Abstract
SO great was the influence of that school of psychology which maintained that we and all other animals had to acquire in the course of our individual lives all the knowledge and skill necessary for our preservation, that many of the very greatest authorities in science refused to believe in those instructive performances of young animals about which the less learned multitude have never had any doubt. For example, Helmholtz, than whom there is not, perhaps, any higher scientific authority, says: “The young chicken very soon pecks at grains of corn, but it pecked while it was still in the shell, and when it hears the hen peck, it pecks again, at first seemingly at random. Then, when it has by chance hit upon a grain, it may, no doubt, learn to notice the field of vision which is at the moment presented to it.”
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SPALDING, D. Instinct and Acquisition * . Nature 12, 507–508 (1875). https://doi.org/10.1038/012507a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/012507a0