The Study of Behavior

Abstract

The attempt to understand and classify the behavior of animals, and in particular that of humans, has engaged scholars for many centuries, at least since the time of the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato. Ethology developed from zoology, that is, from the study by naturalists of animals in their natural habitat, whereas psychology developed from philosophy. Much of the difference between the theoretical and methodological approaches taken by ethologists and psychologists can be traced to their different origins. The following sections briefly summarize the principal branches of the behavioral sciences, ethology, and comparative psychology, the controversies between them during the 1950s and 1960s, and the subsequent synthesis that has developed into the modern study of animal behavior. This may be the most difficult chapter in the book to master.