Graziano & Raulin
Research Methods (9th edition)
VII. COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY
(ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY)
Descartes’ philosophy emphasized clearly defined differences between humans and animals--specifically that humans have operative minds that interact with the body, whereas animals have only bodies without minds. Animals, then, were seen as automata--mechanical creature without the capacity of thought, reasoning, memory, or the knowledge of pain or appreciation of pleasure. Descartes saw a discontinuity between man and animals; the two are qualitatively different. This notion was in keeping with theological certainty that only humans have souls. This concept of a qualitative difference between humans and animals remained the standard wisdom for over 200 years.
Because animals were thought to have no mind, there was no reason to investigate the possibility of animal intelligence or consciousness. But the Darwin-Wallace model of evolution (1859) changed this conception in the latter part of the 19th Century, just as it had influenced so much of science. Evolutionary theory argues that there is no discontinuity between animals and humans; rather, there is a phylogenic continuity among animals and humans. What this means is that humans and other animals are on the same evolutionary scale, and they share characteristics--physical and mental--depending upon their distance from each other on this scale. Thus, humans and the higher mammals are seen as having great similarities; non-human animals, like humans, must have some degree of consciousness and intelligence. Darwin believed that animals experience sensations, pleasure, pain, and emotions, a point he made in his book, The Expression of the Emotions of Man and Animals (1872).
Darwin’s ideas stimulated a surge of interest in animal intelligence in the 1860s and 1870s. In this section you will find the following researchers:
| Loeb, Jacques | Morgan, C. Lloyd | Romanes, George |