Abstract
IN the preface to “The Animal Mind”, Prof. Lloyd Morgan quotes the words of Don Quixote to the Duchess: “God only knows whether there be any Dulcinea or not in the world....” Let us be quixotic enough, adds the author, “and some behaviourists say that it is sheer quixotry to believe that our Dulcinea does exist....” This sentence sums up the difficulties of a biologist who is asked to review “The Animal Mind”, if he does not agree with the Weltanschauung of the author. Either you agree with Prof. Lloyd Morgan's views about scientific method and regard the views he expresses about animals as a contribution to scientific knowledge; or you do not agree with Prof. Lloyd Morgan's views about scientific method and are therefore compelled to say courteously but unequivocally that science is not advanced by speculations about what goes on in the mind as opposed to the central nervous system of an animal, and that the attempt to “put yourself in his place” is the very antithesis of the procedure which the scientific worker adopts in studying the characteristics of living matter.
The Animal Mind.
C. Lloyd Morgan. Pp. xii + 275. (London: Edward Arnold and Co., 1930.) 12s. 6d. net.
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The Animal Mind . Nature 127, 887 (1931). https://doi.org/10.1038/127887a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/127887a0