Background
Griffin was born on August 3, 1915, in Southampton, New York.
Cambridge, MA, United States
Griffin attended Harvard University, where he received a Bachelor's, a Master's, and Doctoral degrees, the last in 1942.
(A scientist explores the possibility that animals have th...)
A scientist explores the possibility that animals have thoughts and feelings, demonstrating that some animals engage in foraging, predatory tactics, tool use, and other "human" traits. By the author of The Question of Animal Awareness.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226308642/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2
1992
(In Animal Minds, Donald R. Griffin takes us on a guided t...)
In Animal Minds, Donald R. Griffin takes us on a guided tour of the recent explosion of scientific research on animal mentality. Are animals consciously aware of anything, or are they merely living machines, incapable of conscious thoughts or emotional feelings? How can we tell? Such questions have long fascinated Griffin, who has been a pioneer at the forefront of research in animal cognition for decades, and is recognized as one of the leading behavioral ecologists of the twentieth century. With this new edition of his classic book, which he has completely revised and updated, Griffin moves beyond considerations of animal cognition to argue that scientists can and should investigate questions of animal consciousness. Using examples from studies of species ranging from chimpanzees and dolphins to birds and honeybees, he demonstrates how communication among animals can serve as a "window" into what animals think and feel, just as human speech and nonverbal communication tell us most of what we know about the thoughts and feelings of other people. Even when they don't communicate about it, animals respond with sometimes surprising versatility to new situations for which neither their genes nor their previous experiences have prepared them, and Griffin discusses what these behaviors can tell us about animal minds. He also reviews the latest research in cognitive neuroscience, which has revealed startling similarities in the neural mechanisms underlying brain functioning in both humans and other animals. Finally, in four chapters greatly expanded for this edition, Griffin considers the latest scientific research on animal consciousness, pro and con, and explores its profound philosophical and ethical implications.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KE006FA/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0
2001
Griffin was born on August 3, 1915, in Southampton, New York.
Griffin attended Harvard University, where he received a Bachelor's, a Master's, and Doctoral degrees, the last in 1942.
Griffin studied animal behavior and was the founder of the field of cognitive ethology, which holds that it is possible that animals possess awareness and can think rationally. He embarked on his academic career at Harvard as a junior fellow in 1940.
Working at Harvard's laboratories in the 1940's, Griffin first made a name for himself when he and a colleague discovered how bats use echolocation - a term he coined - to navigate in the dark. His findings are included in his Listening in the Dark: The Acoustic Orientation of Bats and Men in 1958, which earned the National Academy of Sciences Elliot medal in 1961, and Echoes of Bats and Men, published in 1959. In 1946, he joined the faculty at Cornell University, becoming a professor of zoology there in 1952 before moving back to Harvard the next year.
At Harvard, Griffin taught in and chaired the zoology department from 1962 to 1965; he then became a professor at Rockefeller University, where he remained until his retirement in 1986. It was only because of his firmly established reputation as an excellent scientist that Griffin's ideas about animal cognition received any audience at all among his scientific colleagues.
Biologists and philosophers have for a long time held that animals do not think or have emotions or motivations, other than those guided by instinct. Griffin, however, felt that scientists should keep open minds about this area, since there was no hard evidence that disproved animals could think in rational ways. He wrote on this subject in his books The Question of Animal Awareness: Evolutionary Continuity of Mental Experience, Animal Thinking, and Animal Minds. Griffin was also the author of Bird Migration, which won a Phi Beta Kappa prize in 1966.
(A scientist explores the possibility that animals have th...)
1992(In Animal Minds, Donald R. Griffin takes us on a guided t...)
2001(Second Edition)
1962