Animal Thinking

       

If animals think, what do they think about? Do they use intelligence simply to take care of business--to find food and avoid predators—or do they also imagine? We know that some play, but do they fantasize?
The behaviorist orthodoxy of the past half century has kept most reputable scientists from even posing such questions. Now, with behaviorism on the wane, cognitive science is vigorously asserting an information-processing model of the mind, and once again the question of animal cognition is open to respectable inquiry.

Donald Griffin, since his earliest triumph in elucidating echolocation in bats, has been one of the few scientists of sufficient stature, and courage, to rise above taboos and competing schools of thought and speak openly about animal consciousness. Animal Thinking is Griffin's most provocative book, refuting the "computer envy" of the cognitive scientists as well as the behaviorist "blinders" that still persist in animal studies, while offering a broad, comparative perspective. Griffin gives a balanced interpretation of both old and new evidence of animal thought, drawn from fields as diverse as behavioral ecology, neuroanatomy, and philosophy of mind. Whether he is describing bees or lions, his emphasis is on the adaptive utility of consciousness for animals living under natural conditions.

Griffin's ideas will undoubtedly strike a responsive chord in scientist and layman alike as he examines the linguistic abilities of chimps and speculates about the possibilities for communication with whales and porpoises. But Animal Thinking pushes the limits even farther, suggesting that creatures such as ants, with only a milligram of central nervous system, lacking the luxury of storage space for detailed genetic instructions, must think to solve their problems, if only for reasons of economy and efficiency.

Animal Thinking will surely fuel controversy, and Griffin is most persuasive. Only through the comparative approach of cognitive ethology, he says, can we fully understand the range of mental models and thereby discover what is unique to man.

Donald R. Griffin is Professor, The Rockefeller University. His previous books include The Question of Animal Awareness, Listening in the Dark, Echoes of Bats and Men, and Bird Migration.


Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England

Jacket/Edith Allard