the often devastating consequences, this instinct contributes to the implementation of such important functions as the choice of marriage partners, the establishment of a social hierarchy, and the preservation of territory. Critics of this book argued that its conclusions justify the manifestations of violence in human behavior, although, according to L. himself, innate human aggression becomes even more dangerous because "the invention of artificial weapons upsets the balance between destructive potentials and social prohibitions."

The 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was shared between L., Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch "for discoveries related to the creation and establishment of models of individual and group animal behavior." His achievement was, in particular, that he “observed patterns of behavior that, apparently, could not be acquired through training and should have been interpreted as genetically programmed.” More than any other researcher, L. contributed to a growing understanding of the fact that behavior arises on the same genetic basis as any other characteristic of animals, and, therefore, is subject to the action of natural selection.

After retiring in 1973 from the Max Planck Institute, L. continues to conduct research in the animal sociology department of the Institute of Comparative Ethology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Altenberg, where he lived until his death in 1989.

In 1927, L. married Margaret (Gretl) Gebhardt, with whom he had been friends since childhood; the spouses had two daughters and one son.

Among the awards and distinctions that L. was awarded, the gold medal of the New York Zoological Society (1955), the Vienna Prize for Scientific Achievements awarded by the Vienna City Council (1959), the Kalinga Prize awarded by UNESCO (1970). L. is a foreign member of the Royal Society of London and the American National Academy of Sciences / 5 /.

3. "The so-called evil: about the nature of aggression"

Conrad Lorenz believed that aggressiveness is an innate property of all higher animals. He argued: “There are good reasons to consider intraspecific aggression as the most serious danger that threatens humanity in modern conditions of cultural, historical and technical development” / 6 /.

We can formulate the features of intraspecific aggression according to K. Lorentz in the following theses:

1. Intraspecific aggression - aggression manifested by individuals of the same species in relation to each other. At the same time, they peacefully coexist with individuals of other species.

2. The basis of the conflict in this case is the same food consumed by relatives.

3. Intraspecific aggression is the primary instinct aimed at maintaining the species - and this is precisely its danger, because it is spontaneous (little controllable).

4. In human society, aggression often manifests itself in the form of a “polar illness” or “expeditionary rabies,” affecting small groups of people when, due to circumstances, they are doomed to communicate only with each other and are deprived of the opportunity to quarrel with someone outsider. The accumulation of aggression is the more dangerous the better the members of this group know each other, the more they understand and love each other.

5. One of the tools to inhibit aggression is “good manners”. As a rule, they are exaggerated gestures of humility.

6. The ritual keeps intraspecific aggression from all manifestations that could seriously damage the conservation of the species, but at the same time does not turn off its functions necessary to preserve the species.

7. Reoriented action. If aggressive behavior is provoked by an object that simultaneously causes fear, the action itself is transferred to another object, as if it were the cause of this action. Often aggression is transferred simply to the closest neighbor. Sometimes it’s useful to create ersatz objects.

8. Heavily armed predators have highly developed braking mechanisms that do not allow the destruction of the species. Weak animals do not have such mechanisms and therefore, when a weak animal receives weapons, it stubbornly seeks to destroy an individual of its species to the end. Therefore, the arming of weak individuals is especially dangerous (“dove with a black beak”).

9. Morality, as a mechanism for inhibiting aggression, most often fails not under the influence of a single and harsh test, but under the influence of a debilitating, long-term nervous strain (care, need, hunger, fear, overwork, collapse of hopes).

10. Methods of combating intraspecific aggression:

reorientation to ersatz objects;

sublimation;

mastery of the reaction of inspiration:

something in which they see value and what needs to be protected;

an enemy that threatens this value;

environment of accomplices;

leader.

These theses can be easily correlated with human situations in life, which shows how far we have advanced along the evolutionary ladder.

4. “The Eight Deadly Sins of Humanity”

Conrad Lorenz in his book “The Eight Deadly Sins of Humanity” considers eight different, but closely related causal processes that threaten the death of not only our current culture, but all of humanity as a species.

These are the following processes:

1. Overpopulation of the Earth, forcing each of us to protect ourselves from excessive social contacts, fencing ourselves off from them in some essentially “non-human” way, and, moreover, directly stimulating aggressiveness due to crowding of many individuals in tight spaces.

2. The devastation of the natural living space, not only destroying the external natural environment in which we live, but also killing in man himself all reverence for the beauty and grandeur of his creation.

3. The race of humanity against itself, spurring on the disastrous, ever-accelerating development of technology, makes people blind to all genuine values \u200b\u200band leaves them no time for truly human activity - reflection.

4. The disappearance of all strong feelings and affects due to effeminacy. The development of technology and pharmacology gives rise to increasing intolerance towards everything that causes the slightest displeasure. Thus, the person’s ability to experience the joy that comes only at the cost of hard efforts to overcome obstacles disappears. The tides of suffering and joy, replacing each other by the will of nature, subside, turning into a small swell of inexpressible boredom.

6. A break with tradition. It comes when a critical point is reached, beyond which the younger generation is no longer able to reach mutual understanding with the older, not to mention cultural identification with it. Therefore, young people treat their elders as an alien ethnic group, expressing their national hatred to them. This violation of identification occurs primarily from insufficient contact between parents and children, causing pathological consequences already in infants.

7. The increasing indoctrination of humanity. The increase in the number of people belonging to the same cultural group, together with the improvement of technical means of influencing public opinion, leads to such a unification of views that history has not yet known. Moreover, the awesome effect of the doctrine grows with the mass of followers firmly convinced in it, perhaps even exponentially. Even now, in many places, an individual who deliberately avoids the influence of the media, such as television, is seen as a pathological subject. Effects that destroy individuality are welcomed by everyone who wants to manipulate large masses of people. Sensing public opinion, advertising techniques, and skillfully directed fashion help the big capitalists on this side of the Iron Curtain and officials on the other side in a very similar way to keep the masses in their power.

8. Nuclear weapons bring danger to humanity, but it is easier to avoid than the dangers from the above seven other processes.

Conclusion

Conrad Lorenz, the great ethologist of the last century, clearly expressed his opinion not only about the indistinguishability of a human herd from an animal herd, but also made it clear that our chances in the current state of things are far from survival.

In his first book, he explains in detail to us about intraspecific aggression - a force that preserves life in the animal kingdom. Like everything in the world, she can make a mistake and at the same time destroy her life. But in the great formation of the organic world, this force is destined for good. And the function that responsible morality performed in the history of mankind was to restore the lost balance between armament and the inherent prohibition of killing ...

In his second work, the wildness of the life of modern people is shown from the point of view of a rational animal. The author discusses how much kindness and aggression, progress and religion we need, is it really worth rushing to multiply and just thinking about the ecology of life.

References

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2. Scheler M. The position of man in space // Selected works. M., 1994. S.194.).

3. Protopopov A. Ethology of man and its place in the sciences of behavior

4. Gorokhovskaya E. “Ethology - the birth of scientific discipline”

5. http://www.nkozlov.ru/

6. Lorenz K. Aggression (the so-called “evil”) / Per. with him. - M.: Publishing group "Progress", "Univers", 1994. - 272 p.

