Abstract
THE physicists have gone on strike against determinism and have called on the psychologists to come out in sympathy, but the psychologists can see no logical connexion between the physical problem and the psychological problem. It appears that the physicist can never know the facts about a single electron and can only predict the behaviour of aggregates. An individual animal represents a large aggregate of electrons and other units, and the fact that the behaviour of the individual units cannot be predicted does not necessarily imply that the behaviour of the aggregate is not governed by laws as rigid as those which govern the behaviour of a similar mass of inanimate matter. The difficulties of prediction appear to be due to the complexity of the problem rather than to any fundamental obstacle to observation. The psychologist is presented with a glut of facts about each individual and can see no reason why he should not explain the processes which govern individual behaviour, but such knowledge is likely to play a less important part in the world than a knowledge of the behaviour of aggregates of animals. Prof. Crozier, of Harvard, who has devoted the last ten years to the study of the behaviour of aggregates of rats, has published the summary of his results now under notice.
D´terminisme et variabilit´ dans le comportement des organismes
(Exposés de biométrie et de statistique biologique, 7.) Par Prof. W. J. Crozier. (Actualités scientifiques et industrielles, 261.) Pp. 57. (Paris: Hermann et Cie., 1935.) 15 francs.
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D´terminisme et variabilit´ dans le comportement des organismes. Nature 138, 99 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/138099a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/138099a0