Lloyd Morgan, and the Rise and Fall of "Animal Psychology"

Alan Costall 1
University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom

Whereas Darwin insisted upon the continuity of human and nonhuman animals, more recent students of animal behavior have largely assumed discontinuity. Lloyd Morgan was a pivotal figure in this transformation. His "canon," although intended to underpin a psychological approach to animals, has been persistently misunderstood to be a stark prohibition of anthropomorphic description. His extension to animals of the terms "behavior" and "trial-and-error," previously restricted to human psychology, again largely unwittingly, devalued their original meaning and widened the gulf between animals and humans. His insistence that knowledge of animal psychology could be trusted solely to "qualified" observers initiated the exclusion from science of the informal and intimate knowledge of animals gained by pet owners, animal trainers, and other scientific outsiders. The presumption, however, that animals, in contrast to people, are to be understood solely as "strangers," begs, rather than addresses, the question of animal-human continuity.


Lloyd Morgan had no bias either towards humanizing or towards automatizing. The behavioristic trend of animal psychology since then has diverted attention from those problems of the nature of an animal's conscious processes in which Lloyd Morgan was so much interested (Grindley, 1936, p. 2).


Although the climate of opinion seems to be changing (Dawkins, 1993), much of the scientific literature continues to maintain that the proper description of the activities of animals should be pitched at the most impoverished mechanistic level. For example, Kennedy, in his recent book, The New Anthropomorphism (1992), insists that there is something intrinsically unscientific about treating animals as psychological beings, even though his text is exceedingly unclear about why this might be so: "The scientific study of animal behavior was inevitably marked from birth by its anthropomorphic parentage and to a significant extent it still is. It has had to struggle to free itself from the incubus and the struggle is not over" (Kennedy, 1992, p. 3).

Kennedy puts the case rather dramatically, but his is not an isolated position. Many scientists continue to find themselves obliged to conform to it, often despite their better judgment. Hebb has described his experiences working in the forties at the Yerkes Primate Research Laboratory, where there had been an "official" prohibition of anthropomorphic description in the scientific reports of the research. As Hebb explained, such clinically detached language was not merely useless but potentially dangerous in the researchers' everyday dealings with the chimpanzees:


All that resulted was an almost endless series of specific acts in which no order or meaning could be found. On the other hand, by the use of frankly anthropomorphic concepts of emotion and attitude one could quickly and easily describe the peculiarities of the individual animals, and with this information a newcomer to the staff could handle the animals as he could not safely otherwise. Whatever the anthropomorphic terminology may seem to imply about conscious states in the chimpanzee, it provides an intelligible and practical guide to behavior (Hebb, 1946, p. 88).
The upshot was not a shift towards a consistent use of intentionalist language, however, but an absurd polarization where, in their practical dealings with the animals, the researchers found that they just had to treat the chimpanzees as conscious beings with definite intentions, emotions, and temperaments. In their scientific reports, however, they scrupulously eliminated all trace of such psychological terms (Birke & Smith, 1995; Crocker, 1984; Weider, 1980).
More recently, Goodall provided a vivid account of the difficulties she faced when writing up a Ph.D. dissertation based upon her fieldwork with chimpanzees, research distinguished by, and dependent upon, the close personal relationships she had established with her "subjects." Her Ph.D. supervisor, Robert Hinde, did his best to appeal to her scientific conscience:


[Although] I continued to hold to most of my convictions -- that animals had personalities; that they could feel happy or sad or fearful; that they could feel pain; that they could strive towards planned goals and achieve greater success if they were highly motivated -- I soon realized that these personal convictions were, indeed, difficult to prove. It was best to be circumspect -- at least until I had gained some credentials and credibility. And Robert gave me wonderful advice on how best to tie up some of my more rebellious ideas with scientific ribbon. "You can't know that Fifi was jealous," he admonished on one occasion. We argued a little. And then: "Why don't you just say If Fifi were a human child we would say she was jealous." I did. (Goodall, 1990, p. 13.)
Anyone interested in the impact of Darwin on modern thought will appreciate the striking contradiction here. How could the post-Darwinian study of animal behavior have come to be so resolutely opposed to the treatment of animals as psychological beings? After all, the continuity between human and nonhuman animals (one based on the idea of adaptive radiation rather than the classical notion of a linear scale) was fundamental to Darwin's thinking. Furthermore, the fact of animal intelligence and purposiveness figured centrally in Darwin's own accounts of both sexual and natural selection. According to Darwin, the process of adaptation was not to be construed exclusively as a one-sided "fitting" of organisms to a pre-existing and fixed set of circumstances. Rather animals, through their intelligent activities, also shape their circumstances. A fine example of this is to be found in Darwin's last book, The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Action of Worms (1881), since, of course, the environment of earthworms evolved along with their activity of drawing leaves into the ground. What is more, this activity is an intelligent one. Dragging a large leaf into a tight burrow is a far from simple task, yet, as Darwin demonstrated in a remarkable series of experiments, earthworms do not act in an haphazard fashion, but usually tug at the most appropriate point even, when dealing with unfamiliar leaves or novel shapes cut out of pieces of paper. Here is Darwin's own conclusion:

