12 



Conceptual Thought 



Learning is a phenomenon which occurs at all levels in 

 the animal kingdom. Psychologists now see that in the 

 higher animals, the vertebrates, there is no behavior, except- 

 ing possibly the simple reflexes, that is entirely free from 

 some learning. In man, learning is a pre-eminent character- 

 istic largely unrestricted by factors, such as the rigidity of 

 instinct, that make it difficult for the insect to modify its 

 behavior through experience. W. T. Herron compares the 

 relative advantages and disadvantages of the learned versus 

 the instinctive modes of behavior where the comparison is 

 most vivid; that is, between the human species, using chiefly 

 learning, and the social insects, using chiefly instinct, as 

 modes through which they achieve adaptation. Learned 

 behavior, he finds, is much more adaptable to changing en- 

 vironments than instinct, and the new modes of adaptation 

 can be handed on to offspring more quickly and can be 

 much more readily cumulative, especially at the level of 

 man. On the debit side, however, learning requires long in- 

 dividual tutorial periods and is subject to the inefficiencies of 

 bad memory, to neurotic conflicts, and to the formation of 

 bad habits, all in contrast to the sureness and uniformity of 

 instinct. 



Here again nature seems to "come up" against the re- 

 stricting difficulties that arise as the evolutionary configura- 

 tions become more and more complex. It would seem that in 

 the drive toward greater understanding the evolution of 



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