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Rhetorical Strategies in the Presentation of Ethology and Comparative Psychology in Magazines after World War II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Donald A. Dewsbury
Donald A. Dewsbury
Affiliation:
Department of PsychologyUniversity of Florida.
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Abstract

European ethology and North American comparative psychology have been the two most prominent approaches to the study of animal behavior through most of the twentieth century. In this paper I analyze sets of popular articles by ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen and psychologist Frank Beach, in an effort to understand the contrasting rhetorical styles of the two. Among the numerous ways in which Tinbergen and Beach differed were with respect to expressing the joy of research, the kind of scientific approach adopted, their treatment of animals, their sense of history, and the types of illustrations they chose. In general, Tinbergen‘s articles placed him closer to nature and Beach‘s more in the tradition of dispassionate scientific inquiry. These differences in rhetoric may have been one factor in the greater success of ethology after World War II.

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , Summer 1997 , pp. 367 - 386
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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