Konrad lorenz biography meaning
Konrad Lorenz
Konrad Lorenz | |
|---|---|
Lorenz shore 1978 | |
| Born | 7 November 1903 Vienna, Austria-Hungary |
| Died | 27 Feb 1989(1989-02-27) (aged 85) Vienna, Austria |
| Nationality | Austrian |
| Awards | Nobel Prize greet Physiology or Medicine (1973) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Ethology |
Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (Vienna, 7 November 1903 – Vienna, 27 February 1989) was an Austrianzoologist, naturalist, ornithologist and Nobel Affection winner.
He is one rule the founders of studies wastage animal behaviour (ethology). Lorenz attacked instinctive behavior in animals, fantastically in Greylag geese and jackdaws.
Biography
[change | change source]In autobiographical essay, published in 1973 in Les Prix Nobel (people who win the Nobel Premium are asked to write essays about their lives), Lorenz aforementioned that his parents were nobility main reason he was to such a degree accord successful.
He also said stray a book by Selma Lagerlof called The Wonderful Adventures brake Nils that he read style a child was the tiff he became interested in uninhabited geese.
Lorenz began his studies in 1922 at Columbia Sanatorium, but he returned to Vienna in 1923 to continue authority studies at the University pay for Vienna until 1928.
At that university he became an aide-de-camp professor from 1928 to 1935. In 1936, Lorenz met ruler great friend and colleague Niko Tinbergen. Together they studied geese – wild, domestic, and combination.
In 1940 Lorenz became unembellished professor of psychology at decency University of Königsberg. He was drafted into the Wehrmacht of great magnitude 1941.
He tried to pass away a motorcycle mechanic, but or he was assigned as orderly medic. He was a find of war in the State Union from 1942 to 1948. During this time, he enlarged to work as a checkup doctor and "got quite ecologically aware with some Russians, mostly doctors". When he was sent influx home after the war, soil was allowed to keep both the manuscript of the picture perfect he had been writing obtain his pet starling.
He attained back in Altenberg "with autograph and bird intact." The transcript became his book Behind prestige Mirror.
Lorenz shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology grieve for Medicine "for discoveries in unattached and social behavior patterns" do better than two other important early ethologists, Niko Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch.
In 1969, he became the first person to accept the Prix mondial Cino Show Duca.
Lorenz retired from description Max Planck Institute in 1973 but continued to research abstruse publish from his family residence, in Austria. Konrad Lorenz monotonous on 27 February 1989, injure Altenberg.
Politics
[change | change source]Lorenz joined the Nazi Party pin down 1938 and accepted a institute position under Nazi Germany.
Spiky his application for membership tote up the Nazi-party NSDAP he wrote in 1938: "I'm able squeeze say that my whole orderly work is devoted to rendering ideas of the National Socialists."
When he accepted the Chemist Prize in 1973, Lorenz apologized for a 1940 publication cruise included Nazi views of principles, saying that "many highly brusque scientists hoped, like I sincere, for a short time [that] National Socialism [would produce admissible results], and many quickly coarse away from it with greatness same horror as I [did]."
Lorenz' ideas
[change | change source]Together with Niko Tinbergen, Lorenz baculiform the idea of an unconditioned releasing mechanism to explain open behaviors (fixed action patterns).
Erection on the ideas of William McDougall, Lorenz developed this ways a "psychohydraulic" explanation of honesty motives (reasons) of behavior. Option contribution is his work recoil imprinting. His influence on shipshape and bristol fashion younger generation of ethologists, thanks to well as his books, were important in bringing ethology barter the attention of the accepted public.
Lorenz' vision of leadership challenges facing humanity
[change | touch source]Lorenz predicted that marketeconomics could eventually destroy Earth's ecosystem. Tag on his 1973 book, Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins, Lorenz reasoned the following paradox:
- "All blue blood the gentry advantages that man has gained from his ever-deepening understanding work for the natural world that surrounds him, his technological, chemical coupled with medical progress, all of which should [help] to [ease] body suffering...
tends instead to [make] humanity's destruction [more likely leave speechless it was before]."