7. Lorenz K.The eight deadly sins of civilized humanity / Per. with him. -Publishing house "Republic", 1998 . - 72 p.

8. Alekseev P.V., Panin A.V. "Philosophy" - M .: "Prospect" 1997

9. Bank of Abstracts - http://www.bankreferatov.ru/

10. Modern philosophy: Dictionary and anthology. / Zharov L.V. et al. - Rostov-on-Don: Phoenix, 1996 .- 511 p.

11. www.rubricon.com

Lorenz, Konrad (Lorenz), Austrian specialist in the field of animal behavior. Born November 7, 1903 in Vienna in the family of a surgeon. After graduating from high school in Schotten, he specialized at the University of Vienna in medicine, philosophy and political science. In 1937 he was appointed Privatdocent of the University of Vienna for Comparative Anatomy and Animal Psychology. In 1940 he became a professor of comparative psychology at the University of Koenigsberg. He later oversaw the military sciences. He was captured in the Soviet Union.

Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) - an outstanding Austrian scientist, Nobel laureate, one of the founders ethology  , animal behavior science.

By asserting that aggressiveness is an innate, instinctively determined property of all higher animals — and proving this with many convincing examples — the author concludes; "There are good reasons to consider intraspecific aggression as the most serious danger that threatens humanity in the modern conditions of cultural-historical and technical development."

The books of K. Lorentz were published in Russian: “The Ring of Tsar Solomon”, “Man Finds a Friend”, “Year of the Gray Goose”.

Curriculum Vitae from the book of K. Lorenz. Aggression. M., Progress, 1994.

Lorenz Conrad (November 7, 1903, Vienna - February 27, 1989, Altenberg) is an Austrian biologist and philosopher, one of the founders of evolutionary epistemology. He graduated from New York and Vienna universities. Since 1940, professor at Koenigsberg University, since 1950 - head of the Institute of Behavioral Physiology (Zevisen, Germany). Winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He laid the theoretical foundation of modern ethology, the science of animal behavior. In 1941, he published the article “The Kantian concept a priori in the light of modern biology”, in which he proved that the nature and genesis of the fundamental structures of experience corresponding to Kant a priori can be explained on the basis of the achievements of genetics and the biological theory of evolution. Under the pressure of natural selection, for millions of years, our senses and the thinking apparatus have been formed in such a way as to provide a functionally adequate idea of \u200b\u200breality. A priori Kant can be given an empirical interpretation. A priori, it exists due to the hereditary differentiation of the central nervous system, which is specific for different species and determines the hereditary predisposition to think in certain forms. “A priori” forms of thought are the result of adaptation and develop in the course of evolution. With con. 50s Lorenz dealt with sociocultural and general humanistic problems associated with the dangers posed by technical civilization. Among them, he identified ethical issues as the main ones.

E.A. Gorokhovskaya

New philosophical encyclopedia. In four volumes. / Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Scientific Ed. tip: V.S. Stepin, A.A. Huseynov, G.Yu. Semigin. M., Thought, 2010, v. II, E - M, p. 452.

Lorenz (Lorenz) Conrad (1903-1989) - Aust. biologist and philosopher, one of the founders of evolutionary Epistemology. Winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He laid the theoretical foundation of modern ethology, the science of animal behavior. Lorentz called his epistemological concept “an evolutionary theory of knowledge.” In 1941, he published an article “The Kantian Doctrine a priori in the light of modern times. biology ”, in which he argued that the nature and genesis of the fundamental structures of experience, corresponding a priori to I. Kant, can be explained on the basis of biological evolution. Under the pressure of natural selection, for millions of years, our senses and the thinking apparatus have been formed in such a way as to provide a functionally adequate idea of \u200b\u200breality. So, for example, Lorentz argued that the optical characteristics of the environment are reflected in the structure, biochemical composition and dynamics of the eye, and the laws of optics are encoded. If this were not so, then people simply would not survive as a species. The cognitive structures of the cognitive apparatus are a priori in the sense of their independence from personal experience, but they cease to be such if we consider their development in the process of evolution. For a person as a tribal being, they are posterior.

The theory of knowledge of Lorentz and his followers is also called bioepistemology, since life itself is characterized by them as a cognitive process, as a “cognogenesis”. Bioepistemology, according to Lorentz, is able to explain the genesis of our cognitive structures from the level of instincts and sensory perception to the level of everyday common sense. In collisions with areas of reality that are inaccessible to our ordinary (everyday) experience (for example, the areas of the microworld), our innate cognitive apparatus begins to malfunction and finds its boundaries, since it is evolutionarily adapted only to the usual environment.

In his understanding of the nature and methods of scientific knowledge, Lorentz proceeded from the fact that true natural science is inductive. Following the position of W. Windelband, he believed that cognition passes through three stages: description, systematization, and nomothetic stage. Understanding in inductive science is the reduction of special laws of a given level to more general laws that operate at the next level of reality. At the same time, it is unacceptable to “jump” through the levels. At the same time, Lorentz believed that in order to explain a certain level of reality, there is no need to know the laws of a higher level. He called the strategy of explanation without a description of structure “atomism”. In his opinion, a descriptive, “naturalistic” approach is no less important than a quantitative one. He considered a methodological error “explanatory monism” - an explanation of a complex system, based on the properties of one or two of its elements. By “organic integrity” he understood a system of bilateral causal relationships that form a complex network. It is possible to understand the individual parts of such a system only simultaneously. This requires the “wide front” method, when first the most general characteristics of the system are described, and then the description is detailed. Since the late 1950s, Lorenz has dealt with sociocultural and general humanistic problems associated with the dangers of Western technical civilization. Among them, he identified ethical issues as the main ones.

Modern Western philosophy. Encyclopedic Dictionary / Under. ed. O. Heffe, V.S. Malakhova, V.P. Filatova, with the participation of T.A. Dmitrieva. M., 2009, p. 293.

Works: Aggression: the so-called evil. M., 1994; The back of the mirror. M., 1998; Das sogenannte Bose, Zur Naturgeschichte der Aggression. W., 1963; Die Acht Todsynden der zivilisierten Menschheit. Munchen, 1971; Der Abbau des Menschlichen. Munchen, Zurich, 1983.

Lorenz Conrad Zacharius (1903-1989) is an Austrian biologist and philosopher, one of the founders of ethology, a 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (them, with N. Tivbergen and K. Frisch). Biography. In 1928 he defended his doctoral dissertation in philosophy, in 1932 - in medicine. He taught courses in comparative anatomy and zoopsychology. Since 1940 - professor of comparative psychology at the University of Koenigsberg. In 1943 he was drafted into the army as a doctor, from 1944 to 1948 he was in Soviet captivity. In 1949 he founded the Institute for Comparative Studies of Animal Behavior in Altenberg. Since 1961 - Director of the Institute of Behavioral Physiology Max Planck in Zeeviden. In 1973 he retired. Research. He dealt with the problems of instinctive behavior, learning, including imprinting and social releases (as signal stimuli used in intraspecific communications). He proposed ethological interpretations of the mechanisms of regulation of behavior, including conscious behavior, in situations of competition, domination, aggression, cooperation, and altruism. He conducted field studies of animal instincts and their development in phylogeny and ontogenesis. Developed a hydrodynamic model of motivation. Here instinctive forms of behavior are explained by the accumulation of energy available in the nervous system and associated with activity cycles characteristic of a given biological species. This energy can find realization in behavior both during its long-term accumulation, and under the action of external stimuli. So, let’s say, the accumulation of aggressive drive energy occurs until the burrows begin until the corresponding triggering stimulus begins, which leads to the discharge of this energy. A similar trigger stimulus may be, for example, an invasion of the territory of a given individual by an unfamiliar representative of the same species. K. Lorenz drew an analogy between the behavior of animals and humans. In particular, he interpreted human aggression as a biologically determined factor, which, due to the technical equipment of a person, begins to contradict the tasks of his adaptation (Sogenante Bose. Zur Naturgeschichte der Aggression. Wien, 1963; in Russian translation: Aggression. The so-called “evil”. M., 1994). In his “evolutionary theory of knowledge” he considered the development of cognitive functions, from instincts to self-consciousness, in the aspect of their adaptive role and by analogy with certain working hypotheses verified by trial and error.