[Earthworms] apparently exhibit some degree of intelligence instead of a mere blind instinctive impulse, in the manner of plugging up their burrows. They act in nearly the same manner as would a man, who had to close a cylindrical tube with different kinds of leaves, petioles, triangles of paper . . . for they commonly seize such objects by their pointed ends. (Darwin, 1881, p. 315; Reed, 1982)
The idea that intelligent activity is not simply an outcome but also a positive factor in the evolutionary process was further developed at the close of the last century by a small number of biologists and psychologists. Challenging the lurch within evolutionary biology towards mechanism and reductionism, which began shortly after Darwin's death, these theorists insisted that animal consciousness had to be recognized as having an active role in the evolutionary process. Lloyd Morgan (1852-1936) was one of the main proponents of this view. He had studied with Thomas Henry Huxley in London, but had also been a close associate of the early student of animal behavior, George Romanes. Despite being immersed for a large part of his career in university administration (first as Principal of University College, Bristol, and then, very briefly, as Vice Chancellor of the new University of Bristol he had helped to establish), he continued to be highly productive. The sheer volume and range of his publications is astonishing (Costall, 1998). His scientific work was taken very seriously indeed. In 1889, he became the first psychological researcher ever to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society (Grindley, 1936), and, in 1920, the first President of the newly established Psychology Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
The purpose of this paper is not to celebrate Morgan's achievements, however, but to examine his role in the transformation that occurred in both biological and psychological thought, from Darwinism to neo-Darwinism -- the negation of Darwin's revolutionary challenge to the mechanistic assumptions of traditional science through the assimilation of Darwinism to that very scheme (Boakes, 1984; Johnston, 1995; Richards, 1987). Morgan did not initiate these changes and, in several important ways, sought to counter them. And yet he proved pivotal in a largely negative way. His most active years as an animal researcher coincide almost exactly with the most critical period of this transformation (i.e., from Darwin's death in 1882 to the rediscovery of Mendel's laws at the beginning of the 20th century). He was transitional, in two senses. Historically, as the most prominent animal researcher, the period of his most active research intervened between Romanes' "animal psychology" and Thorndike's "animal behaviorism." Intellectually, the tensions played out during the process of transition pervaded his own thinking. It is as though he could never reconcile the conflicting influences of his two mentors: Huxley's mechanistic, even Cartesian, reading of Darwin and his promotion of Darwinism in the cause of the professionalization of the "scientist," and Romanes' organic, even psychological, vision of the biological order and his gentlemanly respect for the "amateur."


Lloyd Morgan's Canon


Morgan was committed to the idea that animal consciousness is biologically significant. As he put it, an animal is no "mere puppet in the hand of circumstances" (Morgan, 1894, p. 338):


The pendulum swing of opinion has, under the teaching of Professor Weismann, swung so far in the direction of the non-acceptance of the hereditary transmission of characters individually acquired through intelligent adjustment or otherwise; that the part played by consciousness in the evolution of the higher and more active animals is apt to pass unnoticed or unrecorded. It is well, therefore, to put in a reminder that a great number of animals would never reach the adult state in which they pass into the hands of the comparative anatomist save for the acquisition of experience, and the effective use of the consciousness to which they are heirs; that their survival is due, not only to their possession of certain structures and organs, but, every whit as much, to the practical use to which these possessions are put in the give and take of active life (Morgan, 1900, pp. 310-311).
Morgan went further. Animal mentality, he argued, is a positive factor in the evolutionary process (Morgan, 1896, 1900, 1909; Baldwin, 1902; Belew & Mitchell, 1996; Braestrup, 1971; Hardy, 1965; Richards, 1987). According to the theory of organic selection, developed conjointly with J. M. Baldwin, H. F. Osborn, and E. B. Poulton, individually acquired "modifications" not only change the context of subsequent natural selection but do so in such a way that "congenital variations" coincident with those modifications would be favored. In effect, natural selection takes on an intelligent direction:

