Sex and Behavior: Status and Prospectus PDF
Preview Sex and Behavior: Status and Prospectus
Sex andBehavior STATUSANDPROSPECTUS These essays are presented in honorof Frank A. Beach Sex andBehavior STATUSAND PROSPECTUS Edited by Thomas E McGill WilliamsCollege Williamstown,Massachusetts Donald A. Dewsbury University ofFlorida Gainesville,Florida and Benjamin D. Sachs University ofConnecticut Storrs,Connecticut Springer Science+Business Media, LLC Library ofCongressCataloginginPublicationData Mainentryundertitle: Sexand behavior. "Presentedinhonorof FrankA.Beach." Includesbibliographiesand indexes. 1. Sexual behavior in animals. 2. Sex. 3. Psychology, Comparative. I. McGill, Thomas E. II. Dewsbury, Donald A.,1939- Ill.Sachs,Benjamin D.IV.Beach, FrankAmbrose, 1911- QL761.S46 599'.05'6 77-17840 ISBN 978-1-4899-0423-2 ISBN 978-1-4899-0421-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-0421-8 ©SpringerScience+BusinessMediaNewYork1978 OriginallypublishedbyPlenumPress,NewYorkin1978. SoftcoverreprintofthehardcoverIstedition1978 Allrightsreserved Nopartof this bookmay bereproduced,storedinaretrieval system,or transmitted, inany form or byany means,electronic,mechanical,photocopying,microfilming, recording,orotherwise,withoutwrittenpermission from the Publisher Contributors Norman T. Adler Department oj Psychology, University ojPennsylvania, Phi/adelphia, Pennsylvania Gordon Bermant The Federal Judicial Center, Dolley Madison House, w., 1520H Street, N. Washington, D.C. Lynwood G. Clemens Department oj Zoology, Michigan State Uni versity, East Lansing,Michigan Donald A. Dewsbury Department oj Psychology, University oj Florida, Gainesville,Florida Richard L. Doty Monell Chemical Senses Center and Department oj Otorhinolaryngology and Human Communication, University oj PennsylvaniaMedicalSchool. Phi/adelphia,Pennsylvania G. Gray Eaton Unit oj Primate Behavior, Oregon Regional Primate Research Center,505 N.W. 185th Avenue,Beaverton,Oregon Lawrence V. Harper Department oj Applied Behavioral Sciences, University ojCalifornia. Davis. California Benjamin L. Hart School of Veterinary Medicine, University oj California, Davis, California Jerome Kagan Department oj Psychology and Social Relations, Harvard University,Cambridge, Massachusetts Burney J. Le Boeuf Crown College, University ojCalifornia,Santa Cruz, California Thomas E. McGill Department oj Psychology, Williams College, Williamstown.Massachusetts Benjamin D. Sachs Department oj Psychology. The University oj Con necticut, Storrs, Connecticut v vi Contributors Karen M. Sanders Department oj Applied Behavioral Sciences, Uni versityojCalifornia,Davis.California Leonore Tiefer Department oj Psychiatry, Downstate Medical Center, State UniversityojNew York. Brooklyn. New York Steven G. Vandenberg Institute jor Behavioral Genetics, University oj Colorado,Boulder, Colorado Richard E. Whalen Department oj Psychobiology. University oj Cal ifornia.Irvine.California James R. Wilson Institute jor Behavioral Genetics. University oj Colo rado,Boulder,Colorado Foreword Discussion of the precise nature and position of boundaries between dis ciplines is nearly always counterproductive; the need is usually to cross them not to emphasize them. And any such discussion of the distinction between ethology and comparative psychology would today seem patently absurd. While there may be differences in outlook, no boundaries exist. But when Frank Beach started in research, that was not the case. Comparative psychology flourished in the United States whereas ethology was unknown. Beach started as a comparative psychologist and has always called himself either that or a behavioral endocrinologist. Yet, among the com parative psychologists of his generation, he has had closer links with the initially European ethologists than almost any other. He was indeed one of the editors of the first volume of Behaviour. That this should have been so is not surprising once one knows that his Ph.D. thesis concerned "The Neural Basis for Innate Behavior," that he used to sleep in the laboratory so that he could watch mother rats giving birth, and that in 1935 he was using model young to analyze maternal behavior. Furthermore, for nine years he worked in the American Museum of Natural History-in a department first named Experimental Biology and later, when Beach had saved it from extinction and become its chairman, the Department of Animal Behavior. It was in 1938, during Frank's time at the American Museum, that he was first introduced to Niko Tinbergen by Ernst Mayr. Of his impressions at the time, Niko Tinbergen has recently written: Although at that time I was not at all attracted to Frank's "lab orientedness,' nor to hisinclination to measuresimple components of the "causal web," he on his sidewasopen-mindedenough(I am sure not merely polite enough) to express interest in what we were then doing. And hedid influenceus, muchto the good, byhisinsistenceon the need for measurement. I think that it was a combination of our respect for his research, for his open-mindednessand for his friendly and truly cooperative attitude that made us(W. H. Thorpe and N.T.) approach himforrepresenting"Behaviour" intheU.S. vii viii Foreword Beach's editorial position with Behaviour, and later his membership in the group which organized the international ethological conferences per mitted him to play a large part in the liaison between ethology and com parative psychology. I do not think it would betrue to say that his work has been very much influenced by ethology-he was already using some of the experimental