Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (November 7, 1903 in
ViennaVienna is the capital of the Republic of Austria and also one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.7 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre. It is the 10th largest city by...
– February 27, 1989 in
ViennaVienna is the capital of the Republic of Austria and also one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.7 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre. It is the 10th largest city by...
) was an
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.3 million people in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west...
n
zoologistZoology, also spelled zoölogy, is the branch of biology that focuses on the structure, function, behavior, and evolution of animals. The zoologist's pronunciation of "zoology" is , though a common spelling pronunciation is .-Systems of classification:...
, animal psychologist, ornithologist, and
Nobel PrizeThe Nobel Prize is a Sweden-based international monetary prize. The award was established by the 1895 will and estate of Swedish chemist and inventor Alfred Nobel. It was first awarded in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace in 1901...
winner. He is often regarded as one of the founders of modern
ethologyEthology is the scientific study of animal behavior, and a sub-topic of zoology....
, developing an approach that began with an earlier generation, including his teacher
Oskar HeinrothOskar Heinroth was a German biologist who was one of the first to apply the methods of comparative morphology to animal behaviour, and was thus one of the founders of ethology...
. Lorenz studied
instinctive behaviorInstinct is the inborn complex behavior of a living organism that is not learned. Since the 1910 NY Times article , most scientific journals consider the term outdated although it remains popular among the general public and a number of scientists...
in
animalAnimals are a major group of mostly multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously...
s, especially in
greylag geeseThe Greylag Goose , Anser anser, is a bird with a wide range in the Old World. It is the type species of the genus Anser....
and
jackdawThe Jackdaw , sometimes known as the Eurasian Jackdaw, European Jackdaw, Western Jackdaw, or formerly simply the daw, is a dark-plumaged passerine bird in the crow family. It is found across Europe, western Asia and North Africa, and four subspecies are recognised...
s. Working with geese, he rediscovered the principle of
imprintingImprinting is the term used in psychology and ethology to describe any kind of phase-sensitive learning that is rapid and apparently independent of the consequences of behavior...
(originally described by
Douglas SpaldingDouglas Alexander Spalding was an English biologist. He was born in Islington in London in 1841, and began life as a manual laborer. Subsequently he lived in Scotland, near Aberdeen; the philosopher Alexander Bain persuaded the University of Aberdeen to allow him to attend courses without charge....
in the 19th century) in the behavior of
nidifugousNidifugous organisms are those that leave the nest shortly after hatching or birth. It is derived from Latin nidus for "nest" and fugere meaning "to flee". The terminology is most often used to describe birds and was introduced by Lorenz Oken in 1916. The chicks of birds in many families such as...
birdBirds are winged, bipedal, endothermic , vertebrate animals that lay eggs. There are around 10,000 living species, making them the most numerous tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Birds range in size from the Bee Hummingbird to the ...
s.
He wrote numerous books, some of which, such as
King Solomon's RingKing Solomon's Ring is a zoological book for the general audience, written by the Austrian scientist Konrad Lorenz in 1949. The first English-language edition appeared in 1952....
and
On AggressionOn Aggression is a book by ethologist Konrad Lorenz. As he writes in the prologue, "the subject of this book is aggression, that is to say the fighting instinct in beast and man which is directed against members of the same species."...
became popular reading. In later life his interest shifted to the study of man in society.
Biography
In his autobiographical essay, published in 1973 in
Les Prix Nobel (winners of the prizes are requested to provide such essays), Lorenz credits his career to his parents, who "were supremely tolerant of my inordinate love for animals," and to his childhood encounter with
Selma LagerlofSelma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf was a Swedish author. She was the first female writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and most widely known for her children's book Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige .- Biography :Born at Mårbacka an estate in Värmland in western...
's
The Wonderful Adventures of NilsThe Wonderful Adventures of Nils is a famous work of fiction by the Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf, published in two parts in 1906 and 1907...