There is . . . a way in which, when natural selection is operative, intelligence may serve to foster congenital variations of the required nature and direction. We must remember that acquired habits on the one hand, and congenital variations on the other, are both working, in their different spheres, towards the same end, that of adjustment to the conditions of life. If, then, acquired accommodation and congenital adaptation reach this end by different methods, survival may be best secured by their cooperation. . . . Any hereditary variations which coincide in direction with modifications of behaviour due to acquired habit would be favoured and fostered. (Morgan, 1900, p. 115).(2)

[In short, Morgan insisted upon a role for animal mentality and intelligence in evolution. His credentials as a "true Darwinian" (Romanes, 1895) would thus seem unquestionable. Yet there were several developments in his work that nevertheless helped transform the post-Darwinian study of animal activity from a science based on the idea of human-nonhuman continuity to one committed to discontinuity.

The first of these paradoxical developments concerns Morgan's so-called canon, which he first presented at the International Congress of Experimental Psychology held in London in 1892 (Dixon, 1892), and later published in his book, An Introduction to Comparative Psychology (Morgan, 1894, p. 59). According to Morgan's canon, in no case is "an animal activity to be interpreted as the outcome of the exercise of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be fairly interpreted as the outcome of one which stands lower on the psychological scale" (Dixon, 1892, p. 393). Morgan's contemporaries, and most later authors, have understood the canon as insisting upon the almost complete elimination of the use of psychological language in relation to animals and an extreme appeal to the principle of parsimony. Yet its purpose was quite the reverse.

Prior to the canon, Morgan had been engaged in a protracted dispute with Romanes regarding the latter's proposal for an "animal psychology." Morgan's initial, firmly held position was that a psychological treatment of animal activity was methodologically impossible. But he came to change his mind, and the canon represents Morgan's eventual acceptance of Romanes' project (Costall, 1993). Far from prohibiting the psychological description of animal activities, the canon was intended to provide a framework for a psychological approach to animals. When Morgan realized his intentions were being misinterpreted, he added the clarification that "the Canon by no means excludes the interpretation of a particular activity in terms of the higher processes, if we already have independent evidence of the occurrence of these higher processes in the animal under observation" (Morgan, 1903, p. 59). Nor, contrary to most accounts, was the canon, in any simple sense, an appeal to the principle of parsimony -- an invitation to be economical with the truth. As Morgan insisted, "Surely the simplicity of an explanation is no necessary criterion of its truth" (Morgan, 1894, p. 54). His serious point was that there were very good Darwinian reasons for supposing that animals should vary in the nature of their mentality. The canon was, therefore, Morgan's attempt to put "anthropomorphism," the psychological approach to animals, on a secure scientific footing (Costall, 1993).

The extent to which the intentions of Morgan's canon have been misinterpreted is astonishing. One recent author has even transformed the canon into a (misspelt) ecclesiastical title, referring to a "Cannon Lloyd Morgan -- A Pioneering Primatologist" (Baron-Cohen, 1995, p. 121)! There have been numerous attempts over the years to set the record straight, in one way or another, about Morgan and his canon (Burghardt, 1985; Costall, 1983; Dewsbury, 1979; Gray, 1963; Nagge, 1932; Newbury, 1954; Rollin, 1989, 1990; Singer, 1981; Terrace, 1984). If, however, the immediate purpose of Morgan's canon was to underscore the continuity of human and nonhuman animals, was Morgan entirely innocent of any involvement in the process that eventually led to the rigid commitment within science to discontinuity? Why, for example, did Mills, writing very shortly after the publication of the canon, complain that Morgan was becoming "more and more in sympathy with the destructive school" (Mills, 1899, p. 271)?