techniques, and it could not be said that fieldwork would ever have really become Frank's scene. However, a number of hisstudents wrote theses that were ethological by anyone's criteria, and in setting up the Field Station for Research in Animal Behavior at Berkeley he provided research opportunities for a number of ethologists from outside his own Department, such as Peter Marler and Thelma Rowell. Beach's success in keeping the Department of Animal Behavior in being after Noble's death was no small achievement and had important con sequences for ethology in a curious way. Beach persuaded T. C. Schneirla to join the Department, and Schneirla became one of the growing ethology's harshest critics. Fortunately, perhaps, Schneirla's comments were at first little known, in part because the journals in which he wrote were not widely read by ethologists and in part because Schneirla's style was not always as lucid as it might have been. However, Schneirla's message was taken up, emphasized, and supplemented by his pupil, Danny Lehrman, in his "Critique of Konrad Lorenz's Theory of Instinctive Beha viour." Although Lehrman was persuaded by a number of colleagues, including Frank Beach, to soften the tone of that article somewhat before publication, it was both hard-hitting and clear. Ethologists gradually came to accept some of its points and rejected others, and it was from that time on that the boundaries between ethology and comparative psychology began to dissolve. Not only was Frank, by saving the Museum's Department of Animal Behavior, ultimately responsible for the Schneirla-Lehrman combination, he was also closely involved in the discussions. On the one hand, his model of a "central excitatory mechanism" provided valuable material for Tin bergen's (1951) "The Study of Instinct." On the other, Frank's "The Descent of Instinct" (or Taking the Stink out of Instinct) (Psychological Reviews, 1955, 62, 401-410) took up some of the same issues as did Lehrman's. But Frank is an experimentalist rather than a theoretician, and it is his example and his presence that has had the largest effect on ethologists. For a long time it seemed almost impossible that there would be an Interna tional Ethological Congress without him. What was especially appealing to the scientifically youthful ethologists was that he came not as an advocate for psychology, but to learn. And apparently he saw in the ethologists one of the same virtues that Tinbergen had seen inhim, for after one ethological conference he was heard to comment "I have never attended any scientific Foreword ix meeting at which participants were so willing, indeed keen, to listen to criticism as at the ethological conferences." If 1 am right in believing that Frank has made a major and often underestimated contribution to ethology as a liaison man, 1hope 1may be permitted a personal note. During the fifties, several small meetings were organized with the explicit aim of integrating ethology and experimental psychology. The first of these that 1 attended was organized by Bill Verplanck at Harvard, and my friendship with Frank started in Scollay Square, where by chance or good judgment we remet in the evening after the first day's session. Frank took several of usto seehis laboratory inYale afterward. This was only a few years after 1 had written my thesis, but Frank could not have been kinder. A year or two later, he organized what was undoubtedly the most important single academic event in my life-a conference in the Behavioral Sciences Center at Stanford for a few com parative psychologists (I remember especially Harlow, Hebb, Lehrman, Rosenblatt, Washburn, and Beach) and a fewethologists (Tinbergen, Baer ends, van lersel, Vowles, and myself). What was unique was that we had five or six weeks to talk. If you didn't finish what you had to say today, there was always tomorrow, and discussion continued round the dart board or in Dinah's Shack on El Camino Real. 1 made and cemented good friendships at that meeting, and it certainly affected the direction of my work. 1don't think it had the same importance for Frank-he did not even mention it in his chapter in Gardner Lindzey's History oj Psychology in Autobiography. Another occasion was the conference in Berkeley which led eventually to the publication of Sex and Behavior. Frank organized the meeting to take place in two separate periods a year apart and, characteristically, he arranged for participants to be able to bring a student the second year. One incident deserves to be put on record. 1 asked if 1 might bring Patrick Bateson, now Director of the Madingley Sub-Department of Animal Be haviour. Frank, ignorant of the Cambridge collegiate system, sent out invitations to him addressed to my Cambridge college, St. John's. Pat belonged to another college, and the St. John's porters had never heard of him. However, with unusual efficiency they forwarded the letter, within 20 minutes of its arrival, to Gregory Bateson, who had been a Fellow of St. John's 20 years earlier. Gregory is a relation of Pat, but at that time they had never met. Gregory was then living in California, but he and Frank had not been on speaking terms for about ten years. He was therefore a little surprised to get the invitation. But Frank carried offthe situation with great aplomb. Both Batesons came, and met for the first time. Frank and Gre gory spoke to each other, and Gregory gave a superb lecture with his fly open. If these reminiscences take up undue space, it is because 1am grate-
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