Kondakov I.M. Psychology. Illustrated Dictionary. // THEM. Kondakov. - 2nd ed. add. And the reslave. - SPb., 2007, p. 307.

Works: Die angeborenen Formen m6glicher Erfahrung // Zeitschrift fur Tierpsychologie. 1943, 5; Uber tanzahnliche Bewegungsweisen bei Tieren // Studiuin Generate. 1952.1; Die Gestalt-wahrnehmung als Quelle wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis // Zeitschrift filr angewandte und experimentelle Psychologie, 1959, 6; Ring of King Solomon, M., 1970; A man finds a friend. 1971; Die Ruckseite des Spiegels. Miinchen, 1973; Die acht Todsilden der zivilierten Menschheit. Miinchen, 1973; in Russian riep .: The Eight Deadly Sins of Civilized Humanity // Philosophy Issues. 1992. No. 3; Der Abbau des Menschlichen. Munchen, 1983.

References: K. Lorenz // Psychology: Biographical Bibliographic Dictionary / Ed. N. Shihi, E.J. Chepman, W.A. Conroy. St. Petersburg: Eurasia, 1999.

Read on:

Lorenz Conrad. Aggression  . (Lorenz K. Aggression. M., 1994)

Works:

Aggression: the so-called evil. M., 1994;

Kantian doctrine a priori of modern biology. - "Man", 1997, No. 5;

Das sogenannte Böse. Zur Naturgeschichte der Aggression. W., 1963;

Die Acht Tödsünden der zivilisierten Menschheit. Münch., 1971;

Die Rückseite des Spiegels. Münch. – Zürich, 1973;

Der Abbau des Menschlichen. Münch. – Zürich, 1983.

Literature:

Merkulov I.P. Cognitive evolution. M., 1999.

K. Lorenz // Psychology: Biographical Bibliographic Dictionary / Ed. N. Shihi, E.J. Chepman, W.A. Conroy. St. Petersburg: Eurasia, 1999.

Conrad Lorenz is a Nobel laureate, a famous zoologist and zoopsychologist, writer, popularizer of science, one of the founders of a new discipline - ethology. He devoted almost his entire life to the study of animals, and his observations, conjectures, and theories changed the course of development of scientific knowledge. However, it is not only scientists who know and appreciate it: the books of Konrad Lorenz are able to turn the worldview of anyone, even a person far from science.

Biography

Conrad Lorenz lived a long life - when he died, he was 85 years old. Years of his life: 11/7/1903 - 02/27/1989. He was practically the same age as the century, and turned out to be not only a witness to large-scale events, but sometimes their participant. In his life there was much: world recognition and painful periods of lack of demand, membership in the Nazi party and later repentance, many years in war and captivity, students, grateful readers, a happy sixty-year marriage and a beloved affair.

Childhood

Conrad Lorenz was born in Austria in a fairly wealthy and educated family. His father was an orthopedic surgeon who came out of the rural environment, but reached the heights in the profession, universal respect and world fame. Conrad is the second child; he was born when his older brother was already almost an adult, and his parents were over forty.

He grew up in a house with a large garden and from an early age was interested in nature. So the love of life of Konrad Lorenz - animals. Parents reacted to his passion with understanding (albeit with some anxiety), and allowed him to do what he was interested in - to observe, to explore. Already in childhood, he began to keep a diary in which he recorded his observations. His nanny had a talent for breeding animals, and with her help, Conrad once received offspring from a spotted salamander. As he later wrote about this case in an autobiographical article, “this success would be enough to determine my future career.” Once Conrad noticed that the recently hatched duckling was following him, as if he was a duck mother - this was the first acquaintance with a phenomenon that later, as a serious scientist, he would study and call imprinting.

A feature of the scientific method of Konrad Lorenz was an attentive attitude to the real life of animals, which, most likely, was formed in his childhood, filled with careful observations. Reading scientific works in his youth, he was disappointed that researchers did not really understand the animals and their habits. Then he realized that he was to transform the science of animals and make it what it, in his opinion, should be.

Youth

After the gymnasium, Lorenz thought to continue studying animals, but at the insistence of his father, he entered the medical faculty. After his graduation, he became a laboratory assistant at the Department of Anatomy, but at the same time began to study the behavior of birds. In 1927, Konrad Lorenz was married to Margaret Gebhardt (or Gretl, as he called her), whom he had known since childhood. She also studied medical and later became an obstetrician-gynecologist. Together they will live until death, they will have two daughters and a son.

In 1928, after defending his dissertation, Lorenz received a medical degree. Continuing to work at the department (as an assistant), he began to write a dissertation on zoology, which he defended in 1933. In 1936 he became an assistant professor at the Zoological Institute, and in the same year he met the Dutchman Nicholas Timbergen, who became his friend and colleague. From their enthusiastic discussions, collaborative research, and articles from this period, what later became the science of ethology was born. However, shocks will soon come to an end, putting an end to their joint plans: after the German occupation of the Netherlands, Timbergen falls into a concentration camp in 1942, Lorenz is on the other side, which caused many years of tension between them.

Maturity

In 1938, after Austria was incorporated into Germany, Lorenz became a member of the National Socialist Workers Party. He believed that the new government would have a beneficial effect on the situation in his country, on the state of science and society. A dark spot is associated with this period in the biography of Konrad Lorenz. At that time, one of the topics he was interested in was the process of “domestication” in birds, in which they gradually lose their original properties and the complex social behavior inherent in their wild relatives, and become simpler, mostly interested in food and mating. Lorentz saw in this phenomenon the danger of degradation and degeneration and drew parallels with how civilization affects a person. He writes an article about this, arguing in it about the problem of “domestication” of a person and what can be done about it - to bring the struggle to life, exert all your strength, get rid of inferior individuals. This text was written in line with Nazi ideology and contained the appropriate terminology - since then Lorenz has been accompanied by accusations of “adherence to the ideology of Nazism”, despite his public repentance.

In 1939, Lorenz heads the Department of Psychology at the University of Koenigsberg, and in 1941 he was recruited into the army. At first he ended up in the department of neurology and psychiatry, but after some time he was mobilized to the front as a doctor. He had to become including a field surgeon, although before that he had no experience in medical practice.

In 1944, Lorenz was captured by the Soviet Union, from which he returned only in 1948. There, in his spare time from the performance of medical duties, he observed the behavior of animals and people and reflected on the subject of cognition. Thus was born his first book, “The Back of the Mirror.” Konrad Lorenz wrote it with a potassium permanganate solution on scraps of paper bags made of cement, and during the repatriation, with the permission of the head of the camp, he took the manuscript with him. This book (in a very modified form) was published only in 1973.