The main problem with Morgan was that, in a time of radical intellectual transition, he was unclear, perhaps even to himself, about his intentions. Furthermore, in relation to the canon, he seems to have been rather evasive about its origins in his disputes with Romanes. Morgan never acknowledged his acceptance of Romanes' idea of an animal psychology and, somewhat ungraciously, left Romanes to discover for himself that Morgan had finally come round to his way of thinking. When Morgan's Springs of Conduct (1885) appeared, Romanes, who reviewed the book for Nature, noted that Morgan had once taken "exception to the study of animal intelligence and mental evolution in animals, on the ground that it is impossible to obtain any verified knowledge of brutes, seeing that we cannot directly interrogate them upon the nature of their feelings or mental states." But, as Romanes went on to observe, Morgan had evidently changed his tune in the light of the correspondence they had been conducting through the pages of Nature:

The discussion . . . appears to have had the effect of somewhat modifying his original views; for these, as now stated in his book, are not so severely skeptical as they were when stated in these columns. That is to say, he now appears to recognize the possibility of comparative psychology as a science, although its subject-matter is necessarily restricted by the inadequacy of our "ejective" knowledge of animal intelligence." (Romanes, 1886, p. 437)


After Romanes' death, Morgan did his best to suggest that the main purpose of his canon had been to counter Romanes' anecdotalism (Morgan, 1932, p. 264). Yet anecdotalism had hardly been the issue in his early disputes with Romanes (indeed Romanes needed few lessons from Morgan on the subject of experimentation). The serious issue that had separated Morgan from Romanes, prior to the canon, was Morgan's resolute insistance on the very impossibility of making inferences from what animals do to what they feel or think and, hence, of an animal psychology. The canon was meant to help resolve this methodological impasse (Costall, 1993). And it is important to be clear that its logic applies as much to experimental data as to anecdotal evidence, since the fundamental problem identified by Morgan is precisely the same: How to go from "body story" to "mind story." By linking the canon to his antipathy to anecdotalism, however, Morgan managed to make it seem an essentially destructive, rather than constructive, proposal -- a rejection of Romanes' approach rather than a qualified acceptance of the idea of an animal psychology.


"Animal Behavior" and "Trial-and-Error"


If the canon backfired, with a little help from Morgan himself, so did two of his terminological innovations. The first concerns his extension of the term "behaviour" to animals. Morgan's book, Animal Behaviour, published in 1900, was the first book ever to use this title and, more importantly, one of the first scientific works to extend the term "behavior" to animals in a sustained way. [The use of this term with reference to animals was not entirely unprecedented. For example, Wesley Mills used the term "behavior" in relation to animals in a paper he published in 1887 (Cadwallader, 1984); and, earlier still, Darwin himself made reference to the "behaviour of two chimpanzees . . . when they were first brought together" (Darwin, 1872, p. 213).]

Originally, "behavior" had referred to how people conduct themselves in society, and this original moral sense is still apparent in the expressions "misbehavior," and "behave yourself!" In the middle of the nineteenth century, "behavior" was first extended, not to animals, but to the description of physical and chemical processes, in order to convey a sense of their orderliness, though clearly not their intentionality or morality (Ardener, 1973; Williams, 1983). Thus, when Morgan came to talk of "animal behavior," the word "behavior" had already become radically ambivalent in its meaning. Morgan was well aware of this ambivalence, as he took care to explain at the outset of his book:

We commonly use the word "behaviour" with a wide range of meaning. We speak of the behaviour of troops in the field, of the prisoner at the bar, of a dandy in the ball-room. But the chemist and the physicist often speak of the behaviour of atoms and molecules, or that of a gas under changing conditions of temperature and pressure. . . . Frequently employed with a moral significance, the word is at least occasionally used in a wider and more comprehensive sense. When Mary, the nurse, returns with the little Miss Smiths from Master Brown's birthday party, she is narrowly questioned as to their behaviour; but meanwhile their father, the professor, has been discoursing to his students on the behaviour of iron filings in the magnetic field; and his son Jack, of H. M. S. Blunderer, entertains his elder sisters with a graphic description of the behaviour of a first-class battle-ship in a heavy sea. (Morgan, 1900, p. 1.)

