{"id":3973,"date":"2014-04-04T08:54:02","date_gmt":"2014-04-04T13:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/?p=3973"},"modified":"2014-04-04T09:21:11","modified_gmt":"2014-04-04T14:21:11","slug":"grounds-of-war-a-new-paper-on-territoriality-with-remarkable-similarities-to-the-work-of-robert-ardrey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/2014\/04\/04\/history\/grounds-of-war-a-new-paper-on-territoriality-with-remarkable-similarities-to-the-work-of-robert-ardrey\/","title":{"rendered":"“Grounds of War” – A New Paper on Territoriality with Remarkable “Similarities” to the Work of Robert Ardrey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Ardrey<\/a> was a brilliant man.\u00a0 After a successful career as a playwright, he became an anthropologist, and wrote a series of four books in the 60’s and 70’s refuting the absurd orthodoxy of the Blank Slate that prevailed at the time.\u00a0 In other words, to the tune of vociferous abuse from the “men of science” in psychology, sociology, anthropology, and the rest of the behavioral sciences, he insisted that there actually is such a thing as human nature.\u00a0 The abuse was an honor Ardrey well deserved, because he\u00a0proved to be a very\u00a0potent antidote to the Blank Slate nonsense, perhaps the most remarkable perversion of science of all time.\u00a0 Indeed, he was the most influential and effective opponent of the Blank Slate in its heyday.\u00a0 That fact was nicely documented by the Blank Slaters themselves in an invaluable\u00a0little collection of essays entitled Man and Aggression<\/em>.\u00a0 The book, which appeared in 1968,\u00a0was edited by arch-Blank Slater Ashley Montagu<\/a>, and was aimed mainly at Ardrey, with a few barbs reserved for Nobel laureate Konrad Lorenz<\/a>, and with novelist William Golding<\/a> thrown in for comic effect.\u00a0 As I write this, used copies are still available at Amazon for just a penny.\u00a0 In case you happen to be hard up for cash, here’s a quote from the book taken from an essay by psychologist Geoffrey Gorer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Almost without question, Robert Ardrey is today the most influential writer in English dealing with the innate or instinctive attributes of human nature, and the most skilled populariser of the findings of paleo-anthropologists, ethologists, and biological experimenters\u2026 He is a skilled writer, with a lively command of English prose, a pretty turn of wit, and a dramatist\u2019s skill in exposition; he is also a good reporter, with the reporter\u2019s eye for the significant detail, the striking visual impression. He has taken a look at nearly all the current work in Africa of paleo-anthropologists and ethologists; time and again, a couple of his paragraphs can make vivid a site, such as the Olduvai Gorge, which has been merely a name in a hundred articles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2026he does not distort his authorities beyond what is inevitable in any selection and condensation\u2026 even those familiar with most of the literature are likely to find descriptions of research they had hitherto ignored, particularly in The Territorial Imperative<\/em>, with its bibliography of 245 items.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, we now live in more enlightened times, and the Blank Slate collapsed under the weight of its own absurdity years ago.\u00a0 In a word, the life work of Robert Ardrey has been heroically vindicated, no?\u00a0 Well, not exactly.\u00a0 You see, the “men of science” could never forgive Ardrey, a mere playwright, for shaming them.\u00a0 Indeed, Steven Pinker, one of the tribe, went to the trouble of writing a remarkable revision of history entitled, appropriate enough, The Blank Slate<\/em>, in which he actually performed the feat of completely ignoring Ardrey, other than in a single paragraph in which he claimed, on the authority of Richard Dawkins,\u00a0that Ardrey had been “totally and utterly wrong!”\u00a0 It’s like writing that Einstein was\u00a0“totally and utterly wrong” about\u00a0relativity because he didn’t think right about quantum theory.\u00a0 I won’t go into the specious reasons\u00a0Pinker used to fob off this gross imposture on his readers.\u00a0 I’ve gone into them in some detail, for example, here<\/a> and here<\/a>.\u00a0 Suffice it to say that Ardrey’s support for the\u00a0theory of group selection had much to do with it.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to 2014.\u00a0 Two Oxford academics by the names of Monica Duffy Toft<\/a> and Dominic Johnson<\/a> have just published a paper in the\u00a0journal International Security<\/em><\/a> entitled\u00a0Grounds of War; The Evolution of Territorial Conflict<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(hattip hbd-chick<\/a>).\u00a0 And what is it about that title that brings Ardrey to mind?\u00a0 Ah, yes, as those familiar with his work will recall, he wrote a book entitled The Territorial Imperative<\/em><\/a>, published back in 1966.\u00a0 As it happens, the “similarities” don’t end there.\u00a0 Allow me to point out some of the others that appear in this “original” paper:<\/p>\n

