|
|
 |
by Landi
|
|
|
|
|
by Nick Bamforth
|
|
|
|
|
by Bil Keane
|
|
|
|
|
by John Wesley Howard
|
|
|
|
|
King Solomon's Ring
by Konrad Lorenz
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Signet (1972-09-01)
ISBN: 0451132297
EAN: 9780451132291
Paperback: 1 pages
SKU: mon0000047735
Condition: Like New
Comments: "Tanning with age, clearly unused. One small flaw along bottom edge of front cover."
|
Customer Reviews
|
5 stars for significance, charm; 4 stars for accuracy
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-09-10
Konrad Lorenz was one of THE three European founders of ethology (the study of the natural behavior of animals in their environments). Nikolas Tinbergen, Von Frisch, and Lorenz were co-awarded the Nobel Prize in 1973 for their preceding bodies of work which created this new scientific discipline.
This was extremely significant to the course of American psychology which, until that time, had grown increasingly dominated by learning theory and the laboratory method. American psychology, influenced by the achievements of physics and medicine,etc., preferred studying behavior under controlled, laboratory conditions as the means for getting nearer "ultimate truth", which, at that time, was thought to almost always involve learning at its core--in accord with the principles and theories of famous American learning theorists such as Thorndike, Watson, Skinner, Hull, et al. Comparative psychology was the American branch that studied similarities and differences between animal species but controlled problems in a laboratory setting were greatly preferred. Observations of behavior, while valuable for designing later lab experiments, were considered less rigorous.
So the truths Lorenz, Tinbergen, Von Frisch and their other European naturalist colleagues reported was as significant as the child's observation of the Emperor's new clothes. The truth of a significant lack was revealed. The laboratory method could not examine or reveal all important aspects of animal behavior; the lab method obscured or eliminated those behaviors occurring in natural settings.
Lorenz and Tinbergen discovered, explored, and brought imprinting to the attention of the scientific behavioral world. Imprinting is the lasting (often irreversible) effects of early experience (occuring within a critical period of development) on the later behavior of animals. This contrasted with the view of normal learning theories which found the strength of a response was mainly a function of the number of practice trials. (Von Frisch's work was in understanding the "language" of bees.)
Lorenz's "King Solomon's Ring" was a significant contribution that enabled lay people to understand the importance of such observations and prepared (sometimes excited) beginning students in the behavioral sciences to take psychology in new directions. Within a few years, learning theory no longer formed the spinal column and much of the skeletal structure of American psychology.
I was a psychology graduate student during these years and the laboratory instructor for my university's professor of comparative psychology. It was an exciting time, seeing the old "truths" and axioms become overthrown and helping to search for new ones.
The "Ring" is still a delightful and interesting read and inclines the reader to look with different eyes at the behavior of our animal friends. Possibly because I've kept current on research on dogs, I think it's weakest chapter is "The Covenant", Ch. 10, which is on dogs. Here Lorenz decides that most domestic dogs descended from the jackal while a few also descended from the wolf. Having advanced that thesis, he then describes in detail the dichotomy of personality and behavior to which these two antecedents lead and which can be commonly found in all their descendents.
WRONG!
For the last 40 years, we've become increasingly certain that almost all domestic dogs descended from wolves. Lorenz speculates an incorrect premise and then proceeds to elaborate (with charm and erroneous fact and observations skewed by his belief) on this in great detail. It's interesting and illuminating to see how wrong Lorenz can be in some areas and yet was so right (or right enough) in others.
So read the "Ring" to understand its and its author's deserved place in the history of behavioral sciences. Read it to increase your observational powers of your animal friends. But please do not read it as divine, ordained truth. Many thousands of scientists have since built on the foundations that Lorenz, Tinbergen, & Von Frisch built along with the contributions of Watson, Pavlov, Skinner, Hull, and others. (Serpell's "The Domestic Dog" provides a good source on more recent information about dogs. You can click on "read my other reviews" to get my evaluation of Serpell's book.)
|
|
Vanishing Migrations, and a Never-Changing Life Book
Rating (4)
Date: 2005-08-05
5 out of 6 customers found this reveiw helpful
I read Lorenz's book when I was a boy and have never forgotten it, except now that reading it again I see that any number of the animal facts I would spout to people, giving Lorenz as my reference, are severe distortions of his positions. I would tell people, for example, that lambs and sheep are totally different species, and in citing Lorenz I now realize he said nothing of the sort. One of the great things about KING SOLOMON'S RING is how many species it treats. We also had to read an earlier book by Lorenz, in which he discussed only dogs and how to train them. Did you know that Konrad Lorenz was the first scientist to discover that in every pacxk of dogs (even in any pair of two dogs) one dog will be the so-called "alpha male," even when they are technically female? Lorenz was a scientist, a trained observer, but he also had a big heart and this spills out into his books.
They are each of them veritable fountains of good writing and common sense, though sometimes he goes overboard in his enthusiasm.
Some of the animals hje observed in his heyday are acting differently nowadays! I wonder if that is part of natural selection, or if they are being changed due to the ozone layer brteaking up and global warming. Even the patterns of birds' migrations are no longer the same, and they seem to be no longer travelling the immense distances we once thought they did (from Tierra del Fuego to the Maritimes, for example).
In other ways, although dated, KSR remains one of Konrad Lorenz's great accomplishments. I remember meeting him around the time the United Nations honored him for his work with animals. He was a humble man with a witty grin, and the flourish of one who should have been an actor in the movies.
|
|
A peep into the animal/insect/fish/bird's brain
Rating  (5)
Date: 2004-10-21
5 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book is true to Lorenz' style - humorous, intelligent, large hearted and adventurous. Besides being entertained, I came away with humility borne of the knowledge that human beings aren't truly supreme. Even the littlest fish exhibits interesting thought processes and overriding maternal extincts. One just has to look hard enough!
|
|
A beautiful book for all who love nature
Rating (5)
Date: 2004-01-19
7 out of 7 customers found this reveiw helpful
Confession - I'd never heard of Konrad Lorenz (even though he won the Nobel Prize in 1973), and I don't usually read books by Naturalists. I was driving between business meetings during the day, when I happened to tune in to BBC Radio 4 (same as National Public Radio in the USA), and by accident caught a book reading of Chapter 10 regarding Dogs. Then on another day I caught Chapter 11 on Birds. Captivated, I actually pulled over so that I could hear the whole chapter & find out what the book was and who the Author was. Then I ordered the book as a treat to myself for Christmas. Fantastic! With some abridging 'on the fly', this book could even be read to/by a younger audience say down to 8 years old, who would enjoy, laugh & cry at some of the stories contained herein. I wish my science teacher had read this to me when I was 8, rather than do some silly experiments with boring pond life (Chapter 2 would have taught me more about Pond Life)!
|
|
if you are convinced of the evolution of the species
Rating (5)
Date: 2003-09-11
4 out of 8 customers found this reveiw helpful
The last two pages of the book explain why the human species does not have time to evolve a method of conflict resolution. The wolf survives mortal combat by "turning the other cheek", a behavior developed over many, many years. Humans enter combat with weapons that are not a part of their anatomy so the evolution of one on one response is not available. A learned method of conflict resolution is necessary.
|
|
|
|
|