ON GOING BACK TO NATURE: A REVIEW OF SELIGMAN AND HAGER'S BIOLOGICAL BOUNDARIES OF LEARNING 1

Abstract

The history of behaviorism has been marked by numerous challenges, both from within psychology and from without. Of late, these challenges have been directed primarily at Skinnerian behaviorism, known to its practitioners as the "experimental analysis of be-havior", perhaps because it has been the most successful behavioristic approach or perhaps because it has been the most ambitious (Skin-ner, 1953; 1957; 1971). One of the most significant and persistent challenges has come from students of ethology (Lorenz, 1965). The points of conflict between ethology and be-haviorism are numerous: first, ethology views its subject matter as primarily the result of native endowment (Lorenz, 1965), and criticizes behaviorism for its overemphasis on the role of experience in determining behavior. Second, largely as a result of its emphasis on native endowment, ethology emphasizes the species-specific character of behavior and is skeptical of the trans-species generalizations made by behaviorists. Third, ethology is essentially a study of structure (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1970; Tinbergen, 1951). It is aimed at understanding the ways in which behaviors are ordered , and the nature of the internal structures that allow such order to be expressed. Ethology criticizes behaviorism for its over-emphasis of the functional analysis of behavior without apparent regard for the nature of the internal structures. In addition to these fundamental differences in orientation and underlying episte-mology, methodological differences have made