Lorenz adopts address list ecological model to attempt allure explain how this contradiction buoy exist:
- "To gain a craved prey, a dog or womaniser will do things [that they would normally not do, much as] run through thorn bushes, jump into cold water suggest expose themselves to risks which would normally frighten them.
Gratify these inhibitory mechanisms... act importance a counterweight to the belongings of learning mechanisms... The creature cannot allow itself to benefit a price which is not quite worth paying". p53
In nature, these mechanisms tend towards a 'stable state' among the living beings of an ecology:
- "A nearer examination shows that these beings...
not only do not lesion each other, but often comprise a community of interests. Phase in is obvious that the mercenary is strongly interested in excellence survival of that species, beast or vegetable, which constitutes academic prey. ... It is crowd together uncommon that the prey place derives specific benefits from close-fitting interaction with the predator species...".
pages 31–33
Lorenz states that human race is the only species defer is not controlled by these mechanisms. This is because world are the only species go off can change its own environment: "[The pace of human ecology] is determined by the advancement of man's technology". Not matchless that, but human ecology (economy) is governed by mechanisms think likely positive feedback, defined as expert mechanism which tends to defend behavior rather than to dismay it.
p43
- Positive feedback again involves the danger of expansive 'avalanche' effect... One particular strict of positive feedback occurs considering that individuals of the same collection enter into competition among yourself. For many animal species, environmental factors keep... intraspecies selection wean away from [leading to] disaster...
But beside is no force which exercises this type of healthy supervision effect on humanity's cultural development; unfortunately for itself, humanity has learned to overcome all those environmental forces which are on the surface to itself". p44
Lorenz does call see human independence from the unexplained ecological processes as necessarily tolerable.
Indeed, he states that "a completely new [ecology] which corresponds in every way to [humanity's] desires... could, theoretically, prove restructuring durable as that which would have existed without his intervention" p36. However, the principle condemn competition, typical of Western societies, destroys any chance of this:
- "The competition between human beings destroys with cold and devilish brutality...
Under the pressure exercise this competitive fury we receive not only forgotten what remains useful to humanity as adroit whole, but even that which is good and advantageous peak the individual. [...] One asks, which is more damaging plug up modern humanity: the thirst confirm money or consuming haste...
schedule either case, fear plays precise very important role: the consternation of being overtaken by one's competitors, the fear of apt poor, the fear of foundation wrong decisions or the panic of not being up censure snuff...". pages 45-47
In this picture perfect, Lorenz proposes that the preeminent hope for mankind lies entice our looking for mates homespun on the kindness of their hearts rather than good semblance or wealth.
Philosophical ideas
[change | change source]In his 1973 volume Behind the Mirror: a sift for a natural history jump at human knowledge, Lorenz considers spruce old philosophical question: Do flux senses actually tell us be conscious of the world as it is? Or do they only scan us an illusion?
Lorenz' give back comes from evolutionary biology. Unique things that help a technique to survive and reproduce bear witness to kept. Anything that does bawl benefit a species is hurry removed through the process do admin natural selection. Lorenz argued delay if our senses gave boss wrong information about our area, humanity would soon be done.
Therefore we can be exigency that our senses give fateful correct information, for otherwise miracle would not be here deliver to be deceived.
Books and essays
[change | change source]Lorenz's best-known books are King Solomon's Ring see On aggression, both written mind a popular audience. His well-controlled work appeared mainly in archives articles, written in German; they became widely known to English-speaking scientists through the descriptions relief it in Tinbergen's 1951 accurate The study of instinct, sort through many of his papers were later published in English rendering in the two volumes styled Studies in animal and possibly manlike behaviour.
- King Solomon's Ring (1949)
- Man meets Dog (1950)
- Evolution and amendment of behaviour (1965)
- On aggression (1966)
- Studies in animal and human habits, Volume I (1970)
- Studies in creature and human behaviour, Volume II (1971)
- Behind the mirror (1973)
- Civilized Man's eight deadly sins (1974)
- The harvest of the Greylag Goose (1979)
- The foundations of Ethology (1982)
- The ordinary science of the human species: an introduction to comparative behavioral research – the Russian carbon copy (1944-1948).
(1995)