Discussions and Reviews Toward an ethology of human conflict: a review Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression London: Methuen, 1966. Pp. 306. $5.75. Robert Ardrey, African Genesis New York: Atheneum, 1961. Pp. 380. $6.95. Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative New York: Atheneum, 1966. Pp. 390. $6.95. Claire Russell and W. M. S. Russell, Human Behavior—A New Approach Boston: Little, Brown, 1961. Pp. 532. PETER M. DRIVER Mental Health Research Institute, University of Michigan The study of human conflict seems to siderable impact. Those of Ardrey and that labor under three major difficulties: the dis- of Lorenz are best-sellers, and the Russells’ like of the majority of people for viewing book had an enthusiastic reception among man in his evolutionary perspective; the the members of that small ingroup of biolo- tendency of any specialist to consider his gists and humanists forming a tenuous bridge own speciality as more relevant than any between the &dquo;two cultures.&dquo; When taken other applied to a problem of common in- together-though such a mixture is very terest ; and the universal stumbling-block of strong medicine-they indicate a significant man’s sheer lack of ability to deal success- (albeit controversial) development in the fully with his social problems at the com- study of man as an organism, that is, as an munity level. All of the four books under animal which has evolved, like other ani- review at least manage to avoid the first mals, by mechanisms of natural selection. difficulty, and one of them brings powerful Unfortunately, unlike other animals, man argument to play upon the other two. now seems to be developing characteristics These four books have already had con- of &dquo;unnatural&dquo; selection which give concern 362 to many people, including the authors of discipline of objective observation of be- these books and of this review. Certainly, havior is a much longer one. Charles Dar- no other animal exhibits anything like the win, of course, included an understanding degree of intraspecific killing and maiming of ethological principles in his battery of shown by our own species. Whether any of biological techniques. Nora Barlow, Dar- the extinct animals owed their extinction to win’s granddaughter and authority on his this kind of behavioral breakdown we shall writings, has pointed out in a personal com- probably never know, but what we must be munication that in his work on barnacles, clear about is that it is a behavioral break- which predated The Origin of Species, he down-a biological malfunction-and that was all the time &dquo;thinking of behavior, ex- the behavioral biologist-the ethologist-is actly how the animal lives, and its needs.&dquo; particularly fitted to study it. The same can be seen in his Journal off Ethology, as I have indicated, and as Researches (1839). More strictly ethological Lorenz himself (1965) has stated, may be were the studies on &dquo;instinct&dquo; carried out regarded as the biology of behavior. This by Douglas Spalding (Haldane, 1954), a description, however, needs clarification. contemporary of Darwin and, briefly, tutor Anyone studying the behavior of organisms to Bertrand Russell. But such studies-and is studying biological phenomena, yet many there were many others-were only a nat- students of behavior-psychologists, sociol- ural development of the British tradition of ogists, psychiatrists, anthropologists, and the scientific study of natural history, first so on-have little or only partial biological clearly revealed in Gilbert White’s classic, training. The ethologist has the distinction The Natural History of Selbourne ( 1789 ) . of being properly qualified, without obvious White was the first to make a clear dis- limits, for the study of his subject; he has tinction between the three common British training both in biological science and in species of leaf-warbler-and did it on the behavioral observation and analysis. The basis of their behavior. And his distinction ethologist tends to be a student of the whole is as valid today as it ever was. animal which, strictly speaking, is the nor- The work of Lorenz, of Ardrey, and of mal animal in its natural environment. To the Russells represents the natural develop- be a &dquo;pure&dquo; ethologist is obviously, there- ment of the earlier naturalists’ approach to fore, very difficult, and most ethologists animal behavior, only now it is scientific, compromise to some degree by putting with a rigorous methodology and standards some kind of restriction upon their animals. of quality equivalent to those of any other This need not, however, result in significant scientific discipline. At the same time it distortion of the animal’s behavior, and the must be noted that the work of Lorenz and ethological approach to behavior would of Ardrey attracts a good deal of