, which filled him with a great enthusiasm about wild geese.
At the request of his father,
AdolfAdolf Lorenz was an Austrian orthopedic surgeon who was a native of Weidenau . He studied medicine at the University of Vienna and subsequently worked as an assistant to surgeon Eduard Albert in Vienna. In 1901 he was one of the founders of the German Society of Orthopaedic Surgery...
, Lorenz began a premedical curriculum in 1922 at
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City...
, but he returned to Vienna in 1923 to continue his studies at the
University of ViennaThe University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is, therefore, the oldest university in the German-speaking world and one of the largest in Central Europe.-History:...
. He graduated as Doctor of Medicine (MD) in 1928 and became an assistant professor at the Institute of Anatomy until 1935.
He finished his zoological studies in 1933 and received his second doctorate (PhD).
In 1936, at an international scientific symposium on instinct, Lorenz met his great friend and colleague
Nikolaas TinbergenNikolaas "Niko" Tinbergen was a Dutch ethologist and ornithologist who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz for their discoveries concerning organization and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns in animals.In the 1960s he...
. Together they studied geese - wild, domestic, and hybrid. One result of these studies was that Lorenz "realized that an overpowering increase in the drives of feeding as well as of copulation and a waning of more differentiated social instincts is characteristic of very many domestic animals." Lorenz began to suspect and fear "that analogous processes of deterioration may be at work with civilized humanity."
In 1940 he became a professor of
psychologyPsychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the systematic, and sometimes scientific, study of human or animal mental functions and behavior...
at the
University of KönigsbergThe University of Königsberg was the university of Königsberg, East Prussia. It was founded in 1544 by Albert, Duke of Prussia, and was commonly known as the Albertina....
. He was drafted into the
WehrmachtWehrmacht was the name of the unified armed forces of Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe ....
in 1941. He sought to be a motorcycle mechanic, but instead he was assigned as a medic. He was Captured by the Russians very near the start of his service and became a
prisoner of warA prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a combatant who is held in continuing custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
in the Soviet Union from 1942 to 1948. In captivity he continued to work as a medic and "got quite friendly with some Russians, mostly doctors." When he was repatriated, he was allowed to keep the manuscript of a book he had been writing, and his pet starling. He arrived back in Altenberg "with manuscript and bird intact." The manuscript became his book
Behind the MirrorBehind the mirror, a search for a natural history of human knowledge was published by Konrad Lorenz in 1973 as Die Rückseite des Spiegels, Versuch einer Naturgeschichte menschlichen Erkennens....
. The
Max Planck SocietyThe Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften Eingetragener Verein is an independent non-profit association of German research institutes funded by the federal and state governments.The nearly 80 research institutes of the Max Planck Society conduct basic research in the interest...
established the Lorenz Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Buldern,
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
, in 1950.
In 1958, Lorenz transferred to the
Max Planck Institute for Behavioral PhysiologyMax Planck was a German physicist. He is considered to be the founder of the quantum theory, and thus one of the most important physicists of the twentieth century. Planck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.-Biography:Planck came from a traditional, intellectual family...
in Seewiesen. He shared the 1973
Nobel Prize in Physiology or MedicineThe Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded once a year by the Swedish Karolinska Institute. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Peace, and Physiology or Medicine...
"for discoveries in individual and social behavior patterns" with two other important early ethologists, Niko Tinbergen and
Karl von FrischKarl Ritter von Frisch was an Austrian ethologist who received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973, along with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz....
. In 1969, he became the first recipient of the
Prix mondial Cino Del DucaThe Prix mondial Cino Del Duca is a major international literary award established in 1969 in France by Simone Del Duca to continue the work of her late husband, publishing magnate Cino Del Duca...
.
Lorenz retired from the Max Planck Institute in 1973 but continued to research and publish from Altenberg (his family home, near Vienna) and
Grünau im AlmtalGrünau im Almtal is a town in the Austrian state of Upper Austria. The town had a population of 2,115 as of 2002....
in Austria.