Unfortunately, despite his evident sense of the profound ambiguity of "behavior," Morgan chose to keep his options open with "a wide and comprehensive sense" (Morgan, 1900, p. 1) and failed to take a clear stand on the question of animal consciousness:


Thus broadly used, the term in all cases indicates and draws attention to the reaction of that which we speak of as behaving, in response to certain surrounding conditions or circumstances which evoke the behaviour. . . . From what has already been said it may be inferred that our use of the term "behaviour" neither implies nor excludes the presence of consciousness. (Morgan, 1900, pp. 2-3)

"Animal behavior" proved an unfortunate combination of terms. Rather than the residual, positive human connotations of "behavior" rubbing off onto animals, the traditional, negative connotations of "animal" came further to devalue the concept of "behavior." As a result, not only has psychology become deprived of one of its most potentially significant terms, but also "behavior," in its modern impoverished, though still somewhat ambivalent, sense (cf. Danziger, 1997, pp. 92-3), has become basic to the reformulation of Cartesian dualism: Animals merely "behave," whereas humans not only "behave" but also think. Indeed, although in his theory of organic selection, Morgan insisted that mind existed within the natural order and made a difference, he nevertheless retained in his discussions of methodology an essentially Cartesian conception of mind as an "occult" entity, concealed within the body. He regarded "mind story" and "body story" as logically separate, a view that largely dominates current discussions of anthropomorphism both pro and con (Mitchell, Thompson, & Miles, 1997; cf. Crist, 1994; Shapiro, 1997). Morgan shared Romanes' view that we can know about the mind of another human or other animal, if at all, solely in an indirect and unreliable way, by "projecting" onto the other's behavior one's own introspective states:

For me, the plain tale of behavior, as we observe and describe it, yields only, as I have put it, body-story and not mind-story. Mind-story is always "imputed" insofar as one can put oneself in the place of another. And this "imputation," as I now call it, must always be hazardous. But we can in varying measure reduce its hazardry insofar as it may be checked by an appeal to one's own first-hand experience under introspection (Morgan, 1932, pp. 249-50).
Morgan's application of the term "trial-and-error" to animals (Morgan, 1896), suffered a fate similar to that of "behaviour." When Alexander Bain introduced the term to psychology in 1855, it had defined a very high grade of human problem solving in which various options are tried out, in a more or less systematic way, to test their appropriateness for the task at hand: "An inventor or a creative artist needs, according to Bain, first a command of the elements to be used, and second a 'feeling of the end to be served' and good judgment of when the end is satisfactorily attained" (Woodworth, 1950, p. 747).

"Trial-and-error" had already been somewhat relegated in its status in later editions of Bain's own writings (Still, 1988), before Morgan came to apply the term to animals. Curiously, when explaining what he meant by "trial-and-error" (while at the same time warning of the perils of anecdotalism), Morgan himself repeatedly resorted to anecdote, about how his dog had learned to escape from the front garden having once inadvertently lifted the latch of the gate with his head. Morgan was prepared to credit his dog with having a definite purpose in mind, but not with any intelligent command of its actions, other than to "select from a number of relatively indeterminate activities that one which experience proves to be effectual" (Morgan, 1894, p. 162, emphasis added). Although Morgan deemed such low-level functioning to be "the very essence of intelligence" (Morgan, 1894, p. 154), his formulation of trial-and-error, by denying any understanding of means-ends relations, opened the way for later theorists to devalue, yet further, the meaning of "animal behavior," by treating its very purposiveness as an illusion, the outcome of an entirely automatic process of reinforcement.


Disqualifying the Non-Scientists


So far, Lloyd Morgan could be regarded as undermining the principle of animal-human continuity largely despite himself. In one respect, however, he was intent upon promoting division, as one of a new generation of students of animal activity, keen to set themselves above anyone else who might have claims to possess specialist knowledge about animals. In so doing, Morgan and his peers stand in stark contrast with earlier writers, such as Darwin, Romanes, or Lubbock (Lord Avebury), who eagerly drew upon a wide range of experts (pigeon fanciers, animal trainers, hunters, pet owners), and who, although they conducted careful experiments, did not make a fetish of the activity. [On Lubbock's increasingly precarious position as both an amateur and a "serious" researcher, see Clark (1997).]

