Irenaeus Eibl-Eibesfeldt
Perhaps man is one of the most fearful creatures, since added to the basic fear of predators and
hostile con-specifics come intellectually based existential fears.
Summary
Irenaeus Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1928 - ) is the founder of the field of Human Ethology. In authoring the book which bears that title, he applied ethology to humans by studying them in a perspective more common to volumes studying animal behavior.
In the first twenty years of his work as an animal ethologist he investigated experimentally and descriptively the development of behaviour of mammals and compared the behaviour of communication of vertebrates.
He asserted that man is Preprogrammed
, and heredity is a determinator of human behaviour (see
Vital Unconscious and Biocentric
Principle)
His work was also influential in the area of Anthropological Aspects and Etiologies of Aggression (see Psychological Aspects of Biodanza ).
Ideas
See Also
Konrad Lorenz: zoologist, animal psychologist, and ornithologist, often regarded as one of the founders of modern Ethology, influential in the development of the Theory of Instinct.
Links
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iren%C3%A4us_Eibl-Eibesfeldt
Home Page: http://evolution.anthro.univie.ac.at/institutes/urbanethology/staff/eibl-eibesfeldt.html
Biography: http://www.thefutureofscience.org/veniceconference2006/speakers/Eibesfeldt_e.htm
Ethology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethology