The Ontogeny of Behavior

ETHOLOGY ORIGINATED with Konrad Lorenz's work in the 1930s, but did not have widespread impact until the early 1950s, and then mainly through the writings of N. Tinbergen, a student and collaborator of Lorenz's. In Tinbergen's The Study of Instinct (1951), ethology was revealed as a new, widely ranging theory of behavior, the cornerstone of which was the assertion, forcefully supported with evidence, that much of an animal's behavior is instinctive, innate, inherited. That proposition was in marked opposition to the then-prevalent view among American animal psychologists that most, if not all, adaptive behavior was acquired through conditioning. This difference led to a renewal of the hoary controversy of nature versus nurture. Much of that controversy seems to have been based on semantic misunderstandings (Lehrman, 1970); therefore a review is unnecessary. It must be emphasized, however, that the original ethological standpoint on the issue has undergone considera ble modification and differentiation since The Study oJ Instinct was published, as have most other early