Toft & Johnson:\u00a0 Territorial behavior\u2014or \u201cterritoriality\u201d\u2014is prevalent not only among humans, but across the animal kingdom. It has evolved independently across a wide range of taxonomic groups and ecological contexts, whether from the depths of the ocean to rainforest canopies, or from deserts to the Arctic tundra. This recurrence of territoriality suggests evolutionary \u201cconvergence\u201d on a tried and tested strategic solution to a common environmental challenge. Organisms have tended to develop territoriality because it is an effective strategy for survival and maximizing \u201cDarwinian fitness\u201d (reproduction).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ardrey:\u00a0 Territorial behavior in animals, of the past few decades, has attracted the attention of hundreds of competent specialists who have recorded there observations and their reasoned conclusions in obscure professional publications.\u00a0 The subject is very nearly as well\u00a0known to the student of animal behavior as is the relation of mother and infant to the student of human behavior.\u00a0 Furthermore, many of the concerned scientists, as we shall see, believe as do I that man is a territorial species, and that the behavior\u00a0so widely observed in animal species is equally characteristic of our own.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Toft & Johnson:\u00a0 Across the animal kingdom, holders of territory (or \u201cresidents\u201d) tend to have a higher probability of winning contests, even against stronger intruders. Territoriality is thus heavily influenced by who was there first.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ardrey:\u00a0 We may also say that in all territorial species, without exception, possession of a territory lends enhanced energy to the proprieter.\u00a0 Students of animal behavior cannot agree as to why this should be, but the challenger is almost invariably defeated, the intruder expelled.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Toft & Johnson:\u00a0 Territoriality does not necessarily lead to violence. Indeed, biologists regard it as a mechanism that evolved to avoid violence.\u00a0 By partitioning living space according to established behavioral conventions, animals can avoid the costs associated with constant fighting. Furthermore, although discussions of territorial behavior tend to focus on aggression, territorial behavior has two distinct components: attack and avoidance. Residents tend to attack in defense of their territory (fight), intruders tend to withdraw (flight).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ardrey:\u00a0 The territories of howler (monkey) clans are large, the borders vague.\u00a0 But clans have only to sight each other in this no man’s land and total warfare breaks out.\u00a0 Rage shakes the forest.\u00a0 That rage, however, takes none but vocal expression… Should intrusion occur, these voices joined will be the artillery of battle.\u00a0 And strictly in accord with the territorial principle, the home team will always win, the visiting team will always withdraw.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I could multiply such “similarities” into the dozens.\u00a0 Far be it for me, however, to charge the two authors with anything so crude as plagiarism.\u00a0 Indeed, Toft and Johnson actually do take care to cite Ardrey.\u00a0 Here’s what they have to say about him:<\/p>\n

The idea that evolution helps to explain human territorial behavior is not new. Robert Ardrey\u2019s popular book The Territorial Imperative, published in the 1960s, championed the role of territorial instincts in human conflict. This account, however, suffers from some now outdated views of evolution, for example, the idea that behaviors are \u201chard-wired,\u201d or that they evolved because they helped the group or the species as a whole.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here we find Toft and Johnson squawking to order like two Pinkeresque parrots.\u00a0 One must charitably assume that neither of them has ever actually read Ardrey, because otherwise one cannot construe this bit as other than a mendacious lie.\u00a0\u00a0This is what the two have to say about what they mean by the term “hard-wired”:<\/p>\n

As with many other human traits, territoriality might be loosely considered not as \u201chard-wired\u201d but as \u201csoft-wired\u201d\u2014a component of human nature but one that is responsive to prevailing conditions. Power, rational choice, domestic politics, institutions, and culture are of course important as well in explaining territorial conflict, but evolutionary biology can provide additional explanatory power.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not sure if Ardrey ever even used the term “hard-wired,” but if he did it certainly wasn’t in the sense that Toft and Johnson use it.\u00a0 He constantly and repeatedly insisted on the “soft-wired” nature of human behavioral predispositions.\u00a0 For example, from The Territorial Imperative:<\/p>\n

The open instinct, a combination in varying portion of genetic design and relevant experience, is the common sort in all higher animal forms.\u00a0 As beginning with the digger wasp we proceed higher and higher in the animal orders, the closed instinct all but vanishes, the open instinct incorporates more and more a learned portion.\u00a0 In man it reaches a maximum of learning, a minimum of design.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are many similar passages in Ardrey’s work.\u00a0 Turning to the next charge, I know of nothing\u00a0therein that suggests that he ever believed that selection actually took place at the species level.\u00a0\u00a0He did occasionally point out the obvious truth that various behavioral traits tend to benefit a species as a whole rather than harm it, but the claim that this amounts to support for species-level selection is nonsense.\u00a0 Readers can check this for themselves by reading, for example, the last page of Chapter 3, section 2 of The Territorial Imperative<\/em>.\u00a0 Ardrey did support theories of group selection.\u00a0 So did Darwin.\u00a0 So did E. O. Wilson in his latest book, The Social Conquest of Earth.<\/em>\u00a0 Does that fact also disqualify those two from any claim to their own ideas?\u00a0 What’s next?\u00a0 Will Toft and Johnson come up with an “original” theory of evolution by natural selection.\u00a0 Perhaps they could even write a book about it.\u00a0\u00a0Allow me to\u00a0suggest the title On the Origin of Species<\/em>.\u00a0 They could follow that with their own versions of\u00a0Wilson’s Sociobiology<\/em> and On Human Nature<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The saddest thing about it all is that\u00a0Toft and Johnson are\u00a0likely to get away with this revision of history a la<\/em> Dawkins and Pinker.\u00a0 After all, the academics and other \u201cmen of science\u201d hate Ardrey.\u00a0 How dare he be right when almost all of them were embracing the mirage of the Blank Slate!\u00a0 How dare a mere playwright do such a thing?<\/p>\n

\"Robert<\/a>
Robert Ardrey<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\tTweet<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Ardrey was a brilliant man.\u00a0 After a successful career as a playwright, he became an anthropologist, and wrote a series of four books in the 60’s and 70’s refuting the absurd orthodoxy of the Blank Slate that prevailed at the time.\u00a0 In other words, to the tune of vociferous abuse from the “men of … Continue reading ““Grounds of War” – A New Paper on Territoriality with Remarkable “Similarities” to the Work of Robert Ardrey”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[101,181,105,109,8,166,28,198,188],"tags":[269,323],"class_list":["post-3973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-blank-slate","category-evolutionary-psychology-2","category-group-selection","category-history","category-human-evolution","category-human-nature","category-robert-ardrey","category-territoriality","tag-ardrey","tag-territoriality"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwEq0-125","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3973"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3984,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3973\/revisions\/3984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}