"The experiment," elevated to the status of an exclusive source of knowledge, has proved a surprisingly effective device for psychologists to distance themselves from other would-be experts. As George Miller once put it, some psychologists "would not believe that people have two arms and two legs unless you could do an experiment proving it" (quoted in Baars 1986, p. 217). Although, Lloyd Morgan certainly made a point of noting the lack of experimental evidence forthcoming from the non-scientists to support their claims about the abilities of animals, it was his young American disciple, Edward L. Thorndike, who took things to their nihilistic extreme, disregarding even his scientific peers. As Wesley Mills wearily complained, "Dr. Thorndike has not been hampered in his researches by any of that respect for workers of the past of any complexion" (Mills, 1899, p. 263). [Jonçich Clifford (1984), in an excellent biography, portrays the young Thorndike as a guileless opportunist, relishing the notoriety of his doctoral dissertation on cats.]

Morgan did not share Thorndike's extreme position on experimentation, and even criticized the artificiality of his experiments, noting that "a sturdy and unconvinceable advocate of reasoning (properly so-called) in animals may say that to place a starving kitten in the cramped confinement of one of Mr. Thorndike's box-cages, would be more likely to make a cat swear than to lead it to act rationally" (Morgan, 1898, p. 249). Yet, in line with his early teacher, the middle-class outsider, Huxley (Desmond, 1994), Morgan was eager to promote the professionalization of science and the rise of "the scientist." Morgan's objection to non-scientists entering the debate about the capacities of animals seems primarily to have been that they were unqualified. He could be remarkably emphatic, even offensive, about this. In a review of a book by Garner on the speech of monkeys, he rounded on the poor author, ridiculing him for his "popular and chatty anecdotes, with reflections thereon suitable for the delectation of elderly spinsters." Having challenged Garner's scientific credentials by, in effect, questioning his masculinity, Morgan delivered his verdict:


There is no evidence in his book that he has, by a careful training in psychology, earned for himself the right of expressing a scientific opinion on this difficult question. (Morgan, 1892, p. 509)

While the amateur experts on the abilities of animals were being dismissed as sentimental old women (regardless of their sex) and, hence, inherently unreliable, the credibility of mothers (though, significantly, not fathers) was being similarly attacked within the new science of child psychology on the grounds of their emotional involvement with their offspring. In the case of child psychology, however, the male scientists faced a serious complication: The power of the mother and the nurse in the Victorian household in controlling access to "the pass-key to the nursery," and in limiting the kinds of experimental interventions that could be inflicted on the child (Sully, 1895, pp. 17-18; Sully, 1881; Riley, 1983).

Of course, the early students of animal behavior also encountered some problems gaining access to animals. They did not usually have the continual supply of animals (typically, rats, cats, or monkeys) that are available to the modern researcher; presumably, when attempting to study other people's pets, they had to seek informed consent. The following project, outlined by Romanes in a letter to Darwin in 1881, however, seems to have been hardly designed to win the whole-hearted approval of the cat-lovers, or cats, of Wimbledon:


I have got a lot of cats waiting for me at different houses around Wimbledon Common, and some day next week shall surprise our coachman by making a round of calls upon the cats, drive them several miles into the country, and then let them out of their respective bags. If any return, I shall try them again in other directions. (reprinted in Ethel Romanes, 1896, p. 107)

The dismissal, within the two new sciences of animal psychology and child psychology, of those who could not be trusted as dispassionate observers, was not restricted to non-scientists. It included other scientists, untrained in psychological method, who were prone to relate too closely to the objects of their study. Morgan's statement of the canon is immediately preceded by a discussion of the disqualification of many apparent "experts" to engage in animal psychology:


There are, I am well aware, many people who fancy that by the objective study of animal life they can pass by direct induction to conclusions concerning the psychic faculties of animals. All that is necessary, these people will tell you, is to observe carefully, and to explain the actions you observe in the most natural manner. "In the most natural manner," here means and is equivalent to, just the same way as you explain the actions of your human neighbours and acquaintances. And these human actions are explained on the assumption that your neighbour is actuated by motives and impulses similar to your own. . . .

There can be no question that the interpretation of the actions of animals as the outcome of mental processes essentially similar to those of man amply suffices for practical needs. The farmer, the keeper of a kennel, the cattlebreeder, the gamekeeper, the breaker-in of horses, all the practical men who are employed in the breeding, rearing, and training of animals, and the great number of people who keep animals as pets or in domestic service find a somewhat rough and ready interpretation amply sufficient for their purposes in hand. . . . But for the scientific investigator thorough and accurate knowledge of and training in psychology is of at least co-ordinate importance with accuracy of objective observation.


