Project Gutenberg #20417
The Outline of Science, Volume 1
J. Arthur Thomson
1922Thomson's broad popular-science survey of astronomy, biology, and Earth science, prepared section by section from Project Gutenberg HTML.
Project Gutenberg #20417 Public domain in the United States Cover source Local typographic cover created for MojiMori from public-domain source metadata
23
words at B2 or above
A1
A2
B1
B2
C1
C2
C2+
highlighted
at or above your level
Missing dictionary data: 1 unique word is not in the dictionary data yet. Amber marks show where it appears.
A higher note is struck in the behaviour of some more highly endowed monkeys. In many experiments, chiefly in the way of getting into boxes difficult to open, there is evidence (1) of attentive persistent experiment (2) of the rapid elimination of ineffective movements, and (3) of remembering the solution when it[Pg 237] was discovered. Kinnaman taught two macaques the Hampton Court Maze, a feat which probably means a memory of movements, and we get an interesting glimpse in his observation that they began to smack their lips audibly when they reached the latter part of their course, and began to feel, dare one say, "We are right this time."
In getting into "puzzle-boxes" and into "combination-boxes" (where the barriers must be overcome in a definite order), monkeys learn by the trial and error method much more quickly than cats and dogs do, and a very suggestive fact emphasized by Professor Thorndike is "a process of sudden acquisition by a rapid, often apparently instantaneous abandonment of the unsuccessful movements and selection of the appropriate one, which rivals in suddenness the selections made by human beings in similar performances." A higher note still was sounded by one of Thorndike's monkeys which opened a puzzle-box at once, eight months after his previous experience with it. For here was some sort of registration of a solution.