Wallace Craig

Wallace Craig (born July 20, 1876 in Toronto , Ontario , Canada , † April 25, 1954 in Woods Hole , Falmouth, Massachusetts , United States ) was an American experimental psychologist and behaviorist . He developed a scientific concept of behavior organization and is considered one of the founders of ethology . In experimental studies, Craig investigated how emotions are expressed through behavior, how innate and learned behavioral tendencies interact, and how vocal expressions are integrated into social behavior. He represented a conception of behavior as an integrated process, with evolutionary , motivational, experiential, social and ecological degrees of freedom. This integrative perspective has helped shape modern behavioral research. Craig maintained an intensive collaboration with the Austrian behavioral psychologist Konrad Lorenz , with whom he developed the Craig-Lorenz scheme of behavioral organization.

Live and act

Wallace Craig was born on July 20, 1876, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to Alexander Craig, a Scot from Edinburgh who immigrated to the United States, and Marion Brookes, an Englishwoman from London . On October 12, 1904, he married Mima Davis Jenness from Sheffield .

In 1895 Craig graduated from Hyde Park High School in Chicago , Illinois . He graduated from the University of Illinois with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1898 and a Master of Science degree in 1901 . That same year, Craig began studying with Charles O. Whitman and received his PhD in 1908 from the University of Chicago, Illinois, with a dissertation on pigeon behavior .

Craig worked as a science teacher at various secondary schools (1900, Harlan, Iowa ; 1900-01, Fort Collins , Colorado ; 1904-05, Coshocton , Ohio ). In addition, he worked from 1901 to 1904 as a university assistant at the chair of zoology at the University of Chicago and from 1905 to 1907 as a psychology and biology teacher at the State Normal School in Valley City, North Dakota . From 1903 to 1906 he studied at the Marine Biology Research Institute in Woods Hole , Massachusetts .

Scientific career

After his doctorate, Craig received a call as a philosophy professor at the University of Maine at Orono (1908-22). During this time he published most of his treatises on the principles of behavioral organization. These include a series of articles comparing the expression of emotions in different pigeon species (1909–11), essays on endogenous rhythm and behavioral synchronization (1916, 1917), and conceptual treatises on appetite and aversion (1917, 1918) and fighting behavior (1921). The circumstances that led to his retirement from the University of Maine are not precisely known. Possibly both the progressive hearing loss and the dissatisfaction with the work in the college and with the research conditions were decisive.

Craig's professional career after 1922 has been volatile. Thanks to the support of the social psychologist Gordon Allport and James Woods from the Faculty of Philosophy and Psychology at Harvard University , he held various positions there until the mid-1930s, e.g. from 1922 to 1923 as a lecturer in psychology and from 1923 to 1927 as Librarian in the field of biophysics . Until 1937 he did not succeed in attaining a permanent scientific position or in establishing a research program. During this time Craig lived with his wife for two years in Scotland, his father's home. In the mid-1930s, the American ornithologist Margaret Morse Nice made contact with Konrad Lorenz - an Austrian behavioral scientist. Craig and Lorenz began an exchange of letters on fundamental concepts in behavioral research, such as reflex , instinct , taxis , tropism, learning, and search, appetite and aversion behavior. To date none of these letters has been found. According to Lorenz, however, they were - just like Craig's published scientific work and in particular his 1918 essay on appetence and aversion - fundamental to the development of ethology, and Lorenz later referred to Craig as his "teacher". A crucial finding was that many behaviors do not occur as a reaction to a sensory stimulus , but rather represent a search for a stimulus. For example, as they feel increasingly hungry , animals go on an initially undirected search for food. Only when this is detected is a reaction to the food stimulus triggered and the food ingested. As a result of the learning that takes place during these processes, the initial search phase is increasingly determined by “reasoned guesswork”. In an article from 1954, Lorenz summarized this conception of a three-stage behavioral organization as a Craig-Lorenz'sches schema. Craig relied on a very broad definition of appetite , according to which it represents a state of arousal that lasts as long as a certain stimulus situation, which can be described as the desired stimulus, is not given. If the desired stimulus situation finally occurs, an end action is triggered through which the appetite behavior ceases and is replaced by a state of relative calm. Craig defines aversion as a state of excitement that lasts as long as a certain stimulus - the so-called disturbance stimulus - is present, but which subsides as soon as this stimulus no longer affects the sensory organs. Monika Holzapfel, a student of Lorenz, expanded these terms and interpreted states of rest as the goal of acts of appetite (Holzapfel, 1940). As part of his theory of appetence and aversion, Craig described aggression as aversion in an essay from 1921, whereas Lorenz saw it as appetite (Lorenz, 1966).

From 1937 Craig worked as an ornithologist at the New York State Museum, State University of New York, Albany , and was supported by the director of this facility, Charles C. Adams. With the termination of this activity, Craig also completed his monograph on the organization and psychology of bird song (1943). This monograph contains an introduction by Adams and, although of a scientific nature, an unusual foreword by Craig himself, addressed to young future ornithologists. Adams, who had known and promoted Craig since his student days, mentions in his introduction that Craig had an interest in birds and bird song and a musical inclination for violin and flute since his youth.

With annual scholarships from the American Philosophical Society (1944, 1945, and 1948) and appointment as a research fellow (1944–47, sponsored by EG Boring and Gordon Allport), Craig returned to Harvard University and worked on his thesis “The space system of the perceiving self ". A 127-page manuscript of four chapters of this essay, which Craig, according to an exchange with Boring, had sent to the American Philosophical Society, has disappeared to this day.

