The Aggression Debate: Human Nature, Science Popularization, and Politics in Late 20th Century America

SES 00-02057-Nadine Weidman(独立学者)-“攻击辩论：二十世纪末美国的人性、科学普及和政治”该项目是对20世纪60年代和70年代奥地利行为学家康拉德·洛伦茨(1903年-1989年)和英国出生的美国人类学家M·F·阿什利·蒙塔古(1905年-1999年)之间关于人类侵略的起源和性质的辩论的历史研究。在一系列广受欢迎的书籍中，洛伦茨和他的追随者认为，人类的攻击性是一种本能，一种与生俱来的不可避免的倾向，而蒙塔古在针对外行受众的著作中坚持认为，攻击性主要是由环境刺激造成的。通过检查通俗著作、电视、广播和电影作品、科学论文和档案记录，并通过对几名参与者的采访，首席调查员计划展示洛伦茨-蒙塔古侵略辩论和公众对此的反应如何影响到二十世纪末美国的人性、科学普及的技术和目标以及政治自由主义的概念。分析将包括四个部分：(1)洛伦茨--蒙塔古辩论；(2)它与其科学和知识背景的关系；(3)观众对辩论的反应；(4)辩论与随后几十年的生物决定论的关系。

SES 00-02057 - Nadine Weidman (Independent Scholar) - "The Aggression Debate: Human Nature, Science Popularization, and Politics in Late Twentieth-Century America"The project is a historical study of the debate over the origins and nature of human aggression that took place in the 1960s and 1970s between the Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) and the British-born American anthropologist M. F. Ashley Montagu (1905-1999). In a series of widely popular books, Lorenz and his followers argued that aggressiveness in humans was an instinct, an innate and unavoidable tendency, while Montagu maintained in writings also aimed at a lay audience that aggression resulted primarily from environmental stimuli. By examining popular writings, television, radio, and film productions, scientific papers, and the archival record, and by conducting interviews with several of the participants, the principal investigator plans to show how the Lorenz-Montagu aggression debate and the public responses to it affected conceptions of human nature, techniques and goals of scientific popularization, and political liberalism in late twentieth-century America. The analysis will consist of four parts: (1) of the Lorenz--Montagu debate; (2) of its relation to its scientific and intellectual contexts; (3) of the audience response to the debate; (4) of the relation of the debate to the biological determinisms of succeeding decades.