Public-domain ebook
Animal intelligence: Experimental studies
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In: Science - Biology·Psychiatry/Psychology
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #69904.
About this book
The work is a scholarly compilation of Edward L. Thor‑Thorndike’s experimental investigations into animal intellect, presented expressly for students of psychology and biology. The opening pages explain that the volume gathers his early, systematic laboratory studies, ranging from cats and dogs to chicks and monkeys, along with two fresh essays on the general laws of learning. Thorndike positions these reports as the first deliberate application of experimental methods to animal psychology, offering a bridge between the older, speculative treatises on “faculty psychology” and the more technical monographs that followed. The text has been preserved largely as originally printed, with only typographical corrections, renumbered tables, and occasional explanatory notes to prevent misunderstanding. Throughout, Thorndike argues for a view of psychology that treats behavior and consciousness as intertwined yet distinct, using his animal experiments to illustrate how learned connections between situation and response can be measured and analyzed.
The prose reflects the early‑20th‑century academic tone of a psychologist who was both a meticulous experimenter and an eager theoretician. It is formal, dense, and occasionally self‑critical, revealing the youthful exuberance that Thorndike himself acknowledges. Readers who appreciate historical scientific writings, especially those interested in the foundations of comparative psychology, learning theory, or the evolution of experimental methods, will find the book rewarding. It also appeals to scholars tracing the lineage of behaviorism or to anyone curious about how early psychologists grappled with the relationship between observable animal behavior and the elusive notion of consciousness.
The opening · free to read
The main purpose of this volume is to make accessible to students of psychology and biology the author’s experimental studies of animal intellect and behavior.[1] These studies have, I am informed by teachers of comparative psychology, a twofold interest. Since they represent the first deliberate and extended application of the experimental method in animal psychology, they are a useful introduction to the later literature of that subject. They mark the change from books of general argumentation on the basis of common experience interpreted in terms of the faculty psychology, to monographs reporting detailed and often highly technical experiments interpreted in terms of original and acquired connections between situation and response. Since they represent the point of view and the method of present animal psychology, but in the case of very general and simple problems, they are useful also as readings for students who need a general acquaintance with some sample of experimental work in this field.
It has seemed best to leave the texts unaltered except for the correction of typographical errors, renumbering of tables and figures, and redrawing the latter. In a few places, where the original text has been found likely to be misunderstood, brief notes have been added. It is hard to resist the impulse to temper the style, especially of the ‘Animal Intelligence,’ with a certain sobriety and restraint. What one writes at the age of twenty-three is likely to irritate oneself a dozen years later, as it doubtless irritated others at the time. The charitable reader may allay his irritation by the thought that a degree of exuberance, even of arrogance, is proper to youth.
To the reports of experimental studies are added two new essays dealing with the general laws of human and animal learning.
JANUARY, 1911.
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