biological study of behaviour”. By this I mean that the science is charac-
terised by an observable phenomenon (behaviour, or movement), and by
a type of approach, a method of study (the biological method). The fi rst
means that the starting point of our work has been and remains inductive,
for which description of observable phenomena is required. The biological
method is characterised by the general scientifi c method, and in addition
by the kind of questions we ask, which are the same throughout Biology
and some of which are peculiar to it. Huxley likes to speak of “the three
major problems of Biology”: that of causation, that of survival value, and
that of evolution – to which I should like to add a fourth, that of ontogeny.Viewed in light of the Scientifi c Revolution, Tinbergen’s characterization of
ethology has two noteworthy features. First, its method, called “the biologi-
cal method,” consists of two parts: the general scientifi c method and the four
questions. This seems to be a result of the fact that modern science developed
through the amalgamation of mathematical sciences and mechanical philosophy.
The two parts correspond to the two aspects of modern science. Namely, the
general scientifi c method corresponds to mathematical description, and the four
basic questions to mechanical natural philosophy.
Second, why does ethology have the three further questions, i.e., survival
value, evolution and ontogeny, in addition to causation? In order to answer
this question, it is necessary to understand that ethology has developed as a
biological study of animal behavior by extending the conceptual framework of
modern science from physics to biology.
Given this, it is interesting to note that Mayr (2004: 30) observes that there
is one respect that fund amentally distinguishes all biological processes from all
inanimate processes, i.e., dual causation, as follows:
Furthermore, all biological processes differ in one respect fundamentally
from all processes in the inanimate world; they are subject to dual causation.
In contrast to purely physical processes, these biological ones are controlled
not only by natural laws but also by genetic programs. This duality fully
provides a clear demarcation between inanimate and living processes.
The dual causality, however, which is perhaps the most important diag-
nostic characteristic of biology, is a property of both branches of biology.^8
When I speak of dual causality I am of course not referring to Descartes’
distinction of body and soul but rather to the remarkable fact that all living
processes obey two causalities. One of them is the natural laws that, together
with chance, control completely everything that happens in the world of
the exact sciences. The other causality consists of the genetic programs that
characterize the living world so uniquely. There is not a single phenomenon
or a single process in the living world that is not in part controlled by a
genetic program contained in the genome. There is not a single activity
of any organism that is not affected by such a program. There is nothing
comparable to this in the inanimate world.On the current status of biolinguistics 181