TOM BURNS

Colin Cherry has suggested that 'Communication' has become one
of the broad, unifying concepts which occasionally arise to counter
the centrifugal tendencies of specialist studies. He names sociology,
linguistics, psychology, economics, neurophysiology, semiotic, and
communication engineering as disciplines in which the notion of
communication figures, and we could certainly add zoology. Al-
ternatively, one might say that the word has become a peg on which
to hang a whole wardrobe of notions which are too unfashionable,
garish, or otherwise unpresentable for use as everyday wear. Mr.
Barnett is well aware of the dangers in so convenient a term, and has
confined himself to an account of the bearing which studies of animal
behaviour and of human behaviour have on each other. Or rather,
he has spoken of the bearing which the study of behaviour and
communication between animals has on that of men. (This is one
communication channel which usually carries one-way traffic only.)

Because my own contribution is intended to specify the crucial
differences between social behaviour among animals and among men,
it draws largely on evidence from experimental and other studies of
human conduct of the kind mentioned by Mr Barnett.

The community of human with animal behaviour we can, I hope,
take for granted. It has been a central assumption of experimental
psychology for generations, to say nothing of physiology and the
biological sciences at large. But when that is said, it has to be added
that the return from animal psychology during this century, say, has
been disappointingly small, compared with the progress registered
in the cognate sciences of physiology and biology, and in human
psychology itself.

This may account partly for the rather cool reception so far given

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