ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
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ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE
EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES
BY
EDWARD L. THORNDIKE
TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1911
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1911,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1911.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
The main purpose of this volume is to make accessibleto students of psychology and biology the author’s experimentalstudies of animal intellect and behavior.[1] Thesestudies have, I am informed by teachers of comparativepsychology, a twofold interest. Since they represent thefirst deliberate and extended application of the experimentalmethod in animal psychology, they are a usefulintroduction to the later literature of that subject. Theymark the change from books of general argumentationon the basis of common experience interpreted in termsof the faculty psychology, to monographs reporting detailedand often highly technical experiments interpretedin terms of original and acquired connections betweensituation and response. Since they represent the pointof view and the method of present animal psychology, butin the case of very general and simple problems, they areuseful also as readings for students who need a generalacquaintance with some sample of experimental work inthis field.
It has seemed best to leave the texts unaltered exceptfor the correction of typographical errors, renumberingof tables and figures, and redrawing the latter. In afew places, where the original text has been found likelyto be misunderstood, brief notes have been added. It ishard to resist the impulse to temper the style, especiallyof the ‘Animal Intelligence,’ with a certain sobriety andrestraint. What one writes at the age of twenty-threeis likely to irritate oneself a dozen years later, as it doubtlessirritated others at the time. The charitable readermay allay his irritation by the thought that a degree ofexuberance, even of arrogance, is proper to youth.
To the reports of experimental studies are added twonew essays dealing with the general laws of human andanimal learning.
January, 1911.
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