fierce crit- seem to be the most objective and poten- icism from mathematically-oriented ethol- tially valuable of the behavioral sciences. ogists and psychologists. Such critics seem It should be mentioned that ethology is to feel that the Lorenzian type of ethology not just another &dquo;ism&dquo; among the plethora is unscientific, apparently because much of of recently-emerged subdisciplines of nat- the data it collects cannot be subjected to ural science. Although the term &dquo;ethology&dquo; the processes of mathematical analysis found -in its present sense-was first used in to be useful in other types of behavior English by W. M. Wheeler as recently as study. I believe that this criticism may be 1902, the history of ethology as a rigorous an unwise one. As Slobodkin (1965) has CONFLICT RESOLUTION VOLUME XI NUMBER 3 363 pointed out, every empirical science has to It may have been unwise for Lorenz to develop its own standards of quality, and allow this statement to be printed on the &dquo;to insist on the theory of biology conform- dust-jacket of the book, but even so it should ing to aesthetic standards derived from not prejudice the reader against everything extant mathematics is illegitimate and is, in he says. Anyone who has seen Lorenz at fact, an imposition of metaphysical criteria work will know that he is very rigorous in- on the empirical world.&dquo; While all students deed, and can predict more accurately than of behavior must beware of &dquo;intellectual the majority of people what an animal will exercise carried out in the dark void of con- do next. He clearly has a fingerspitzengefiihl temporary ignorance of cerebral functions&dquo; -one of his favorite words, meaning (Walshe, 1957), the ethologist working with roughly, &dquo;fingertip sensitivity&dquo;-for animal animals under relatively natural conditions behavior study, and a fertile and broadly- can be confident that his activities will in- integrated mind. The Russells’ book pro- troduce a minimum of undetectable vari- vides evidence to suggest that certain kinds ables into his experiments. It is in this light of regressive thought process, notably ra- that the books here under review should tionalization, in the sense used by Freud, be considered. common to all of us-though to varying On Aggression, written by one of the degrees-are antipathetic to the broad ap- leading biologists and the most celebrated proach, and may be operative in the nega- ethologist of our time, has been reviewed tive reactions to Lorenz’s work. by a number of eminent people from several On Aggression is a book which must be fields. The variety of response to the book taken very seriously, as it provides a power- is of interest in itself, and though it cannot ful thesis to explain the behavioral break- be considered here in detail, it is worth down which has resulted in the deaths of noting that those who approve are largely more than sixty million humans since 1820 experts in other fields. These include Alsop as a result of internecine strife. Basically (1966), Gorer (1966), Koestler (1966), this thesis is that aggression in the proper and Mead (1966). Those against-all work- sense of the word is intraspecific aggression, ing somewhere in the field of animal be- and normally fulfills a species-preserving havior-are, principally, Barnett (1967), function. The fantastic aggression we see Schneirla (1966), and Zuckerman (1966). in humans today is aggression gone wrong, I believe that this antagonism from other out of hand, and now resembling in its re- behavioral scientists is only partly explained sults the predator/prey combats in which by Lorenz’ tendency to make broad sweep- the predator’s behavior has been evolved for the of the Intra- ing assertions, e.g., &dquo;I am honestly con- purpose killing prey. is in vinced that in the near future very many specific aggression normally (that is, most or all animals other than men-indeed perhaps the majority of man- man) only similar to behavior, kind-will regard as obvious and banal superficially predator which is both business and truth all that I have written in this book pleasure- not war. &dquo;The buffalo which the about intra-specific aggression and the hunting, lion fells provokes his aggression as little dangers which its perversion entails for as the which I have humanity.&dquo; appetizing turkey just seen hanging in the larder provokes mine. The difference in these inner drives can 1 For further information see Letters, Scien- tific American, May 1967, and Driver, 1967. clearly be seen in the expression movements 364 of the animal: a dog about to catch a that of intraspecific aggression. If the latter hunted rabbit has the same kind of excitedly is a fundamental characteristic of animal happy expression as he has when he greets organization, then we must be able to pos- his master or awaits some longed-for treat.