Dualism in Animal Psychology

Abstract

The second edition of Professor Washburn's text-book in animal psychology indulges as little as the first in controversy over matters of general theory.Indeed the chief purpose for which the book was written (as the author stated in the Introduction to the first edition) was to bring together, and make available for the ordinary student, the simple facts whose discovery is the result of experimental method in comparative psychology.And it is the rapid accumulation of such facts discovered since the first appearance of The Animal Mind in 1908, 1 that has led the author to prepare a second edition, a task which involved the rewriting of more than half of the earlier volume.Of the growth of theoretical controversy which has accompanied this rapid advance in comparative psychology during this decade, little intimation appears in the text.Textbooks are not, of course, the place to discuss such subjects.Yet the reader who peruses the pages of The Animal Mind with the issues of current controversy in the back of his head may well find food for philosophical reflection.For the interesting facts of animal behavior which the author sets before us in so orderly and clear a manner are not, after all, presented merely as interesting facts.They are selected and ordered that they may serve as evidence from which the animal mind-or mindsmay be deduced.As the author herself remarks in the Introduction, the book might properly be entitled The Animal Mind as Deduced from Experimental Evidence.It