Unfortunately many able men who are eminently fitted to make and record exact observations on the habits and activities of animals have not undergone the training necessary to enable them to deal with the psychological aspect of the question. The skilled naturalist or biologist is seldom also skilled in psychological analysis. Notwithstanding therefore the admirable and invaluable observations of our great naturalists, we cannot help feeling that their psychological conclusions are hardly on the same level as that reached by their conclusions in the purely biological field (Morgan, 1894, pp. 50-52).

Within scientific discourse, a dichotomy between two ways of knowing, involvement versus detachment, has become entrenched -- one which, in turn, underpins a stark division between two kinds of objects of knowledge. On the one hand, there are certain people, who can safely be treated by scientists as "one of us." On the other hand, there are animals (and also, perhaps, non-civilized adults and children), who, scientifically speaking, are to be known solely at a distance, exclusively as strangers. In effect, a methodological double-standard has become established that reinforces the very distinction it pretends to clarify. The unilateral application of Morgan's canon as well as the exclusion of "non-expert" evidence solely in relation to animals begs, rather than answers, the question of the mental discontinuity, or otherwise, of animals and humans. This crucial point, somewhat lost on modern psychologists, did not entirely escape the notice of Morgan's contemporaries:


Skepticism of this kind is logically bound to deny evidence of mind, not only in the case of lower animals, but also in that of the higher, and even in that of men other than the skeptic himself. (Romanes, 1883, p. 6; Holmes, 1911, p. 234; Romanes, 1884).

This unilateral skepticism, adopted in the name of science, gives rise to a fundamental contradiction in our scientific practice. For it is not simply that scientists when off-duty seldom relate to animals in a clinically detached way either outside or inside the laboratory (Still, 1987). As Hebb (1946) and many others since have stressed (Wieder, 1980), such "non-expert" knowledge of animals is typically the essential precondition for their treatment as objects of detached scientific investigation.



Conclusion

Lloyd Morgan did not mean to promote animal-human discontinuity; neither, as an evolutionary thinker, did he wish to argue for identity. Nevertheless, he seems to have been unusually accident-prone. Despite his better intentions, the canon backfired, and his attempt to extend the terms "behaviour" and "trial-and-error" to animals proved, in the longer-term, divisive. But it was the attempt by Morgan and his peers to disparage, not animals directly, but rather the knowledge claims of those who live and work most closely with them that is perhaps most basic to the persistence of the anti-Darwinian notion of the discontinuity of humans and animals. The resolution of this curious paradox of post-Darwinian science will require, however, not just an epistemological and political re-evaluation of our so-called "scientific" and "non-expert" knowledge of animals, but also a rejection of the Cartesian assumptions that, despite Darwin's radical challenge, continue to structure much of modern science and make animal psychology (and, indeed, human psychology) seem such a hazardous affair (Costall, 1996).


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Notes
1. Correspondence should be addressed to Alan Costall, Psychology Department, University of Portsmouth, King Henry Street, Portsmouth, PO1 2DY, U.K., or by e-mail to costalla@psyc.port.ac.uk. An earlier version of this paper was presented at "ISAZ '96: The Animal Contract," International Society for Anthrozoology, Downing College, Cambridge, July 24-26, 1996. I am grateful to Ann Richards and Paul Morris for their helpful comments. I also appreciate the very helpful comments of the three anonymous referees, one of whom alerted me to Darwin's early use of the term "behavior" in relation to chimpanzees.

2. The theory of organic selection was, in fact, a coalition of different ideas from its "independent" discovers. Morgan's main contribution seems to have been the proposal that congenital variations would specifically follow the direction taken by intelligent modifications. Baldwin emphasized the importance of social transmission in spreading intelligent modifications throughout a group, and hence consolidating the changes in the context of natural selection operating upon congenital variations. Although Morgan insisted that the capacity to undergo modifications should be regarded as heritable, he nevertheless subscribed, at least in his formulation of the theory of organic selection, to a stark dichotomy between individually acquired modifications, on the one hand, and congenital variations on the other. According to Morgan, modifications, being individually acquired, were not themselves subject to selection; rather organic selection served to replace such modifications by heritable variations. Contrary to the claims of many later commentators, however, neither Morgan or Baldwin regarded this process of replacement as involving a single mutation, but rather, a gradual process of selection.
 

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