Returning to his homeland, Lorenz was happy to discover that none of his family had died. However, the situation was difficult: in Austria there was no work for him, and the situation was aggravated by his reputation as a supporter of Nazism. By then, Gretl had left medical practice and worked on a farm providing them with food. In 1949, work for Lorenz was found in Germany - he began to manage a research station, which soon became part of the Max-Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology, and in 1962 he headed the entire institute. During these years he writes books that brought him fame.

Last years

In 1973, Lorenz returned to Austria and worked there at the Institute of Comparative Ethology. In the same year, he, together with Nicholas Timbergen and Karl von Frisch (a scientist who discovered and deciphered the bee language of dances) received the Nobel Prize. During this period, he gives popular lectures on biology on the radio.

Conrad Lorenz died in 1989 from kidney failure.

Scientific theory

The discipline, finally formed thanks to the works of Konrad Lorenz and Nicholas Timbergen, is called ethology. This science studies the genetically determined behavior of animals (including humans) and is based on the theory of evolution and field research methods. These features of ethology largely overlap with the scientific predispositions inherent in Lorentz: he met Darwin's theory of evolution at the age of ten and was a consistent Darwinist all his life, and the importance of directly studying the real life of animals was obvious to him from childhood.

Unlike scientists working in laboratories (for example, behaviorists and comparative psychologists), ethologists study animals in their natural rather than artificial environment. Their analysis is based on observations and a thorough description of the behavior of animals in typical conditions, the study of congenital and acquired factors, comparative studies. Ethology proves that behavior is largely determined by genetics: in response to certain stimuli, the animal performs some stereotypic actions characteristic of its entire species (the so-called “fixed motor pattern”).

Imprinting

However, this does not mean that the environment does not play any role, which demonstrates the phenomenon of imprinting discovered by Lorentz. Its essence is that the ducklings hatched from the egg (as well as other birds or newborn animals) consider their mother the first moving object that they see, and not even necessarily animate it. This affects all their subsequent relationship to this object. If the birds during the first week of life were isolated from individuals of their species, but were in the company of people, then they further prefer the human society to their relatives and even refuse to mate. Imprinting is possible only during a short period, but it is irreversible and does not fade away without further reinforcement.

Therefore, all the time while Lorenz examined ducks and geese, birds followed him.

Aggression

Another famous concept of Konrad Lorenz is his theory of aggression. He believed that aggression is innate and has internal causes. If you remove external stimuli, then it does not disappear, but accumulates and sooner or later comes out. Studying animals, Lorenz noticed that those who have great physical strength, sharp teeth and claws have developed a “morality” - a ban on aggression inside the species, but the weak ones don’t, and they can cripple or kill their relative. People are an initially weak species. In his famous book on aggression, Konrad Lorenz compares a man with a rat. He offers to conduct a thought experiment and imagine that an alien scientist is sitting somewhere on Mars, observing the life of people: “He must make the inevitable conclusion that the situation with human society is almost the same as with the society of rats, which are just as social and they are peaceful inside a closed clan, but real devils in relation to a relative who does not belong to their own party. ”Human civilization, says Lorenz, gives us weapons, but does not teach us to control our aggression. However, he expresses the hope that one day culture will still help us deal with this.

The book “Aggression, or the so-called evil” by Konrad Lorenz, published in 1963, still causes heated debate. His other books focus more on his love for animals and, in one way or another, try to infect others with her.

Man finds a friend

Conrad Lorenz’s book “Man Finds a Friend” was written in 1954. It is intended for the general reader - for everyone who loves animals, especially dogs, wants to find out where our friendship has come from and understand how to manage them. Lorenz talks about the relationship between people and dogs (and a little cats) from antiquity to the present day, about the origin of the breeds, describes the stories from the life of his pets. In this book, he again returns to the topic of “domestication,” this time in the form of imbrinding, the degeneration of thoroughbred dogs, and explains why mutts are often smarter.

As in all his work, with the help of this book, Lorenz wants to share his passion for animals and life in general, because, as he writes, “only love for animals is beautiful and instructive, which gives rise to love for all life and which must be the love of people. ”

Ring of King Solomon

Year of the gray goose

“The Year of the Gray Goose” is Konrad Lorenz’s last book, written by him several years before his death, in 1984. She talks about a research station that studies the behavior of geese in their natural environment. Explaining why the gray goose was chosen as the object of study, Lorenz said that his behavior is much like the behavior of a person in family life.

He advocates the importance of understanding wild animals so that we can understand ourselves. But “in our time, too much of humanity is alienated from nature. “The daily lives of so many people are passing among the dead products of human hands, so that they have lost the ability to understand living creatures and communicate with them.”

Conclusion

Lorentz, his books, theories and ideas help to look at man and his place in nature from a different perspective. His all-consuming love of animals inspires and makes one gaze curiously at unfamiliar areas. I would like to end with another quote from Konrad Lorenz: “Trying to restore the lost connection between people and other living organisms living on our planet is a very important, very worthy task. Ultimately, the success or failure of such attempts will solve the question of whether humanity will destroy itself along with all living creatures on earth or not. ”

Conrad Lorenz is an outstanding zoologist and zoopsychologist, philosopher and psychologist, Nobel laureate in physiology and medicine, the author of time-tested books “Year of the Gray Goose”, “Ring of King Solomon” and “Man Finds a Friend”. "Aggression, or the so-called ...

• November 12, 2013, 17:30

Genre:

Only two species of animals became members of the human home circle, not like captives, and were not tamed by compulsion - a dog and a cat. They are united by two points - both of them are predators and in both people uses their hunting abilities. And in everything else, and most importantly - by the nature of their relationship with a person, they differ among themselves, like day and night. There is no other animal that would radically change the whole way of life, the whole sphere of its interests, would become so domestic as a dog; and there is no other animal that, over the long centuries of its connection with man, would have changed as little as a cat.

The strength of the dog’s charm lies in the depths of friendship and fortress of spiritual bonds that bind it to a person, and the cat’s charm is explained by the fact that she did not come into close contact with him, that she hunts in his stables and barns with mysterious and inaccessible even then when gently rubs against the feet of the mistress or pleases purr at the fire.

The outstanding scientist and wonderful publicist Konrad Lorenz in his book “Man Finds a Friend” fascinatingly talks about the observations of people interacting with dogs and cats and the relationship of the “smaller brothers” between ...

• October 28, 2013 17:18

Genre:

The name of the remarkable Austrian biologist and philosopher, Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989), his books on animals are known throughout the world and are well known to our readers. This publication contains Lorentz’s works in which he tries to find the answer to the most acute problems of social life, to global problems that modern mankind has faced, as well as to identify those deep roots of human behavior and the process of human cognition that unite us with “ smaller brothers. " Two of the three works of Lorentz included in the book are published in Russian for the first time. The publication is addressed to wide circles ...

• October 28, 2013, 13:20

Genre:

Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) - an outstanding Austrian scientist, Nobel Prize laureate, one of the founders of ethology, the science of animal behavior.

The invaluable advantage of the book by Konrad Lorenz, written a quarter of a century ago and enjoying constant popularity, is that it vibrantly, simply and easily talks about the scientific search, awakening in the reader the desire for a deep knowledge of the world around us.

Conrad Lorenz - founder of ethology

On the occasion of the 100th birthday

From the editors of "Nature"

In 2003, the scientific world celebrated the 100th birthday of the founder of ethology, Konrad Lorenz. In early December, in Munich, where Lorenz lectured on ethology at the university for many years, an international symposium was held on this anniversary. Participants talked about Lorentz’s creative biography and his personality, but most of the reports were related to the scientist’s ideas, which continue to be developed and influence modern research. Particular attention was paid to the development of Lorentzian ideas in the field of human studies in such fields as the biology of human behavior, culture, philosophy, psychology, as well as psychiatry and psychotherapy. The range of issues discussed at the symposium speaks of the versatility of scientific interests and the encyclopedic knowledge of Lorentz.

