Ethology (from Greek: ἦθος, ethos, "character"; and -λογία, -logia, "the study of") is the scientific and objective study of animal behaviour, and is a sub-topic of zoology. Wikipedia
Just a quick word today.
In a dispute I had over an old NYT report about some neo-haruspical study of baboons and how that's supposed to tell us something about people, an odd habit of thinking among the behavioral scientists came up. I said I was skeptical that the reported analysis of observations made by someone indoctrinated in some school of ethology was 1. reliably not influenced by the ideology that the observer had been trained in, 2. that his observations and analysis could be anything but a fully human one, and so biased, 3 was relevant to any other species.
The other party to the dispute was outraged that someone could think that his observations, as a trained ethologist, could be anything but entirely objective. That is the establishing conceit of all research into behavior, that people can be taught to make reliable and objective observations and analyses of behavior and, more far fetched, that their analyses of that behavior will be objective, having the reliability of observations of physical phenomena of the kind that science was invented to study.
When you think about it, that is about as amazing a line of nonsense as has been successfully sold in the past hundred-fifty years. Especially when you look at the openly unscientific nature of so much of the past practice of that, Freud, of course, but others as well, and that most of the behavioral "sciences" are conducted through schools of thought which are thoroughly ideological and, especially in a professional context, political in nature. And in no case is that clearer than reporting on the behavior of animals, which cannot report to us their own motivations, ideas and perceptions as people can with such varying reliability.
The WAY in which allegedly scientific observations are made of animal behavior is taught by those teachers belonging to one of those schools, on which their academic identity depends. How to do it the right way is, in itself, the product of that kind of ideological training. And even more, the analysis and reporting of those observations will typically be accepted or rejected on the basis of their conformity with the vocabulary and means of expression that are acceptable within the school in whose context it will be published. And, very importantly, the grad student and post-grad researcher will know what is expected and what will get them in trouble.
There is no such thing as an objective observation or analysis of behavior, not among human beings, certainly not between species. People reporting on their own behavior, of which they are the most intimate of experts, open themselves to being doubted and refuted, that happens hundreds and thousands of times a day in law courts, billions of times a day within families, when people know each other more intimately than any ethologist will ever know a baboon or even a bonobo. And if people can deceive themselves about their own behavior, they can certainly see what they want to see in other animals.
The idea that ethology is science is one of the most absurd of contemporary superstitions among the educated. In terms of my blogging, it is incredible that so many atheists are totally sold on it, led there by some of the biggest names in atheism today. And all while holding the superstition that atheism, materialism, is some kind of magic charm against superstition, guaranteeing objectivity and magically conferring an ability to "see the universe as it really is". Which is complete and total hogwash which what is now very old physics should have dispelled almost a century ago. Yet that superstition is one of the most commonly held today, both among the materialistic and atheistic and even those who are not materialists and atheists. It is ubiquitous among those who congratulate themselves on their rationality and sciencyness. You don't know whether to laugh or cry when you hear them going on like that.
The other party to the dispute was outraged that someone could think that his observations, as a trained ethologist, could be anything but entirely objective. That is the establishing conceit of all research into behavior, that people can be taught to make reliable and objective observations and analyses of behavior and, more far fetched, that their analyses of that behavior will be objective, having the reliability of observations of physical phenomena of the kind that science was invented to study.
ReplyDeleteLet me be the second (obviously you were the first) to welcome this "ethologist" to the post-modern era.
Good grief. Post-modernism arose from anthropology, largely among the French scholars, and the recognition that the position of "objectivity" was merely privileging one cultural norm over others. That debate was over in the '70's....
These things that pass for knowledge I don't understand....