DAWN OF REASON

Taranaki Daily News, 22 September 1931, Page 12

DAWN OF REASON

STUDY OF CHIMPANZEES. EFFECT OF MIRRORS. ’ London, August 13. Sir J. Arthur Thomson, the biologist, in an address to the Summer School of the British Social Hygiene Council, at Oxford, on “Biology and Human Life,” expressed a hope that the dawn of reason may be discovered through further study of the chimpanzee and other anthropoids. When explaining the activities of the body, he said that in spite of ourselves we were all peripatetic breweries. “We cannot think of life without fermentation. One of the most striking things of life is the rapidity of its processes. This is due to the hundreds of ferments in our bodies,” he said. “Nerve impulse remains an unsolved problem. The commonest thing in our life is a nerve thrill, yet we do not know what it is.” Consideration of conditional reflexes led him to refer to an experiment made by Pavlov, the Russian physiologist. Pavlov, he said, took a lot of white mice, rang a bell, and give them a meal, and he stated that after 390 lessons it was sufficient to ring the bell in order to bring the mice dashing out of their dormitory to eat the meal that was not there. “The second generation of mice, Pavlov said, required only 100 lessons, and the third generation 50, and so on. “I was sceptical about this,” said Sir Arthur, “and began similar experiments in Aberdeen. The first result was very interesting. Whereas the Leningrad white mice required 300 lessons to associate the ringing of the bell with the food, that was not there, the Aberdeen mice, as one might have expected, required. only forty. The second generation required exactly the same number of lessons. The Aberdeen experiment was quite contradictory of that made by Pavlov, who said that he must have been deceived by an assistant and publicly withdrew his views. “Man has almost no instinct. I regret that Professor McDougall has misled psychologists by his use of the word ‘instinct’ in reference to man. Why talk about the sex instinct? It is as blunt as blunt can be. “Take the maternal instinct. What does the inexperienced mother know about taking care of her child? How would she keep it if it were not for the experience of other mothers ? I think that as the study of chimpanzees and other anthropoids goes on, the dawn of reason will be discovered. “When some chimpanzees were given mirrors they were greatly pleased, and spent days looking at themselves, each one holding the mirror in the left hand, but having the right hand always ready to punch the fellow looking at it through the glass. They never got rid of the idea that there was another fellow, but when the glass mirrors were taken away they found mirrors of their own which were merely pieces of polished tin. Then ' they found that puddles of water gave a 'reflection, and they would gaze into the water by the hour. I should, think that just at that time there was the dawn of self-consciousness; that reason was just beginning to dawn on the chimpanzee’s mind."