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the father of ethology, I would like to recall that his scientific work in Russian first appeared on the pages of our journal in 1969. And in this issue we offer the reader not only a scientific and biographical essay by EA Gorokhovskaya, but also a fragment from scientific and philosophical treatise "Introduction to a comparative study of behavior", written by Lorentz in Soviet captivity (1944-1947). According to the author’s intention, the work was to become the introductory part of the future big book.   “The subject of this book ... is not zoopsychology, although it mostly speaks of animals, but essentially speaking the man himself! .. The path to understanding man leads directly through understanding the animal, just like the path to the emergence of man, without any doubt, went through the animal! ”  - so wrote Lorenz.

© Gorokhovskaya E.A.

“Goose father”

E.A. Gorokhovskaya,
candidate of biological sciences
Institute of the History of Natural Science and Technology named after S.I.Vavilov RAS
Moscow

Conrad Lorenz, a famous Austrian zoologist, a brilliant naturalist and creator of ethology (animal behavior science), widely known as the author of fascinating books about animals, is one of the most prominent figures in the intellectual history of the 20th century. His ideas excited the minds of not only natural scientists, but also philosophers, writers, politicians and religious figures. He gained many ardent admirers and no less ardent opponents.

In the second half of the 1930s - early 1940s, Lorenz laid the theoretical foundation of ethology, the focus of which was an analysis of the instinctive behavior of animals. Nicholas Tinbergen also played an important role in creating the theory. In 1973, the Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology for discoveries related to the creation and establishment of models of individual and group behavior of animals was awarded to K. Lorenz, N. Tinbergen and K. background Frisch.

Lorentz, challenging the dominant reflex theory at that time, proposed a completely new physiological hypothesis to explain the behavior of animals. Thanks to this approach, the study of species-specific behavior of animals in natural conditions has evolved from a predominantly descriptive field to a rapidly developing experimental discipline. An active influx of young researchers began in ethology, striving to combine a disinterested love for animals with the pursuit of serious science.

Since then, ethology has come a long way from a small school to science with many special areas. Many ethnologists of Lorentz seem obsolete to modern ethologists. However, a new general theory of behavior has not yet appeared.

Details of the scientific and journalistic views of Lorentz and the details of his life are little known in our country, for which there are historical reasons. Until the mid-1960s, in the USSR, ethology, in essence, was banned and was considered “bourgeois pseudoscience,” and human ethology retained this status until the 1990s. The scientific works of Lorentz in our country have never been published, except for one small article published in Nature in 1969, and the book The Back of the Mirror, which was published recently. The famous “Aggression” appeared in Russian only 30 years after its release in the West. However, animal lovers in our country have long known Lorenz as the author of the brilliant popular science books “The Ring of Tsar Solomon”, “A Man Finds a Friend” and “The Year of the Gray Goose”, translated from our 1960s and 1970s.

Konrad Lorenz was born on November 7, 1903 in Vienna in the family of a successful orthopedic doctor A. Lorenz. From childhood, he was distinguished by an immense love for animals and a desire to spend most of the time with them. Conrad was a late, unplanned child, and perhaps this explains the amazing tolerance of his family for his hobby. Young Lorenz flooded the whole house and garden in a family estate in the village of Altenberg, located on the banks of the Danube near Vienna, with diverse animals, giving preference to birds. He dreamed of becoming a zoologist. But when it came time to choose his life path, his father decided that children's fuss with animals should be abandoned and, following family tradition, go to study as a doctor, who already became Konrad's older brother. Very fond and respectful of his father, Lorenz obeyed the demand, but did not abandon the fuss with the animals. On the contrary, even while studying at the medical faculty of the University of Vienna, he took up a serious study of animal behavior. In choosing a life partner, Conrad also went against his father’s will - he married his childhood friend Margarita Gebhardt, although his father assumed a completely different party for him.

Starting to study comparative anatomy at the university under the guidance of Professor Ferdinand Hochstetter, Lorenz came to the idea of \u200b\u200bthe need to create a similar discipline devoted to comparative analysis of behavior, and boldly took up this task. Hochstetter supported him and, when Lorenz became his assistant, gave him complete freedom to engage in animal behavior. Although Lorenz received his doctorate in medicine, his entire professional career was connected with zoology. After graduating from the medical faculty, Lorenz continued his education and in 1933 received his doctorate now in the field of zoology. He had to deal with practical medicine only during the Second World War.

From the early 1930s, Lorenz began to develop his own theory of behavior. The greatest influence was exerted on him by the German ornithologist, curator of the aquarium department of the Berlin Zoo, Oscar Heinroth, whose closest student and friend he became. Of great importance were the ideas of the German physiologist Jacob von Ikskül, with whom Lorenz was personally acquainted, the American ornithologist Wallace Craig and the famous Austrian psychologist Karl Bühler, in the seminar of which Lorenz studied for a long time.

In 1935, the famous article “Companion in the world of the bird” was published, where many important concepts of Lorentz theory were already present. From this publication the birth of “classical ethology” is counted. At first, Lorenz tried to explain instincts with the help of reflexes. However, this caused him a lot of difficulties, but so far no alternative physiological approach has been found. And in such a situation, he considered any departure from the theory of reflexes as a concession to vitalism. In 1936, Lorenz met the young German physiologist Erich von Holst, who convinced him to abandon the reflex explanation of instincts. Based on the results of his research, Lorentz formulated a physiological hypothesis that explained the main features of instinctive behavior - spontaneity and purposefulness. In the same year, a meeting with Tinbergen took place. The Dutch zoologist enthusiastically accepted the ideas of Lorentz. The next year they saw each other already in Altenberg to begin joint experimental work. As Lorentz recalled, their views "coincided to an implausible degree." One of the results of this community was the only article co-authored by them. Discussions with Tinbergen helped Lorentz formulate the final version of the theory, which he presented in 1939.

It is not possible to fully present the ethological theory, therefore, we recall only some of its provisions relating to the model of instinctive behavior. According to Lorentz, the basis of species-specific behavior of animals is congenital "instinctive actions", or "hereditary coordination" - movements that have a constant genetically fixed form. The widely used English version of this term - fixed action patterns - should be translated into Russian as “fixed forms of action”. The existence of such movements was associated by Lorentz with the constant automatic generation of rhythmically organized nerve impulses in the central nervous system. However, the arrival of these impulses to the muscles is blocked until a special neurosensory mechanism — the innate trigger — is triggered in response to special key stimuli that characterize the objects that instinctive movements should be directed at. But for their implementation, the presence of key incentives is not enough: a certain level of internal physiological motivation is necessary. When it is achieved, the animal activates an activity aimed at searching for key stimuli, which may include orientational reactions, conditioned reflexes, or even intellectual behavior. Everything ends with instinctive action.

Lorentz introduced another important idea of \u200b\u200bimprinting - the ability of animals in the early stages of development to almost irreversibly capture in memory in detail the appearance of the object of some instinctive reactions. For example, geese and ducks immediately after birth remember the appearance of their parents, which they will relentlessly follow. But if the first moving object that they see is a man, they will only follow him in the future.

