Donald Redfield Griffin (August 3, 1915 – November 7, 2003) was an American professor of
zoology
Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and ...
at various universities who conducted seminal research in
animal behavior
Ethology is the scientific study of animal behaviour, usually with a focus on behaviour under natural conditions, and viewing behaviour as an evolutionarily adaptive trait. Behaviourism as a term also describes the scientific and objective ...
,
animal navigation
Animal navigation is the ability of many animals to find their way accurately without maps or instruments. Birds such as the Arctic tern, insects such as the monarch butterfly and fish such as the salmon regularly migrate thousands of miles to ...
, acoustic orientation and sensory biophysics. In 1938, while an undergraduate at Harvard University, he began studying the navigational method of bats, which he identified as
animal echolocation
Echolocation, also called bio sonar, is a biological sonar used by several animal species.
Echolocating animals emit calls out to the environment
and listen to the echoes of those calls that return from various objects near them. They use these ...
in 1944. In ''The Question of Animal Awareness'' (1976), he argued that
animals are conscious like humans. Griffin was the originator of the concept of
mentophobia Mentophobia or mentaphobia is a concept described by Donald Griffin, an American zoologist and the founder of cognitive ethology, to denote strong resistance from scientists to the idea that animals, other than humans, are conscious. Griffin argued ...
: the denial of the consciousness of other animals by scientists.
Biography
Griffin was born on August 3, 1915 in
Southampton, New York
Southampton, officially the Town of Southampton, is a town in southeastern Suffolk County, New York, partly on the South Fork of Long Island. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the town had a population of 69,036. Southampton is included in the str ...
and attended
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
, where he was awarded bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees. After serving on the faculty of
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to ...
he became a professor at his alma mater and later worked at
Rockefeller University
The Rockefeller University is a Private university, private Medical research, biomedical Research university, research and graduate-only university in New York City, New York (state), New York. It focuses primarily on the biological and medica ...
.
[Yoon, Carol Kaesuk]
"Donald R. Griffin, 88, Dies; Argued Animals Can Think"
''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', November 14, 2003. Accessed July 16, 2010.
While at Harvard in the late 1930s, Griffin worked with
Robert Galambos on studies of animal echolocation. Griffin conducted preliminary tests during the summer of 1939 when he was a research fellow at the Edmund Niles Huyck Preserve and Biological Research Station in
Rensselaerville, New York
Rensselaerville () is a town in Albany County, New York, United States. The population was 1,826 at the 2020 census. The town is named after Stephen Van Rensselaer.
History
Rensselaerville was once part of the Manor of Rensselaerswyck; as such ...
. He set up a minimal bat flight facility in a 9-by-7 square-foot room in a barn and then measured the ability of bats to avoid obstacles by having them fly through a barrier of metal wires suspended from a ceiling.
The remaining work was done at Harvard's Physical Laboratories. Using sound capture technology that had been developed by physicist
G. W. Pierce
George Washington Pierce (January 11, 1872 – August 25, 1956) was an American physicist. He was a professor of physics at Harvard University and inventor in the development of electronic telecommunications.
The son of a Texas cattle rancher, h ...
, Galambos and Pierce were able to determine that bats generate and hear sounds an
octave
In music, an octave ( la, octavus: eighth) or perfect octave (sometimes called the diapason) is the interval between one musical pitch and another with double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been refer ...
higher than can be heard by humans and other animals. Experiments they conducted used methods developed by
Hallowell Davis Hallowell Davis (August 31, 1896 – August 22, 1992) was an American physiologist, otolaryngologist and researcher who did pioneering work on the physiology of hearing and the inner ear. He served as director of research at the Central Institu ...
to monitor the brains of bats and their hearing responses as they navigated their way past wires suspended from a laboratory ceiling. They showed how bats used echolocation to accurately avoid obstacles, which they were unable to do if their mouths or ears were kept shut. Griffin coined the term "echolocation" in 1944 to describe the phenomenon, which many physiologists of the day could not believe was possible.
[ During World War II, Griffin worked for ]National Defense Research Committee
The National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) was an organization created "to coordinate, supervise, and conduct scientific research on the problems underlying the development, production, and use of mechanisms and devices of warfare" in the Un ...
where he supported the approval of the bat bomb.
At a time when animal thinking was a topic deemed unfit for serious research, Griffin became a pioneer in the field of cognitive ethology, starting research in 1978 that studied how animals think. His observations of the sophisticated abilities of animals to gather food and interact with their environment and each other led him to conclude that animals were conscious, thinking beings, not the mere automatons that had been postulated. In its obituary, ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' credited Griffin as "the only reason that animal thinking was given consideration at all". While critics argue that cognitive ethology is anthropomorphic
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology.
Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics t ...
and subjective, those in the field have studied the ways that animals form concepts and mental state
A mental state, or a mental property, is a state of mind of a person. Mental states comprise a diverse class, including perception, pain experience, belief, desire, intention, emotion, and memory. There is controversy concerning the exact definiti ...
s based on their interactions with their environment, showing how animals base their actions and anticipate the responses of other sentient beings.[ He was elected a Fellow of the ]American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, ...
in 1952. In 1958 he was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal
The Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal is awarded by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences "for meritorious work in zoology or paleontology study published in a three- to five-year period." Named after Daniel Giraud Elliot, it was first awarded in 1917.
L ...
from the National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...
. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communi ...
in 1971.
He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.[
Griffin was the Director of the Institute for Research in Animal Behavior, in the 1960s, which was formed as a collaboration between Rockefeller University and the ]New York Zoological Society
New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created.
New or NEW may refer to:
Music
* New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz
Albums and EPs
* ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013
* ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator ...
(now Wildlife Conservation Society). In 1965 following on from research on bats conducted at the New York Zoological Society's field station in Trinidad and Tobago, he married Jocelyn Crane.
A resident of Lexington, Massachusetts
Lexington is a suburban town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is 10 miles (16 km) from Downtown Boston. The population was 34,454 as of the 2020 census. The area was originally inhabited by Native Americans, and was firs ...
since his 1986 departure from Rockefeller University, Griffin died at his home there at age 88 on November 7, 2003. He was survived by two daughters and a son.[
]
Publications
* ''Listening in the Dark'' (1958)
* ''Echoes of Bats and Men'' (1959) Anchor Books (Doubleday).
* ''Animal Structure and Function'' (1962) Holt, Rinehart and Winston
* ''Bird Migration: The Biology and Physics of Orientation Behaviour'' (1965) London: Heinemann
* ''Animal Structure and Function'' (1970, 2nd ed. co-authored with Alvin Novick) Holt, Rinehart and Winston
* ''Question of Animal Awareness'' (1976)
* ''Animal Thinking'' (1985) Harvard University Press.
* ''Animal Minds'' (1992)
* ''Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness'' (2001)
*
Windows on nonhuman minds
" in Michel Weber
Michel Weber (born 1963) is a Belgian philosopher. He is best known as an interpreter and advocate of the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, and has come to prominence as the architect and organizer of an overlapping array of international ...
and Anderson Weekes (eds.),
Process Approaches to Consciousness in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Philosophy of Mind
' (Whitehead Psychology Nexus Studies II), Albany, New York, State University of New York Press, 2009, pp. 219 sq.
References
External links
National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir
{{DEFAULTSORT:Griffin, Donald
1915 births
2003 deaths
Animal cognition writers
People from Southampton (town), New York
Cornell University faculty
Harvard University alumni
Harvard University faculty
Neuroethology
People from Lexington, Massachusetts
Rockefeller University faculty
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Wildlife Conservation Society people
20th-century American zoologists
Members of the American Philosophical Society