A clear and concise practical guide to the principles and methods of studies of behaviour.

The role of parents in shaping the characters of their children, the causes of violence and crime, and the roots of personal unhappiness are central to humanity. Like so many fundamental questions about human existence, these issues all relate to behavioural development. In this lucid and accessible book, eminent biologist Professor Sir Patrick Bateson suggests that the nature/nurture dichotomy we often use to think about questions of development in both humans and animals is misleading. Instead, he argues that we should pay attention to whole systems, rather than to simple causes, when trying to understand the complexity of development. In his wide-ranging approach Bateson discusses why so much behaviour appears to be well-designed. He explores issues such as ‘imprinting’ and its importance to the attachment of offspring to their parents; the mutual benefits that characterise communication between parent and offspring; the importance of play in learning how to choose and control the optimal conditions in which to thrive; and the vital function of adaptability in the interplay between development and evolution. Bateson disputes the idea that a simple link can be found between genetics and behaviour. What an individual human or animal does in its life depends on the reciprocal nature of its relationships with the world about it. This knowledge also points to ways in which an animal’s own behaviour can provide the variation that influences the subsequent course of evolution. This has relevance not only for our scientific approaches to the systems of development and evolution, but also on how humans change institutional rules that have become dysfunctional, or design public health measures when mismatches occur between themselves and their environments. It affects how we think about ourselves and our own capacity for change.

Examines the role of playfulness in animal and human development, highlighting its links to creativity and, in turn, to innovation.

Written in clear and simple language, 'Design for a Life' offers an understanding of the science that lies behind many current controversies in parenting, education, social policy and medicine.

One of the attractive features of the great classical ethologists was their readiness to ask different kinds of questions about behavior - and to do so without muddling the answers. Niko Tinbergen, for instance, was interested in the evolution of behavior. But he also had interests in the present-day sur vival value of a behavior pattern and in the mechanisms that control it from moment to moment. Broad as his interests were, he clearly separated out the problems and recognized that questions about the history, function, control, and development of behavior require distinct approaches - even though the answers to one type of question may aid in finding answers to another. The open-minded (and clear-headed) style of ethologists like Tinbergen was based on a recognition that there are diverse ways of usefully con ducting research on behavior. This consciousness has been partially sub merged in recent years by new waves of narrowly focused enthusiasm. For instance, the study of the behavior of whole animals without recourse to lower levels of analysis, and the treatment of sociobiological theories as ex planation for how individuals develop, has meant that the relatively fragile plants of neuroethology and behavioral ontogeny have almost disappeared under the flood.

The first book to clarify the relationship between plasticity and robustness in the context of development and evolution.

Written in clear and simple language, Design for a Life offers an understanding of the science that lies behind many current controversies in parenting, education, social policy and medicine.

Defining learning is almost a bad joke among people who study behaviour... even though we have visions of a grand theory of memory before us, a certain amount of intellectual resilience is probably still needed.