All this time, the house in Altenberg remained the research base of Lorenz. Since 1935, after the reactionary clericals who had a negative attitude to evolutionary biology came to power, he lost his paid job: he was a privat-docent at the University of Vienna and gave lectures on animal behavior for free. They managed to make ends meet only with the help of his father and the money that his wife (obstetrician doctor) earned, who wholeheartedly believed in her husband’s talent and calling. In 1936, Lorenz took an active part in organizing the German Zoopsychological Society, which published its zoopsychological journal, which after the war became one of the main ethological journals.

The disgust that Lorenz had for the regime established in Austria largely explains his attitude to Anschluss (Austria's accession to Germany in 1938). He, like most Austrians, welcomed Anschluss. Then the professional position of Lorentz improved. The Kaiser Wilhelm German Science Society agreed to organize a special research institute for him in Altenberg. A war broke out against these plans.

a prestigious post of head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Koenigsberg. The appointment of a zoologist to this post caused a real shock for many at the university, especially when the new manager installed fish tanks in his office (he studied their behavior with his graduate student, future famous ethologist Paul Leichausen).

Teachers of the departments of philosophy and psychology were necessarily members of the Kantian society. Active participation in the meetings of this society served as a powerful impetus for Lorentz's interest in the philosophy of knowledge. In 1941, a large article by Lorentz appeared in the German philosophical journal “Kant's Doctrine of A priori in the Light of Modern Biology”, in which he outlined his “evolutionary theory of knowledge”. Her credo lies in the fact that the features of human cognition and, therefore, of knowledge itself are determined by the specifics of the cognitive apparatus (nervous system, sensory organs and behavior), which was formed in the course of adaptive biological evolution. Hence the analysis of our cognitive apparatus and the study of its functioning are indispensable for building a philosophy of knowledge. From the point of view of Lorentz, Kant a priori has a manifestation of the properties of this apparatus as a result of evolution. The article did not resonate with professional philosophers, but the author was rewarded by receiving very approving feedback from the famous physicist Max Planck. Today, Lorentz is considered one of the founders of evolutionary epistemology (the theory of knowledge), which is actively developing at the present time.

In the late 1930s - early 1940s, another theme that interested him all his life appeared in Lorenz's work - the fate of Western civilization. However, the beginning was not too successful. Thoughts about the dangers that threaten her led Lorenz to publish a number of articles in which a lot of this was written, which he later had to bitterly regret *. He thought that life in big cities leads to the degradation of human nature due to a phenomenon that he called the domestication (or self-domestication) of man. By it, he understood the changes in human behavior, similar in nature to the changes that occur in animals when they are domesticated. As a result of domestication, many complex congenital forms of behavior can disappear, while others, most often the more primitive congenital forms, on the contrary, become hypertrophied. Lorentz considered it necessary to take special measures to prevent this and to eliminate degraded unwanted elements.

I must say that in the first third of the XX century. eugenics was very popular and many biologists in different countries expressed similar views. Later, Lorenz claimed that by elimination he did not mean any repression, let alone murder. But, of course, writing such things under Hitler was extremely unacceptable. Lorentz also assured that he learned about all the atrocities of the Nazis only in 1943, after all this had been written. Such ignorance may seem implausible, but he shared it with many of his compatriots. As the history of the 20th century shows, such a socio-psychological phenomenon is extremely characteristic of a totalitarian state, and not only of Hitler's Germany.

In articles of that period, Lorenz not only discusses the troubles of civilized humanity, but also tries to formulate the foundations of human ethology as a whole. Most fully his concept of human ethology is presented in the article “Congenital Forms of Possible Experience” (he wrote it in 1942 while serving in the army, and she came out in 1943). In it, he analyzes anthropogenesis from an ethological point of view, considering domestication not only in a negative, but also in a positive way, as a necessary condition for the emergence of a person, his freedom and further historical and cultural evolution. Here, Lorentz also describes the innate components of human behavior, primarily related to perception, in particular, the “child pattern” that has become widely known - a set of signs that characterize the appearance of the baby, which causes protective behavior in adults.

With the outbreak of war, Lorentz was engaged in field surgery courses in parallel with scientific and teaching activities. He was drafted into the army in October 1941. Considering his medical qualifications insufficient, Lorenz, when called up among “special skills,” indicated driving a motorcycle. The fact is that in his youth motorcycles were a great hobby for him, he even tried them for a well-known British company. In 1930, while working at the University of Vienna, Lorenz drove around the city on a growling motorcycle, which was a very unusual sight. As people who knew him then recall, the appearance of Lorentz was therefore known to the whole city. At the front, he first got into the motorcycle division. The instructor, seeing with amazement how an almost forty-year-old professor performs dashing tricks on a powerful machine, immediately appointed him his assistant. But still this type of army was not suitable for Lorenz, and his friends soon placed him in the department of military psychology, which was disbanded in May 1942. After that, Lorenz served as a neurologist in a reserve hospital in the city of Poznan (Poland). From there, in April 1944 he was sent to the Russian front near Vitebsk, where he was a surgeon in a field hospital for about two months.

In the last days of June 1944, during a hasty retreat of the Germans, Lorenz was captured, in which he spent about three and a half years. During this time, he changed several camps and everywhere performed the duties of a doctor. But his activities were not limited to this. In his own words, for his comrades-in-arms, he acted as a physician, father-confessor and clown, and the latter was no less important. He regularly arranged amateur performances, even staged the first part of Goethe's Faust (this is the only book he had with him), and he gave interested students in the camp a whole course of lectures on animal and human behavior. He learned to fluently speak Russian and easily established friendly relations. Lorentz spent the longest time in two camps. About a year was in a special hospital for prisoners of war near Kirov. There, he led a 600-bed ward where patients suffered from “field neuritis” caused by stress, cold, and vitamin C deficiency. Soviet doctors in the hospital could not figure out what disease the patients died from. Lorenz correctly diagnosed, prescribed a simple and affordable treatment (large doses of ascorbic acid, peace and warmth), which saved the lives of many people.

About a year and a half Lorenz spent in a camp near Yerevan. In Armenia, he had enough free time. He even managed to raise two tame birds - a lark and a starling, thanks to which he gained fame as a wizard: a starling once joined a flock of brothers flying by, and Lorenz returned it with a whistle. But he devoted most of his leisure time to writing an extensive scientific work (he wrote with potassium permanganate, less often with ink, on pieces of paper bags made of cement). According to the plan, this work was supposed to encompass the ethology of animals and humans, and the ultimate goal was precisely man. Ethology of animals was considered as a necessary condition for understanding human behavior. Lorentz managed to write only the introductory part, where a large place was given to the philosophy of knowledge.

When the deadline for his repatriation came, he asked to take the manuscript with him. They went to meet him and transferred to a privileged camp in Krasnogorsk near Moscow. There he retyped his text on a typewriter (the volume of the manuscript was over 200 pages at one interval), after which he was sent to the censor. It is difficult to say how long Lorenz would have waited for the censor’s response, but the head of the Krasnogorsk camp made an extraordinary decision. On his own responsibility, he allowed Lorentz to take away the manuscript version, taking from him an honest word that there is no politics in the manuscript, but only science. Lorenz was shocked by such trust and in a letter to his friend O. Koenig noted “Unprecedented generous support of the Soviet authorities”  regarding his manuscript. After returning from captivity, Lorenz wanted to finalize and publish his work, but then changed his mind and used it in many subsequent works.