Konrad Lorenz died on February 27, 1989, in Altenberg.
Lorenz was also a friend and student of renowned biologist Sir Julian Huxley (grandson of "Darwin's bulldog", Thomas Henry Huxley). Famed psycho-anatomist
Ralph GreensonDr. Ralph Greenson was a prominent American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. While working with Mrs Eunice Murray, Greenson is famous for being Marilyn Monroe's psychiatrist and the basis for Leo Rosten's 1963 novel, Captain Newman, M.D...
and Sir Peter Scott were good friends.
Politics
Lorenz joined the
Nazi PartyThe National Socialist German Workers' Party , commonly known in English as the Nazi Party , was a political party in Germany between 1919 and 1945...
in 1938 and accepted a university chair under the
Nazi regimeNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
. In his application for membership to the Nazi-party
NSDAPThe National Socialist German Workers' Party , commonly known in English as the Nazi Party , was a political party in Germany between 1919 and 1945...
he wrote in 1938: "I'm able to say that my whole scientific work is devoted to the ideas of the
National SocialistsNazism, known officially in German as National Socialism , is the totalitarian ideology and practices of the Nazi Party or National Socialist German Workers’ Party under Adolf Hitler, and the policies adopted by the dictatorial government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.Nazism is often considered...
." His publications during that time led in later years to allegations that his scientific work had been contaminated by Nazi sympathies: his published writing during the Nazi period included support for Nazi ideas of "
racial hygieneRacial hygiene is the selection, by a government, of the putatively most physical, intellectual and moral persons to raise the next generation and a close alignment of public health with eugenics.Racial hygiene was historically tied to traditional notions of public health, but usually with an...
" couched in pseudoscientific metaphors.
During the final years of his life Lorenz supported the fledgling
Austrian Green PartyThe Greens – The Green Alternative is a political party in the Austrian parliament....
and in 1984 became the figurehead of the Konrad Lorenz
VolksbegehrenA referendum , ballot question, or plebiscite is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to either accept or reject a particular proposal...
, a grass-roots movement that was formed to prevent the building of a power plant at the Danube near
Hainburg an der DonauHainburg an der Donau is a place in the Bruck an der Leitha district, Lower Austria, Austria.-Geography:The city is located next to the Danube river and Bratislava in Slovakia. It is part of the Industrial Quarter Industrieviertel in Lower Austria....
and thus the destruction of the surrounding woodland.
Contributions and legacy
Together with
Nikolaas TinbergenNikolaas "Niko" Tinbergen was a Dutch ethologist and ornithologist who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz for their discoveries concerning organization and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns in animals.In the 1960s he...
, Lorenz developed the idea of an innate releasing mechanism to explain instinctive behaviors (
fixed action patternIn ethology, a fixed action pattern is an instinctive behavioral sequence that is indivisible and runs to completion. Fixed action patterns are invariant and are produced by a neural network known as the innate releasing mechanism in response to an external sensory stimulus known as a sign...
s). They experimented with "supernormal stimuli" such as giant eggs or dummy bird beaks which they found could release the fixed action patterns more powerfully than the natural objects for which the behaviors were adapted. Influenced by the ideas of
William McDougallWilliam McDougall was an early twentieth century psychologist who spent the first part of his career in the United Kingdom and the latter part in the United States...
, Lorenz developed this into a "psychohydraulic" model of the
motivationMotivation is the activation or energization of goal-oriented behavior. Motivation may be internal or external. The term is generally used for humans but, theoretically, it can also be used to describe the causes for animal behavior as well. This article refers to human motivation...
of behavior, which tended towards
group selectionIn evolutionary biology, group selection refers to the idea that alleles can become fixed or spread in a population because of the benefits they bestow on groups, regardless of the alleles' effect on the fitness of individuals within that group....
ist ideas, which were influential in the 1960s. Another of his contributions to ethology is his work on
imprintingImprinting is the term used in psychology and ethology to describe any kind of phase-sensitive learning that is rapid and apparently independent of the consequences of behavior...
