The animal mind : a text-book of comparative psychology / by Margaret Floy Washburn.

  • Margaret Floy Washburn
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The animal mind : a text-book of comparative psychology / by Margaret Floy Washburn. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PREFACE The title of this book might more appropriately, if not more concisely, have been “The Animal Mind as Deduced from Experimental Evidence.” For the facts set forth in the fol- lowing pages are very largely the results of the experimental method in comparative psychology. Thus many aspects of the animal mind, to the investigation of which experiment either has not yet been applied or is perhaps not adapted, are left wholly unconsidered. This limitation of the scope of the book is a consequence of its aim to supply what I have felt to be a chief need of comparative psychology at the present time. Although the science is still in its formative stage, the mass of experimental material that has been accu- mulating from the researches of physiologists and psycholo- gists is already great, and is also for the most part inaccessible to the ordinary student, being widely scattered and to a con- siderable extent published in journals which the average college library does not contain. While we have books on animal instincts and on the interpretation of animal behavior, we have no book which adequately presents the simple facts. Probably no bibliography seems to one who carefully examines it entirely consistent in what it includes and what it excludes. Certainly the one upon which this book is based contains inconsistencies. The design has been to ex- clude works bearing only upon general physiology, upon the morphology of the nervous system and sense organs, or upon the nature of animal instinct as such, and to include those which bear upon the topics mentioned in the chapter headings.