Johan Bierens de Haan

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Johan (nes) Abraham Bierens de Haan (born March 17, 1883 in Haarlem , † June 13, 1958 in Siena , Italy) was a Dutch biologist and ethologist . Much earlier than his German colleagues, he researched the interplay between innate and learned behavior.

Career

Johan Bierens de Haan first studied mathematics and astronomy at the University of Leiden from 1901 and graduated four years later. After completing his military service, he turned to the study of biology, which he completed on January 14, 1913 with the doctoral examination "cum laude". His doctoral thesis was entitled "Over homogeneous en heterogeneous versmeltingen bij Echinidenkiemen" ("On homogeneous and heterogeneous fusions in sea ​​urchins - embryos ") and was the first work in the field of experimental embryology in the Netherlands; Bierens de Hahn carried out the experiments for his study in Naples .

After completing his doctorate, Johan Bierens de Haan worked from September 1913 to August 1914 at the biological research institute in Vienna . During the First World War he served as an officer in the General Staff , among other things ; subsequently, from 1919 to 1921, he was employed as a zoologist at the Trade Museum of the Koloniaal Institute in Amsterdam . In 1921 he moved to Geneva , where he worked until 1923 at the psychological institute of Prof. Édouard Claparède in animal psychology - a field that at that time was still almost unknown in the Netherlands (and not only there). Back in the Netherlands, Bierens de Haan became a private lecturer in experimental zoology at the University of Amsterdam in July 1924 , becoming the first professor of behavioral biology in the Netherlands; he taught this subject until 1939.

Research topics

Amsterdam's Artis Zoo made it possible for Bierens de Haan to experiment with a wide variety of animals and make behavioral observations. Thanks to these good job opportunities, he was able to publish numerous publications between 1927 and 1939, which, among other things, dealt with the perception of animals (especially their ability to distinguish and learn from shapes ) and the use of tools in animals. His investigations were mainly monkeys and monkeys as well as coatis and raccoons .

Through his investigations, he also wanted to advance the objectives and methods of his still very young specialist field, which were still not very specific at the time; Field experiments were quite unusual at the time; many researchers contented themselves with laboratory studies on white rats in the wake of behaviorism . By conducting his studies in the semi-natural environment of the zoo enclosure and also being able to fall back on a large number of animal species, he was able to check the biological relevance of the published laboratory studies and their interpretations, with often surprising results. This is how his study “Labyrinth and Detour. A chapter from animal psychology ”, in which he compared laboratory and field findings and in this way also weighed the interplay of learned and innate behavior against each other.

In numerous writings and lectures he also tried (similar to Konrad Lorenz in Germany and his - better known - Dutch colleague Nikolaas Tinbergen ) to establish behavioral research in the Netherlands as an independent branch of biology. In this context he paid particular attention to the concept of instinct . In his main work, published in 1940, “The animal instincts and their transformation through experience. An introduction to general animal psychology ”, Bierens de Haan went extensively into the meaning of the terms“ instinct ”and“ intelligence ”in animals and their interplay: a way of thinking that noticeably and - from today's point of view very beneficial - from Nikolaas Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz and their fixation on purely innate behavior. In 1945 Bierens de Haan published a popular scientific summary of his main work under the title "Instinct en intelligentie bij de diren".

In 1938 Bierens de Haan was elected to the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences , whose secretariat he immediately took over and then saw this task as his main focus of work until his death. Nevertheless, today he is considered to be a founder of behavioral research in the Netherlands. Johan Bierens de Haan died unexpectedly on June 13, 1958 while on vacation in a hotel in Siena.

Fonts (selection)

  • Tools and tool use in animals. In: The natural sciences . Volume 15, No. 23, 1927, pp. 481-487, doi: 10.1007 / BF01506569 .
  • The goldfinch as creator . In: Journal of Ornithology. Volume 80, No. 1, 1933, pp. 1-22, doi: 10.1007 / BF01932163 .
  • Problems of the animal instinct . In: The natural sciences. Volume 23, No. 42, 1935, pp. 711-717, doi: 10.1007 / BF01491141 .
  • Animal psychological research. Your goals and paths. Johann Ambrosius Barth, Leipzig 1935.
  • The Animal Instincts and Their Transformation through Experience: An Introduction to General Animal Psychology. Brill, Leiden 1940.

Individual evidence

  1. Bierens de Haan, Johannes Abraham (1883-1958). In: Biographical Woordenboek van Nederland: 1880-2000.