. His influence on a younger generation of ethologists; and his popular works, were important in bringing ethology to the attention of the general public.
There are three Konrad Lorenz Institutes in Austria; one is housed in his family mansion at Altenberg
http://www.kli.ac.at/, and another at his field station in Grünau.
Lorenz, like other ethologists, performed research largely by observation, or where experiments were conducted they were conducted in a natural setting. Occasionally there were long-term problems from his research, for example when geese
imprintedImprinting is the term used in psychology and ethology to describe any kind of phase-sensitive learning that is rapid and apparently independent of the consequences of behavior...
on baby buggies as goslings were later released into Vienna's parks, some later had an unforeseen propensity for attempting to mate with similar objects . Nevertheless,
animal welfareAnimal welfare, the health and well-being of animals, represents a systematic concern for people who believe that nonhuman animals are sentient beings that deserve consideration, respect, and care...
advocates like to point out that Lorenz won a Nobel Prize without ever using invasive techniques.
Lorenz's vision of the challenges facing humanity
Lorenz also predicted the relationship between market economics and the threat of ecological catastrophe. In his 1973 book,
Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins, Konrad Lorenz addresses the following paradox:
- "All the advantages that man has gained from his ever-deepening understanding of the natural world that surrounds him, his technological, chemical and medical progress, all of which should seem to alleviate human suffering... tends instead to favor humanity's destruction"
Lorenz adopts an ecological model to attempt to grasp the mechanisms behind this contradiction. Thus "all species... are adapted to their environment... including not only inorganic components... but all the other living beings that inhabit the locality." p31.
Fundamental to Lorenz' theory of ecology is the function of feedback mechanisms, especially negative ones which, in hierarchical fashion, dampen impulses that occur beneath a certain threshold. The thresholds themselves are the product of the interaction of contrasting mechanisms. Thus pain and pleasure act as checks on each other:
- "To gain a desired prey, a dog or wolf will do things that, in other contexts, they would shy away from: run through thorn bushes, jump into cold water and expose themselves to risks which would normally frighten them. All these inhibitory mechanisms... act as a counterweight to the effects of learning mechanisms... The organism cannot allow itself to pay a price which is not worth paying". p53.
In nature, these mechanisms tend towards a 'stable state' among the living beings of an ecology:
- "A closer examination shows that these beings... not only do not damage each other, but often constitute a community of interests. It is obvious that the predator is strongly interested in the survival of that species, animal or vegetable, which constitutes its prey. ... It is not uncommon that the prey species derives specific benefits from its interaction with the predator species..." pp31–33.
Lorenz states that humanity is the one species not bound by these mechanisms, being the only one that has defined its own environment:
- "[The pace of human ecology] is determined by the progress of man's technology (p35)... human ecology (economy) is governed by mechanisms of POSITIVE feedback, defined as a mechanism which tends to encourage behavior rather than to attenuate it (p43). Positive feedback always involves the danger of an 'avalanche' effect... One particular kind of positive feedback occurs when individuals OF THE SAME SPECIES enter into competition among themselves... For many animal species, environmental factors keep... intraspecies selection from [leading to] disaster... But there is no force which exercises this type of healthy regulatory effect on humanity's cultural development; unfortunately for itself, humanity has learned to overcome all those environmental forces which are external to itself" p44.
Lorenz does not see human independence from natural ecological processes as necessarily bad. Indeed, he states that:
- "A completely new [ecology] which corresponds in every way to [humanity's] desires... could, theoretically, prove as durable as that which would have existed without his intervention (36).
