Konrad Lorenz

Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (German pronunciation: /ˈkɔnʁaːt ˈloːʁɛnts/; 7 November 1903 – February 27, 1989) was an Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch. He is often considered one of the founders of modern ethology, the study of animal behavior. He developed an approach that began with an earlier generation, including his teacher Oskar Heinroth.

Lorenz studied instinctive behavior in animals, especially greylag geese and western jackdaws. Working with geese, he investigated the imprinting principle, the process by which some nesting birds (ie, birds that leave their nest early) instinctively bond with the first moving object they see within hours of hatching. Although Lorenz did not discover the subject, he became widely known for his descriptions of imprinting as an instinctual link. In 1936 he met Tinbergen, and the two collaborated in the development of ethology as a separate subdiscipline of biology.

A study in the Review of General Psychology, published in 2002, ranked Lorenz as the 65th most cited scholar of the century XX in psychology journals, introductory college textbooks, and reviews of studies.

Lorenz's work was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II and in 1941 he was drafted into the German army as a medic. In 1944 he was sent to the Eastern Front, where he was captured by the Red Army and spent four years as a German prisoner of war in Soviet Armenia. During these years, he was a member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi Party).

Lorenz wrote numerous books, including King Solomon's Ring, On Aggression and Man Meets Dog i>, became popular reading.

Biography

Along with his father Alfred Lorenz in 1904.

Early years and studies (1903-1933)

In his autobiographical essay, published in 1973 in Les Prix Nobel (prize winners are requested to provide such essays), Lorenz credits his career to his parents, who " they were extremely tolerant of my excessive love for animals", and also, the encounter during his childhood with The wonderful journey of Nils Holgersson by Selma Lagerlöf, which "filled him with great enthusiasm for wild geese".

At the request of his father, Adolf Lorenz, he began an undergraduate degree in medicine in 1922 at Columbia University, but returned to Vienna in 1923 to continue his studies at the University of Vienna. He graduated as a Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) in 1928 and became assistant professor at its Institute of Anatomy until 1935. He began a second doctorate (Ph.D.), this time in zoology, from which he graduated in 1933.

While still a student, Lorenz began building what would become a large menagerie (“menagerie”), ranging from domestic animals to exotic animals. In his popular book King Solomon's Ring, Lorenz recounts that while studying at the University of Vienna he kept a variety of animals in his parents' apartment, from fish to a capuchin monkey named Gloria..

Beginnings as an academic (1933-1939)

In 1936, at an international scientific symposium on instinct, Lorenz met his great friend and colleague Nikolaas Tinbergen. Together they studied geese: wild, domestic and hybrid. One result of these studies was that Lorenz "realized that an overwhelming increase in feeding urges as well as copulation and a decrease in more differentiated social instincts is characteristic of many domestic animals." Lorenz began to suspect and fear "that analogous processes of deterioration may be at work with civilized humanity." This observation of bird hybrids led Lorenz to believe that domestication resulting from urbanization in humans could also cause dysgenic effects, and to argue in two articles that Nazi eugenic policies against this were therefore scientifically justified.

Participation in World War II (1939-1948)

In 1940 he became a professor of psychology at the University of Königsberg. He was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1941. He tried to be a motorcycle mechanic, but was instead assigned as a military psychologist, conducting racial studies on humans in occupied Poznań under Rudolf Hippius. The objective was to study the biological characteristics of the "German-Polish mestizos" to determine if they "benefited" of the same work ethic as the pure Germans. The degree to which Lorenz participated in the project is unknown, but project manager Hippius referred to Lorenz a couple of times as the "examining psychologist".

Lorenz later stated that he once saw transports of concentration camp inmates at Fort VII near Poznań, which made him "fully realize the complete inhumanity of the Nazis".

He was sent to the Russian front in 1944, where he quickly became a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1948. In captivity in Soviet Armenia, he continued to work as a doctor and "became tolerably fluent in Russian and became tolerably fluent in Russian." he became quite friendly with some Russians, mostly doctors." When he was repatriated, he was allowed to keep the manuscript of a book he had been writing and his pet starling. He arrived at Altenberg (his family home, near Vienna) both "with the manuscript and the bird intact." The manuscript became his 1973 book Die Rückseite des Spiegels.

Return to Vienna, Nobel Prize in Medicine and last years (1949-1989)

The Max Planck Society established the "Lorenz Institute for Behavioral Physiology" in Buldern, Germany, in 1950. In his memoirs, Lorenz described the chronology of his war years differently from what historians have been able to document after his death. He himself claimed that he was captured in 1942, where he was actually sent to the front and captured in 1944, completely leaving out his involvement in the Poznań project.

In 1958, Lorenz transferred to the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Seewiesen. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for discoveries in patterns of individual and social behavior"; with two other important early ethologists, Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch. In 1969, he became the first recipient of the Cino Del Duca World Award. He was a friend and student of the renowned biologist Sir Julian Huxley (grandson of Darwin's bulldog, Thomas Henry Huxley). The famous psychoanalyst Ralph Greenson and Sir Peter Scott were good friends of his. Lorenz and Karl Popper were childhood friends; Many years after they met, during the celebration of Popper's 80th birthday, they wrote a book together entitled Die Zukunft ist offen.

He retired from the Max Planck Institute in 1973, but continued to do research and publish in Altenberg and Grünau im Almtal in Austria. He died on February 27, 1989 in Altenberg.

Ethology

Faculty of Medicine, University of Vienna.

