BLAB: Donald Griffin obit.

[Colin Allen]

Donald R. Griffin, 88, Who Argued Animals Can Think, Dies

By CAROL KAESUK YOON

Published: November 14, 2003


Ed Quinn for The New York Times
Dr. Donald R. Griffin in 2001.

Dr. Donald R. Griffin, who was considered the founder of the modern  
field involving the study of animal thinking and consciousness, and who  
early in his career helped unravel the secret of bats' navigation system,  
died last Friday in Lexington, Mass. He was 88.

An emeritus professor of animal behavior at Rockefeller University, Dr.  
Griffin gave birth to the field known as cognitive ethology in 1978 when  
he broke a scientific taboo by suggesting that animals might have the  
capacity to think and reason, and that scientists should study these  
mental processes.

"He started a revolution in the way we see animals," said Dr. Marian  
Stamp Dawkins, an animal behaviorist at Oxford University. "People had  
been saying we shouldn't study animal minds or animal consciousness but  
only things we can observe. He said this is a legitimate question. He  
really opened the door."

In his publications, Dr. Griffin argued that the great complexity and  
adaptability of animal behavior, from the sophisticated food-gathering  
behavior of chimps to the clever fishing techniques of herons, suggest  
that animals are not mere automatons. Instead, he maintained, they are  
thinking beings, even if they might be thinking about different things,  
in ways entirely different from humans.

In fact, other scientists in earlier centuries had considered the  
internal lives of animals (including Darwin, who wrote "The Expression of  
the Emotions in Man and Animals"), and many nonscientists have long been  
comfortable with the assertion that animals have thoughts, plans and  
feelings. Yet among scientists, especially those studying animal  
behavior, animal thinking was considered a subject that belonged far  
outside the realm of scientific exploration.

Many scientists say the only reason that animal thinking was given  
consideration at all was that Dr. Griffin suggested it. Respected as a  
rigorous scientist, he was known to biologists for discovering the method  
bats use to navigate in darkness.

As a student, Donald Griffin and a fellow student, Robert Galambos,  
found that bats could use reflected sounds to detect objects. In 1944,  
Dr. Griffin coined the term echolocation to describe the phenomenon.

To many, the idea was outrageous.

Dr. Griffin once wrote, "One distinguished physiologist was so shocked  
by our presentation at a scientific meeting that he seized Bob by the  
shoulders and shook him while expostulating, `You can't really mean  
that!' "

But while echolocation is well accepted today, Dr. Griffin's pleas that  
animal thinking and consciousness become standard fare for research have  
met with more mixed success.

The numerous and vocal critics of the growing field of cognitive  
ethology include both scientists and philosophers. Scientists complain  
the field is too dependent on anecdote, highly subjective and  
anthropomorphic, more akin to the way a dog owner envisions his pet's day  
than the way a scientist typically approaches the study of animal  
behavior.

In addition, the field's natural connection to movements like animal  
rights advocacy has made some scientists wary.

Yet for other scientists, animal reasoning and consciousness have merely  
become the latest in the long list of humanity's supposedly unique  
characteristics to be acknowledged as shared more widely across the  
animal kingdom. These researchers acknowledge the difficulty of studying  
an animal's mental state, but say such hurdles should not preclude animal  
thinking from being the subject of scientific research.

Today cognitive ethologists study many varied questions about how  
animals might think: if animals can form concepts, for example, or  
anticipate the actions of others.

"It's a curious point that I've made in all my books," Dr. Griffin once  
said, "that in the face of very weak evidence we scientists tend to make  
very strong, negative statements: no animal does this, animals can't do  
that and so on, when we really don't know. I think we should have an open  
mind."

Dr. Griffin was born in Southampton, N.Y., in 1915. He received his  
bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard. He was a  
professor at Cornell, then later at Harvard, where he was a professor of  
zoology. He finished his career at Rockefeller. He was also a member of  
the National Academy of Sciences.

After retiring from Rockefeller in 1986, he moved to Lexington, Mass.

He is survived by two daughters, Janet Abbott of Arlington, Mass., and  
Margaret Griffin of Montreal, and a son, John, of Brighton, Mass.


New York Times

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