However, the principle of competition, typical of Western societies, destroys any chance of this:
- "The competition between human beings destroys with cold and diabolic brutality... Under the pressure of this competitive fury we have not only forgotten what is useful to humanity as a whole, but even that which is good and advantageous to the individual. [...] One asks, which is more damaging to modern humanity: the thirst for money or consuming haste... in either case, fear plays a very important role: the fear of being overtaken by one's competitors, the fear of becoming poor, the fear of making wrong decisions or the fear of not being up to snuff..." pp45–47.
In this book, Lorenz proposes that the best hope for mankind lies in our looking for mates based on the kindness of their hearts rather than good looks or wealth. He illustrates this with a Jewish story, explicitly described as such.
Lorenz was one of the early scientists who recognised the significance of overpopulation. The number one deadly sin of civilized man in his book is overpopulation, what leads to aggression.
Philosophical speculations
In his 1973 book
Behind the Mirror: A Search for a Natural History of Human KnowledgeBehind the mirror, a search for a natural history of human knowledge was published by Konrad Lorenz in 1973 as Die Rückseite des Spiegels, Versuch einer Naturgeschichte menschlichen Erkennens....
, Lorenz considers the old philosophical question of whether our senses correctly inform us about the world as it is, or provide us only with an illusion. His answer comes from
evolutionary biologyEvolutionary biology is a sub-field of biology concerned with the origin of species from a common descent and descent of species, as well as their change, multiplication and diversity over time. Someone who studies evolutionary biology is known as an evolutionary biologist...
. Only traits that help us survive and reproduce are transmitted. If our senses gave us wrong information about our environment, we would soon be extinct. Therefore we can be sure that our senses give us correct information, for otherwise we would not be here to be deceived.
Works
Lorenz's best-known books are
King Solomon's RingKing Solomon's Ring is a zoological book for the general audience, written by the Austrian scientist Konrad Lorenz in 1949. The first English-language edition appeared in 1952....
and
On AggressionOn Aggression is a book by ethologist Konrad Lorenz. As he writes in the prologue, "the subject of this book is aggression, that is to say the fighting instinct in beast and man which is directed against members of the same species."...
, both written for a popular audience. His scientific work appeared mainly in journal articles, written in
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by...
; they became widely known to English-speaking scientists through the descriptions of it in Tinbergen's
1951 bookThe year 1951 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Computer science:* March 30 - Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau.-Awards:*Nobel Prizes...
The Study of Instinct, though many of his papers were later published in English translation in the two volumes titled
Studies in Geese and Waste Behavior.
- King Solomon's Ring
King Solomon's Ring is a zoological book for the general audience, written by the Austrian scientist Konrad Lorenz in 1949. The first English-language edition appeared in 1952....
(1949)
- Man Meets Dog
Man Meets Dog is a zoological book for the general audience, written by the Austrian scientist Konrad Lorenz in 1949. The first English-language edition appeared in 1954....
(1950)
- Evolution and Modification of Behavior (1965)
- On Aggression
On Aggression is a book by ethologist Konrad Lorenz. As he writes in the prologue, "the subject of this book is aggression, that is to say the fighting instinct in beast and man which is directed against members of the same species."...
(1966)
- Studies in Animal and Human Behavior, Volume I (1970)
- Studies in Animal and Human Behavior, Volume II (1971)
- Behind the Mirror: A Search for a Natural History of Human Knowledge
Behind the mirror, a search for a natural history of human knowledge was published by Konrad Lorenz in 1973 as Die Rückseite des Spiegels, Versuch einer Naturgeschichte menschlichen Erkennens....
(1973)
- Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins (1974)
- The Year of the Greylag Goose (1979)
- The Foundations of Ethology (1982)
- Here Am I - Where Are You? - The Behavior of the Greylag Goose (In collaboration with Michael Martys and Angelika Tipler). (1988). Translated by Robert D. Martin from Hier bin ich - wo bist du?. ISBN 0151400563
- The Natural Science of the Human Species: An Introduction to Comparative Behavioral Research - The Russian Manuscript (1944-1948)(1995)
External links