In 1947, Craig's retirement from Harvard University. In 1953 he moved to Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where he died on April 25, 1954.

Appreciation

In retrospect, Craig can arguably be considered one of the great behavioral scientists of the 20th century. The reasons why his findings - with a few exceptions - did not find a stronger response from his contemporaries and did not bring him lasting scientific fame will remain the subject of further discussion.

Wallace Craig publications

• 1902. Song in birds. Science, 15, 590-592.
• 1902. Ecology. Science, 15, 793.
• 1908. The voices of pigeons regarded as a means of social control. American Journal of Sociology, 14, 86-100.
• 1909. The expressions of emotion in the pigeons: I. The blond ring dove. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 19, 29-80.
• 1911a. Oviposition induced by the male in pigeons. Journal of Morphology, 22, 299-305.
• 1911b. The expressions of emotion in the pigeons: II. The mourning dove. Auk, 28, 398-407.
• 1911c. The expressions of emotion in the pigeons: III. The passenger pigeon. Auk, 29, 408-427.
• 1912a. Pigeons do not carry their eggs. Auk, 29, 392-393.
• 1912b. Observations on doves learning to drink. Journal of Animal Behavior, 2, 273-279.
• 1912c. Behavior of the young bird in breaking out of the egg. Journal of Animal Behavior, 2, 296-298.
• 1913a. The stimulation and the inhibition of ovulation in birds and mammals. Journal of Animal Behavior, 3, 215-221.
• 1913b. Recollections of the passenger pigeon in captivity. Bird Lore, 93-99.
• 1914. Male doves reared in isolation. Journal of Animal Behavior, 4, 121-133.
• 1916. Synchronism in the rhythmic activities of animals. Science, 44, 784-786.
• 1917. On the ability of animals to keep time with an external rhythm. Journal of Animal Behavior, 7, 444-448.
• 1917. Appetites and aversions as constituents of instincts. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), 3, 685-688.
• 1918. Appetites and aversions as constituents of instincts. Biological Bulletin, 34, 91-107.
• 1919. Tropisms and instinctive activities. Psychological Bulletin, 16, 151-159.
• 1920. Tropisms and instinctive activities. Psychological Bulletin, 17, 169-178.
• 1921. Why do animals fight? International Journal of Ethics, 31, 264-278.
• 1922. A note on Darwin's work on the expression of the emotions in man and animals. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 16, 256-266.
• 1924. The dog as a detective. Scientific Monthly, IS, 38-47.
• 1926. The twilight song of the wood pewee: A preliminary statement. Auk, 43, 150-152.
• 1926. Request for the data on the twilight song of the wood pewee. Science, 63, 525.
• 1933. The music of the wood pewee's song and one of its laws. Auk, SO, 174-178.
• 1943. The song of the wood pewee Myiochanes virens Linnaeus: A study of bird music. New York State Museum Bulletin No. 334. Albany: University of the State of New York.
• 1944. The twilight ceremonies of horse flies and birds. Science, 99, 125-126.

swell

• 1940. Holzapfel M: Drive-related states of rest as the goal of acts of appetite. Natural Sciences, 28, 273-280.
• 1954. Lorenz K: Psychology and Tribal History. In Heberer G (ed.) The evolution of organisms. pp. 131-172. Jena: G. Fischer Verlag.
• 1966. Lorenz K: On aggression (translated by M. Latzke). London: Methuen. (The original work was published in German in 1963)
• 1970a. Lorenz K: Companions as factors in the bird's environment. In K Lorenz Studies in human and animal behavior (translated by R Martin). Vol. 1, pp. 101-258. London: Methuen. (The original work was published in German in 1935)
• 1970b. Lorenz K: The establishment of the instinct concept. In K Lorenz Studies in human and animal behavior (translated by R Martin). Vol. 1, pp. 259-315. London: Methuen. (The original plant was established in 1937 to German published)
• 1988. Burkhardt RW jr: Charles Otis Whitman, Wallace Craig, and the biological study of animal behavior in the United States, 1898-1925. In R Rainger, K Benson & J Maienschein (eds.) The American development of biology. pp. 185-218. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
• 1989. Kalikow TJ & Mills JA: Wallace Craig (1876-1954), ethologist and animal psychologist. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 103, 281-288.
• 1973. Lorenz K: Autobiography. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1973/lorenz-bio.html
• 2008. Burkhardt RW, Jr.: Craig, Wallace. http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-2830905598.html
• Short biographical entry available at: https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/webexhibits/charleswhitman/students.html
• Who's who in New England: http://www.mocavo.com/Whos-Who-in-New-England/343278/289
• The University of Illinois Library at Urbana-Champaign has a copy of Craig's unpublished bachelor thesis, “On the Early Stages of the Development of the Urogenital System of the Pig” (1898).
• The Forbes Biological Station of the Illinois Natural History Survey in Havana, Illinois owns a copy of Craig's unpublished master's thesis, "On the Fishes of the Illinois River System at Havana, Ill." (1901).
• Article on the life and work of Wallace Craig at the American Philosophical Society : http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0735-7036.103.3.281
• At PsycNet from the American Philosophical Society

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Konrad Lorenz : Comparative behavior research. Basics of ethology. Springer, Vienna and New York 1978, p. 104, ISBN 978-3-7091-3098-8 .