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Further Thoughts on “The ‘New Biology’ and the Causes of War”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

C. E. S. Franks
C. E. S. Franks
Affiliation:
Queen's University
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Extract

Mr Colton's conclusion is that we ought to assume human aggressiveness and territorial instincts in the hope that “Deprived of all chance of rushing into the millennium, statesmen might concentrate on bringing a measure of rationality to this century.” This might well be a sensible way for statesmen to act, but there is nothing in the “new biology” which justifies any sort of assumption on human aggressiveness. The arguments propounded by Lorenz and Ardrey have been thoroughly criticized by a great many biologists and other scientists. These critics quite rightly call into question both the validity of concepts such as “instinct” and “imperative” in describing human behaviour, and the processes by which Ardrey and Lorenz extrapolate from the behaviour of lower animals to human behaviour. Of the two, the errors of Ardrey are by far the greater.

Type
Communication
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , June 1970 , pp. 318 - 322
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1970

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References

1 Colton, Timothy, “The ‘New Biology’ and the Causes of War,” this Journal, II, no. 4 (Dec. 1969), 434–47.Google Scholar

2 Montagu's, AshleyMan and Aggression (New York, 1968)Google Scholar summarizes this discussion, and reprints a number of reviews by scientists of both Lorenz’ and Ardrey's theories.

3 African Genesis (New York, 1961), and The Territorial Imperative (London, 1967).

4 The Herring Gull's World (London, 1953).

5 See Lorenz, Konrad, King Solomon's Ring: New Light on Animal War (London, 1952)Google Scholar, especially chap. 12; and On Aggression (London, 1966), chap. 7.

6 On Aggression, 206.

7 Ibid., 207.

8 Ibid., 208.

9 Perhaps the best general description of territoriality in animals is found in Wynne-Edwards, V. C., Animal Dispersion in Relation to Social Behaviour (New York, 1962).Google Scholar However, there is some disagreement with Wynne-Edwards’ views on territorial behaviour as a means of homeostatic regulation of animal populations, which appear to be espoused by Ardrey (The Territorial Imperative, 55–6). See Lack, David, Population Studies of Birds (Oxford, 1966).Google Scholar

10 Exclusive-solitary, exclusive-gregarious, overlapping-solitary, overlapping-gregarious.

11 “The Russian German,” in Sketches from a Hunter's Album (London, 1967), trans. Freeborn, Richard, 255.Google Scholar

12 See, for instance, Hall, E. T., The Silent Language (New York, 1959).Google Scholar