The typewritten version remained in the USSR, and in 1990 it was discovered in the Central State Archive of the USSR by domestic zoologists V.E. Sokolov and L.M. Baskin (this was their publication in Nature). Having started to study this manuscript, which is now stored in the Russian State Military Archive, I decided to compare the typewritten version with the manuscript version taken away by Lorentz, which was published after his death. As a result, I made an unexpected discovery: it turned out that the typewritten version is very noticeably different from the handwritten, in fact this is a different version *.

* Compared to the manuscript published in Germany, whole pieces in our typewritten text have been replaced. When reprinting, many additions were made and almost everywhere there is an editorial revision and the wording is substantially changed. ( Gorokhovskaya E.A.// WIET. 2002. No3. S.529-559)

After the war, the rapid development of ethology began, in different countries the circle of its adherents expanded, including in the USSR, despite the general negative position of official science. Among the few supporters of the ideas developed by Lorentz, there was a well-known physiologist who studies the behavior of animals, L.V. Krushinsky. He did a lot to acquaint Russian scientists with the works of Lorentz; since 1961, they began many years of correspondence.

The ideas of Lorentz gained wide popularity, but at the same time became the object of criticism even among his followers. It was especially harsh on the part of American comparative psychologists (behaviorist orientation), who adhered to fundamentally different theoretical principles. This criticism served as an incentive for a serious revision of the ethological theory, which began in the mid-1950s. Lorenz again played a leading role in the transformation of ethology. The result of this work was his book “Evolution and Modification of Behavior” (1965).

General view of the Institute of Behavioral Physiology in Zevisen near Starnberg, Germany.

The central point of this modernization concerned perceptions of innate and acquired behavior. If earlier in ethology the behavior itself was divided into such categories, now the concepts of “innate” and “acquired” were applied to individual properties of any behavior. At the same time, fixed forms of action were considered not as completely innate, but as the least plastic components of behavior, least affected by changes under the influence of experience and training. Lorentz also introduced the concept of inherent species-specific foundations of learning, determining, first of all, its adaptability, as well as its disposition and limitations.

Since the late 1950s, Lorenz turned to an analysis of aggressive behavior, which, undoubtedly, was associated with the events of the Second World War that he experienced. In 1963, the German edition of the book, The So-called Evil: Towards the Natural History of Aggression, appeared, and in 1966, its English edition appeared, with the short title On aggression. In Russian, “Aggression (the so-called“ evil ”)” was released only in 1994 *. Although most of the book is about animals and only the last chapters are devoted to man, it is man who, in fact, is the main character of the story. Addressing the general public, carrying a strong journalistic charge and brilliantly written, the book produced the effect of an exploding bomb. It appeared when the ethology of man was still in diapers, and Lorentz allowed himself to express unverified hypotheses, justifying them by the urgency of the problem. A flurry of criticism from experts, especially psychologists, fell upon Aggression. The biggest objections were raised to the assertion that aggressive human behavior, like in animals, has innate foundations and autonomous internal motivation. Very many considered this behavior as a whole the result of training and were convinced of the possibility of its complete eradication. The debate around this book continued for many years, and so far the readers' interest in it has not disappeared because of its ability to induce serious reflection.

In 1973, Lorenz resigned from the post of director of the institute in Zevisen and returned to Austria. There he headed the Ethological Institute of Animal Sociology, specially created for him. He again lived in his house in Altenberg.

The last period of Lorenz’s life, 1970-1980s, was still full of high creative activity. In 1978, the voluminous work Comparative Behavior Study: Foundations of Ethology was published — the latest version of his ethological theory. However, then the thoughts of Lorentz, perhaps, more focused on the humanitarian field. He, as before, was worried about the problems of human civilization, and he still saw a threat to its very existence. True, now he almost did not turn to his concept of domestication and did not attach any serious significance to the possibility of genetic degradation. Given the speed with which negative social phenomena that disturbed him developed, Lorenz considered modern Western culture, focused on technology and anonymous mass society, to be responsible, but he hoped that ethology could help overcome these dangers. He devoted his later books to this subject: in 1973, “The Eight Deadly Sins of Civilized Humanity,” and in 1983, “The Decline of Man.”

Further development of his evolutionary theory of knowledge, Lorentz devoted the book “The Back of the Mirror” * (1973). When Lorenz returned to Austria, a close circle of like-minded people, biologists and philosophers, adherents of evolutionary epistemology formed around him. His friend, American psychologist and philosopher Donald Campbell, the author of the term “evolutionary epistemology”, drew attention to the philosophical works of Lorentz, the famous philosopher Karl Popper. It is interesting that Lorenz was friends with Popper in childhood in Altenberg, but then their paths diverged. In 1983, they met again at the Lorenz house in Altenberg (their conversation was later published).

* Interestingly, this name was once proposed by Zimmer, Lorenz’s fellow prisoner in Yerevan.

Konrad Lorenz with his darlings the gray geese, Zevisen.

He was a paradoxical thinker, an implacable opponent of idealism and vitalism. However, he developed his ethological theory under the strong influence of the vitalists J.F. Ikskül and psychologist W.Mac-Dougal. At one time, this gave some reason to accuse him of vitalism. But he created a theory that explained the behavior of animals without resorting to their psyche, and now he is often criticized for a mechanistic approach to animals. At the same time, Lorenz always had a deep interest in the inner world of animals, which is especially evident in his books addressed to the general reader. And, of course, there were many who scolded him for anthropomorphism. Yes, Lorenz struggled with idealism and all the features of the living seemed to be ready to explain by natural selection. And yet he declared the existence of beauty in wildlife, which is not related to the benefits for the survival of organisms. He was convinced that all living things initially possessed creative abilities and a desire for harmony and beauty.

I think that Lorentz’s ideas are too early to be archived, and they will be a matter of serious interest and heated debate for a long time to come.

What is comparative ethology?

C. Lorenz

The introductory chapter of the typewritten version of the treatise “Introduction to a Comparative Study of Behavior” (also known as the “Russian Manuscript”, is stored in the Russian State Military Archive: F.4P. Op.24A. D.36. L.6-12).

© Translation and Publication by E. Gorokhovskaya

Understanding this fundamental property of innate forms of behavior helps to correctly evaluate the results of special genetic processes, which we usually call domestication. The changes caused by domestication, first of all, the loss of innate reaction norms, on the one hand, provide the appearance in the phylogenesis of unprecedented degrees of freedom of behavior, so fundamental to humanity that the concept of “un domesticated”, in the genetic sense of the word “wild” people, is a contradiction in the definition! On the other hand, there are also due to domestication<…>  mutational loss, namely a decrease or hypertrophic increase in some instinctive actions. They arise for completely similar reasons, but with blindness inherent in all mutations, they turn into serious and hostile violations for life, into real “lethal factors”<…>, since they destroy the functional harmony of the norms of behavior that are necessary as supporting structural elements of social behavior in a modern cultural society.

But<…>  the rigidity of congenital forms of human behavior can also, regardless of domestication, “abnormal” changes, ie in the presence of all typical reaction norms typical of the species, cause serious violations of social behavior and significant impediments to the development of human society. The organization of human society has immensely changed and become more complex in historical time, instantaneous in comparison with geological history, and the development of innate forms of behavior, the adaptation of social “instincts” to new conditions during this time, of course, was impossible. In this case, naturally, a discrepancy arises between species-specific reaction norms and requirements imposed on an individual by a highly developed society, i.e. to the conflict between the ancient, “instinctive” inclinations and norms that culture dictates, adapted to the prehistoric structure of society.

A number of species-specific reactions, “instincts,” as they used to say earlier, have completely lost their original function that ensures the survival of the species during the rapid development of human society. They turned into things useless by inheritance, in a comparatively phylogenetic sense, into rudiments. But such forms of behavior, deprived of expediency, exhibit stubborn indestructibility and animal incorrigibility, which distinguish all inherent norms of reactions. They are steadily forcing people to behavior, not only useless for the survival of the species, but also hostile to life and society. For this reason, a naive religious person imagines that in the impulses emanating from his own “vestiges of instincts,” he hears the instigation of an internal evil force. And this gives rise to deep psychology about a special regressive “death drive”, which in its meaning is opposite to the creative principle of Platonic eros. We will show that such instincts, which have lost their function, can raise difficult to overcome obstacles for the progressive development of a social system that meets modern needs, and even under certain conditions pose a direct threat. You can overcome these obstacles and deal with dangers only by examining their causes.

In asserting this, we in no way biologize human behavior and do not encroach on its specific specific laws. We only affirm that sociology as an inductively developing science must take into account the undoubtedly real processes that we have discovered. We also consider them especially important in practical terms. And just because the violations and errors of social behavior in question are not caused by the environment, like almost all other functional violations of human social life, studied by scientific sociology, we cannot expect that with the elimination of certain defects in today's social structure, they themselves will disappear! On the contrary, it will certainly require special means to combat them! How to cope with these problems is already a special task of special sociology. Our task is only to<…> to draw her attention to some, partially bordering on pathological, processes occurring in the deep layers of the human psyche, to familiarize her with the specific facts that underlie our ideas, and, exploring the causes of such phenomena, to create the basis for combating certain disorders.

The relations of ethology * with the doctrine of morality and ethics, with ethics are formed in exactly the same way<…>. Of course, our criticism of purely idealistic ethics and the thesis put forward by it about the existence of eternal non-natural laws of morality justifiably takes other and more categorical forms than our very careful intervention<…>  in the interests of inductive scientific sociology. But in content, this criticism is similar. Thanks to a comparative study of love, family and social life of higher animals, we came to the firm belief that people also have many details of social behavior, which are ethics<…>  considers the result of responsible reason and morality, in fact, based on innate species-specific (much more primitive) reactions ... Among them, those that are subjectively experienced as a perception of values \u200b\u200bare of particular interest and significance<…>. Further, we can demand from the scientific doctrine of morality and ethics, as well as sociology, that they deal with the already mentioned errors of atavistic instincts. In our opinion, their understanding is absolutely necessary for knowing all that “what is called sin, corruption, in short, evil” and to which ethics and the doctrine of morality are directly related. If comparative ethology directly imposes certain results of its research on special science, this is done from the very practical considerations that we give regarding the sociological significance of our scientific conclusions. We also think that we can help overcome certain dangers ethically.

* In the Russian translation, the German term Vergleichende Verhaltensforschung, literally meaning “comparative study of behavior”, is hereinafter replaced by the word ethology, its generally accepted synonym.

These features in human development are important from the point of view of morality and ethics in the following respect. The loss of security that is characteristic of a person due to the reduction of specializations in relation to his social forms of behavior assumes an especially menacing scale due to the peculiar joint and mutually antagonistic action of various processes. Domestication-related death of instincts<…> it leads to a new freedom of behavior, to new opportunities in the structure of society, which, for their part, again make unnecessary other, still existing instincts unnecessary and allow their reduction. But the more a person is freed from instincts, the freer he becomes from other social structures and specializations. There is an avalanche-like growth, a real orgy of the withering away of specializations, which, of course, should not lead to good and needs stabilizing regulation.<…>  A new regulatory principle is needed here, specialization at a new level as a result of the withering away of all specializations, form in formlessness, law in freedom, denial of denial, which means a step towards a qualitatively new, higher level of social achievement. But this step is being made thanks to the new, in the highest sense fundamental to man, work of the new collective consciousness, con-scientia, which consists in the fact that man is responsible to society for his individual actions. This in the narrow sense of social morality becomes all the more necessary as a regulatory factor, as a typical loss of security caused by<…>  the withering away of specializations, the specific errors of persisting atavistic “instincts” are added.<…>  This harmonic persistent preservation of individual structural elements from phases of development that have already been completed is also a phenomenon that is not at all specific to humans. When a cancer or bird molts, a teenager changes his personality structure, or humanity during the revolution changes its social structure, for the final result<…>  there is always a very real danger: in a new state that preserves the remnants of old specializations that disrupt the functioning of the whole, there will not be complete harmony! The biologist and zoo worker are familiar with the pathological phenomenon of “incomplete molting” and “being stuck in a molting condition,” just as the psychiatrist and psychologist are similar pathological disorders resulting from persistent preservation of infantile traits after adolescence, and, finally, a sociologist He sees one of his most important tasks in overcoming the interfering remnants of social forms. The analogy between these phenomena goes so far that one involuntarily attracts one as a likeness and illustration of the other! The persistent preservation of atavistic instincts among cultured people is also a typical frequent case of this widespread developmental disorder!

Thus, the regulatory principle of human social morality involves an unusual struggle on two fronts. On the one hand, against “too human”, against extremely fast, chaotic plastic destruction of the entire structure and specialization in innate species-specific social behavior, the loss of which morality must compensate for. And on the other hand, against the “too animal” in man, stubborn, obsolete, anachronistic and “evil” instincts, to which she contrasts her prohibitions and demands with varying success. Naturally, we do not at all affirm that this double work, compensating for the loss of necessary and restraining the harmful effects of unnecessary “instincts”, is the only task of a free responsible moral person, and the very statement that it is very important seems to be taken for granted. But essentially different - based on specific facts, we can indicate what is being replaced or suppressed. How to carry out this compensation is not our task, but the problem of ethics! Ethology in no way solves ethical problems, it only explores what tasks the compensatory work of responsible morality and ethics must cope with. We could even take it one step further and claim that the scientific doctrine of morality and ethics is also not able to “solve” these problems in the literal sense! Recognizing the need to compensate for these violations, public morality and ethics<…>, in our opinion, they are not created intentionally with the help of science, but simply with the development of human society they organically arise themselves, without our conscious participation! * We consider it a utopian mistake to believe that the structure of human society can be changed solely through “teaching.” On the contrary, we think that science can influence human morality and ethics, primarily by learning to create such conditions<…>in which free responsible ethics and morality could organically develop, this is the path that Marxist sociology has entered and has already achieved serious success! As for behavioral disturbances due to the preservation of rudimentary atavistic reaction norms, we have already said that they, being endogenous phenomena not directly caused by the environment, require special measures. I do not regard such a view as fatalistic cultural pessimism. A similar thing is the position that the natural scientist will take in the last turn, and the danger, the cause of which is recognized, is thereby no longer as threatening as before! We even quite definitely believe that the broadest and universal dissemination of simple knowledge of these phenomena would in itself be enough to ensure this natural development of compensatory morality!

* In the first, handwritten version, Lorentz argued that philosophy, relying on scientific sociology and ethology, would create new morality and ethics.

Drawings from the typewritten version of the book.
Left  - phases of eel movement, on right  - scheme of instinctive act.

The journal "Nature" №3 2004