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The document is an introduction to the book 'Behavior and Evolution' by Jean Piaget, which explores the relationship between behavior and evolutionary processes. It discusses various theories regarding the role of behavior in evolution, contrasting Lamarckian and neo-Darwinian perspectives. The book aims to critically examine these approaches and evaluate behavior's significance in the context of evolutionary mechanisms.

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200 views

Behaviour and Evolution, 1st Edition Multiformat Download

The document is an introduction to the book 'Behavior and Evolution' by Jean Piaget, which explores the relationship between behavior and evolutionary processes. It discusses various theories regarding the role of behavior in evolution, contrasting Lamarckian and neo-Darwinian perspectives. The book aims to critically examine these approaches and evaluate behavior's significance in the context of evolutionary mechanisms.

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Behaviour and Evolution, 1st Edition

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BEHAVIOR
AND
EVOLUTION
Jean Piaget
BEHAVIOR
AND
EVOLUTION
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY
DoNALD N1cHoLSoN-SMITH

a
PANTHEON BOOKS,
NEW, YORK
. English Translation Copyright © 1978 by Random House, Inc.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American


Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by
Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New
York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of
Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in France as
Le comportement moteur de /'evolution by Editions Gallimard,
Paris. Copyright © 1976 by Jean Piaget.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Piaget, Jean. 1896-


Behavior and Evolution.
Translation of Le comportement moteur de /'evolution.
· Includes index.
1. Genetic psychology. 2. Movement, Psychology of.
I. Title.
BE702.P49313 1978 155.7 77-88762
ISBN 0-394-41810-7
ISBN 0-394-73588-9 pbk.

Manufactured in the United States of America

First American Edition


Contents

Translators Acknowledgements
VII

Introduction
IX

ONE
The Merits and Drawbacks of the Lamarckian Thesis
3
TWO
Baldwin and Organic Selection
14

THREE
The Ethological View of Behavior's Role in Evolution
26
FOUR
Cybernetic Interaction, "Genetic Assimilation, " and Behavior
45
FIVE
Behavior and Weiss s Hierarchy of Systems
59
SIX
Phenocopy as Mediation Between Environmental Influences and
Behavioral Genie Factors
73
BEHAVIOR AND EVOLUTION

SEVEN
Psychobiologi,cal Speculations on the Problems of Instincts in
Relation to the Problems of Evolution
85
EIGHT
Some Remarks on Plant Behavior
130

NINE
General Conclusio'f!S: Behavior, Motor of Evolution
1 39

Index
161
Translator:S Acknowledgments

I wouid like to thank Dr. Gilbert Voyat for


reading the translation, offering his criticisms
and suggestions, and clearing up some difficul-
ties in the text in consultation with Professor
Piaget.
My thanks also to Ruth Elwell for her help in
the preparation of the manuscript.
D. N.-S.

Vil
Introduction

Bv "BEHAVIOR" I refer to all action directed by organisms


toward the outside world in order to change conditions
therein or to change their own situation in relation to
these surroundings. Examples would be searching for
food, buildi'ng a nest, using a tool, etc. At the lowest
level, behavior amounts to no more than sensorimotor
actions (perceptions and movements in conjunction); at
the highest, it embraces ideational internalizations, as in
human intelligence, where action extends into the
sphere of mental operations. On the other hand, internal
movements of the organism, such as the contraction of
muscles or the circula~on of blood, do not qualify as
behavior in this sense, even thpugh they condition be-
havior. Nor would we consider as behavior the action of
respiration upon the atmosphere, because such action
occurs as a result of processes not actually designed to
affect the milieu. (The fact that it does indeed occur-
and on a massive scale in the case of the oxygen pro-
IX
INTRODUCTION

duced by plants-is irrelevant for our purposes.) But an


animal's reflexes, or the ornithogalum flower's reactions
to light, may legitimately be described as behavior be-
cause they are intended, no matter how locally or occa-
sionally, to modify the relationship between organism
and environment. The same goes for perceptions, which
are always a function of actual or virtual overall behavior.
In sum, behavior is teleonomic action aimed at the utili-
zation or transformation of the environment and the
preservation or increase of the organism's capacity to
affect this environment.
That there is a relationship between all forms of be-
havior so understood and the evolution oflife in general
is a widely accepted view. The nature of this relationship,
however, is a question on which little consensus exists.
Indeed, there are many possible ways of approaching the
problem. Sometimes behavior is viewed as causal in rela-
tion to evolution, sometimes as determined by it. Some-
times a~ general solution is sought, and sometimes the
interpretation varies according to the specific case, as
when a distinction is drawn between forms of behavior
associated with specialized organs and forms that seem
to retain the quality of acts. The aim of this book is to
present a critical examination of the different ap-
proaches to the problem of behavior. My concern, how-
ever, is not with behavior's internal mechanisms. That is
a question for the ethologists. Rather, I want to evaluate
behavior's role within the framework of the general proc-
esses of the evolution oflife. This problem is rarely dealt
x
Introduction

