Subversão da Etologia

Abstract

In this paper, the author expounds his criticisms toward the extrapolations from animal to human behavior, which are more and more presented to the large public, when they don’t respect the rules of phyletic inference currently established and accepted in the frame of evolutionary theory. The author stresses the need of clearly recognize the distinction between homologies and the different kinds of homoplasies (including analogies), and criticizes the absence of this distinction in most of the behavioral comparisons between non phylectically related species. In the last part of the paper, the author makes reference to the methodological importance of ethology to deal alone with the complex human, social and cultural phenomena, criticizing the sociobiologists and other animal behavior scientists that intempt such a reductionist approach. The author supports the transciplinary and integrated approach to those phenomena.