Lorenz is recognized as one of the founding fathers of the field of ethology, the study of animal behavior. He is known for his discovery of the principle of attachment or imprinting, through which in some species a bond is formed between a newborn animal and its caretaker. Douglas Spalding discovered this principle in the 19th century, and Lorenz's mentor Oskar Heinroth had also worked on the subject, but Lorenz's description of Prägung, imprints, on nidifugal birds like gray geese in his 1935 book Der Kumpan en der Umwelt des Vogels ("The Companion in the environment of birds") became a fundamental explanation of the phenomenon.

Here, Lorenz specified Jakob von Uexküll's concept of Umwelt to understand how animals' limited perception filtered out certain phenomena with which they instinctively interacted. For example, a young goose instinctively bonds with the first moving stimulus it perceives, be it its mother or a person. Lorenz showed that this imprinting behavior is what allows the goose to learn to recognize members of its own species, thus allowing them to be the object of later behavior patterns, such as mating. He developed a theory of instinctive behavior that considers that behavior patterns are, to a large extent, innate, but that they are activated through environmental stimuli (such as the hawk/goose effect). He argued that animals have an internal drive to carry out instinctive behaviors, and if they don't find the right stimulus, they will eventually engage in the behavior with an inappropriate stimulus.

Lorenz's approach to ethology stems from a skepticism toward studies of animal behavior conducted in laboratory settings. He considered that, in order to understand the mechanisms of animal behavior, it was necessary to observe their full range of behaviors in their natural context. Lorenz didn't do much traditional fieldwork, but he did spot animals near his home. His method involved empathizing with animals, often using anthropomorphization to imagine their mental states. He believed that animals readily experience many of the same 'human' emotions.

Tinbergen, a friend of Lorenz's with whom he received the Nobel Prize, summarized Lorenz's important contribution to ethology as making behavior a topic of biological investigation, behavior as part of an animal's evolutionary team. Tinbergen and Lorenz contributed to make Ethology a recognized subdiscipline within Biology and created the first specialized academic journal in this new field: "Ethology" (originally called "Zeitschift für Tierpsychologie")

Political position: Nazism and ecology

Lorenz joined the Nazi Party in 1938 and accepted a university professorship under the Nazi regime. In his application for party membership, he wrote: "I can say that all my scientific work is devoted to the ideas of the National Socialists." His publications during this time led in later years to accusations that his scientific work had been tainted by Nazi sympathies. His works published during the Nazi period included support for Nazi ideas of 'racial hygiene'.

In his autobiography, Lorenz wrote:

I was frightened—as I still am—by the thought that analogous genetical processes of deterioration may be at work with civilized humanity. Moved by this fear, I did a very ill-advised thing soon after the Germans had invaded Austria: I wrote about the dangers of domestication and, in order to be understood, I couched my writing in the worst of Nazi terminology. I do not want to extenuate this action. I did, indeed, believe that some good might come of the new rulers. The precedent narrow-minded catholic regime in Austria induced better and more intelligent men than I was to cherish this naive hope. Practically all my friends and teachers did so, including my own father who certainly was a kindly and humane man. None of us as much as suspected that the word "selection", when used by these rulers, meant murder. I regret those writings not so much for the undeniable discredit they reflect on my person as for their effect of hampering the future recognition of the dangers of human domestication.

I was scared, as I am still, by the idea that analogous genetic processes of deterioration may be developing as a product of civilized humanity. Moving for this fear, I did something very unpredictable shortly after the Germans had invaded Austria: I wrote about the dangers of domestication and, to understand, I wrote my writings with the worst Nazi terminology. I don't want to attenuate this action. In fact, I thought something good might come from the new rulers. The Catholic regime of close mind in Austria led better and more intelligent men than I to appreciate this naive hope. Practically all my friends and teachers did, including my own father, who was certainly a kind and human man. None of us suspected that the word "selection" used by these rulers meant murder. I regret those writings not so much for the undeniable discredit they reflect on my person as for their effect of hindering the future recognition of the dangers of human domestication.

Konrad Lorenz, 1973

When his application for membership was made public, he denied knowing the extent of the genocide, despite his position as a psychologist in the Office of Racial Policy.

He was also shown to have made anti-Semitic jokes about "Jewish characteristics" in letters to his mentor Heinroth. In 2015, the University of Salzburg posthumously rescinded an honorary doctorate awarded to Lorenz in 1983, citing his party membership and his claims in said application, namely that he was "always a National Socialist", and that his work "is at the service of National Socialist thought". The university also accused him of using his work to spread "basic elements of the racist ideology of National Socialism."

During the last years of his life, Lorenz supported Austria's fledgling Green Party and in 1984 became the visible face of the Konrad Lorenz Volksbegehren, a grassroots movement that was formed to prevent the construction of a power plant on the Danube near Hainburg an der Donau and thus the destruction of the surrounding forest.

Main work

• The companion in the bird's atmosphere. in: J. für Ornithologie 83 (2-3), p. 137 - 215 and p. 289 - 413 (reprint of 1965, in: "Human and animal behavior" Vol. 1). (1935)
• He talked to beasts, fish and birdsalso known as: The ring of King Solomon (1949)
• When the man found the dog (1950)
• About aggression (1966)
• The other side of the mirror (1973)
• The eight mortal sins of civilized humanity (1973)
• Basics of ethology (1982)
• The Decay of Man (1983)
• I'm here, where are you? Wild gray goose ethology (1988)
• Man's science. The Russian manuscript (1992)

Honors

• ForMemRS (1964)

Eponymy

• "Colegio Anglo-Alemán Konrad Lorenz", Mendoza, Argentina, who pays tribute to Konrad Lorenz.

• In Bogotá, Colombia, there is a university that also bears its name: Fundación Universitaria Konrad Lorenz.

• In Florida (Buenos Aires) is the garden and primary school "Konrad Lorenz School".