with explicitly, as though its solution were implicit in any


model of evolutionary diversity. But it may well be, to the
contrary, that this role is fundamental as a necessary
(though not sufficient) condition of evolution, and hence
that the inability to account for this is adequate cause for
rejecting a number of theories of organic and morpho-
genetic changes, the classical status of these theories
notwithstanding. Otherwise we shall run the risk of treat-
ing intelligence itself, not to mention the science of biol-
ogy, as a product of chance, and of failing to distinguish
between the selection of accommodations on the basis of
experience or of the surroundings and mere so-called
natural selection, as gauged solely by survival and by the
relative rate of reproduction. In the collective work Be-
havior and Evolution, 1 G. G. Simpson maintains, admit-
tedly, that the findings of modern ethology have made it
impossible to consider behavior solely a result of evolu-
tion and that it must also be treated as one of its determi-
nants. But the central problem remains, for we still have
to ascertain how behavior operates here, and whether it
intervenes solely in selection and survival or also as a
causal factor in the actual formation of morphological
characteristics, as is suggested notably by Paul A. Weiss's
conclusion that the living organism's overall organiza-
tion , and hierarchy of subsystems have a retroactive
effect, according to the various forms of a "global dy-
namics" (or "field" effects), even upon the functioning
of the genome,2 instead of being simply determined by
this functioning.
Xl
INTRODUCTION

In fact, all accounts of the role of behavior in evolu-


tional mechanisms have tended toward one or the other
of two extreme solutions. For the most part, it is only
very recently that any attempt has been made to develop
more subtle explanatory models. One of the two ex-
treme positions is, of course, the Lamarckian one. This
approach treats changes in behavior, imposed by the
environment in the shape of types of new "habits," as the
source of all evolutionary variations, these then becom-
ing fixed as heredity passes on th~ characteristics thus
acquired. Hence, Lamarckianism does look upon behav-·
ior as the central factor in evolution, although it also
postulates an internal factor known as organization. The
function of organization, however, is limited-to a
greater or lesser degree, depending on the text consid-
ered-to ensuring coordination between old and newly
acquired habits.
At the other extreme lies the orthodox neo-Darwinian
approach, which does not explicitly raise the question of
behavior's role but answers it implicitly by deeming any
new genotypical trait (including, therefore, any change
in hereditary behavior) to be the outcome of chance
variations whose adaptive nature emerges only after the
fact of natural selection,3 with acquired characteristics
playing no part whatsoever. According to this account,
then, behavior has no active role in the generation of
evolutionary variations, and it comprises nothing more
than effects having no formative influence of any kind. It
is true that those types of behavior retained after selec-
XU
Introduction

tion are favorable to the survival of the species, but this


is only by virtue of an a posteriori correlation between
their fortuitous emergence and the requirements· of the
environment. The nature of this correlation is deter-
mined by no process ·other than the aggregation of
' chance developments. Generalizing from this position,
Jacques Monod has gone even further than the neo-
Darwinians, drawing the conclusion, on the basis of the
chance factor which plays a part in all biological evolu-
tion, that such evolution is "not a property of living
beings, since it stems from the very i!flperfections of the
conservative mechanism which indeed constitutes their
unique privilege."4
However, both these extreme positions, the motives
for whose adoption I shall discuss below, are indicative
of just how .complex the problem of behavior's role in
evolution becomes once we assume that it does indeed
have a formative function and is not merely the outcome
of hereditary morphological variations generated quite
independently of the living organism that is to make use
of them in its specific surroundings. Actually, new forms
of behavior are often produced only in the course of an
organism's development, or even in its maturity, and
only where certain environmental conditions are
fulfilled. In such cases, it would seem that the form of
behavior in question is linked with epigenesis (during
which interaction between genetic programming and en-
vironmental factors is already operative) or with a
phenotypical state. This difficulty does not arise if one
Xlll
INTRODUCTION

adopts the Lamarckian view that phenotypical variations


are transmitted by heredity, and this is what enables
Lamarck to consider changes in habits the basic factor in
evolutionary transformations. At the other extreme,
those who not only reject the possibility of such direct
transmission in view of experimental findings that refute
it, but also (and this is quite a different matter) treat
genie mechanisms as radically independent of and alien
to the retroactive effects of epigenesis, must view behav-
ior as brought into being by the organism's genetic
structures-by structures, in other words, created quite·
independently of behavior itself. In this case, it becomes
extremely hard to explain how behavior can achieve such
differentiated and sophisticated adaptations to an out-
side world that governs it solely by means of selective
rejection or acceptance.
Thus, it is easy to see why those biologists who are not
prepared to overlook either behavior's important forma-
tive rote or the complexity of epigenesis cannot espouse
either of the two extreme theses and why they seek more
refined solutions. As early as 1896-i.e., before the re-
vival of Mendelism and the neo-Darwinism that devel-
oped out of it-the great psychologist J. M. Baldwin5
brought forward the very important notion of an "or-
ganic selection" based on the actual activity of the living
organism as it seeks to "accommodate" to new sur-
roundings the hereditary equipment with which it has
been endowed. According to Baldwin, such accom~oda­
tions, though not inherited directly, influence heredity
XlV

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