Customer Reviews

King Solomon's Ring (Routledge Classics)

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4 star:		(1)
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Confession - I'd never heard of Konrad Lorenz (even though he won the Nobel Prize in 1973), and I don't usually read books by Naturalists.

I was driving between business meetings during the day, when I happened to tune in to BBC Radio 4 (same as National Public Radio in the USA), and by accident caught a book reading of Chapter 10 regarding Dogs. Then on another day I caught Chapter 11 on Birds. Captivated, I actually pulled over so that I could hear the whole chapter & find out what the book was and who the Author was.

Then I ordered the book as a treat to myself for Christmas.

Fantastic! With some abridging 'on the fly', this book could even be read to/by a younger audience say down to 8 years old, who would enjoy, laugh & cry at some of the stories contained herein.

I wish my science teacher had read this to me when I was 8, rather than do some silly experiments with boring pond life (Chapter 2 would have taught me more about Pond Life)!

A rare 5 stars for this one, simply delightful, a joy to read. Lorenz is so full of love for his craft, yes I say craft because that is the way he treats his study of animal behaviour. Not an average scientist but rather somehow he has that rare ability to both love his work and be able to write about it to a lay audience with wonderful wit, charm, wisdom and grace. He's a little like Adolf Portmann except with more humour but the same love.

I mentioned that he writes this book for lay readers, not scientists, and unlike the contemporary crowd, who often write in a more condescending way he manages to get across the animals and their complex behaviour without ever at any stage making the reader think himself inadequate to the task. He writes as a human being experiencing the wonders of the natural world and does not artificially reduce it to ashes and leache the life out of it as others do. Here he actually makes people want to become naturalists or biologists. There is no finer writer in the sciences.

In the book, a little tome of 190 pages, he discusses a whole range of animals he studies notably, often from his own home where he keeps an entire managerie of ducks, geese, jackdaws, parrots, dogs, hamsters, water shrews etc etc. The whole house is alive with the raucous cries and crazy comings and goings of his companions. He gives much to the reader such as how to manage an aquarium properly, how to look after animals correctly so their lives are well lived and the book is chocka-block full of animal tales. The kind of tales myths and legends are grown from. I mean that the tales are often so remarkable, e.g. the intelligence shown by his pet raven or the story of two men carrying a canoe followed by several goslings, a large red dog and some ducklings. Its droll and humouress and full of joy. And, in it all the way through are his wondrous drawings portraying everything he tells of in the book.

A must have book for everyone, anyone.

"Without supernatural assistance, our fellow creatures can tell us the most beautiful stories, and that means true stories, because the truth about nature is always far more beautiful even than what our great poets sing of it, and they are the only real magicians that exist." This book is wonderful in the original sense of that word, filled with wonder, and this quote from the Preface explains one reason this is so. Another reason is the sense that one is sitting peacefully on a pleasant evening while a true raconteur quietly meanders through his unexpectedly mesmerizing tales.

I originally picked up this book looking for material to liven up a natural history essay on shrews; those tiny overlooked but wide-spread creatures better known as metaphors than animals. This classic book from a legendary naturalist includes one of the very few bits of writing on shrews outside formal scientific literature. Surely, I thought, Lorenz would have something interesting to say. In fact, he had many interesting things to say on shrews. After finding that he could tell an entertaining and informative tale that brought these apparently unexciting animals to life on the page, I naturally had to start back at the beginning and read the book through.

Each chapter treats a different topic and can stands on its own. But read together they bring an understanding greater than their sum. Lorenz's skilled storytelling gradually reveals that what at first appeared to be many different threads are all actually part of one wonderful fabric.

Konrad Lorenz was one of THE three European founders of ethology (the study of the natural behavior of animals in their environments). Nikolas Tinbergen, Von Frisch, and Lorenz were co-awarded the Nobel Prize in 1973 for their preceding bodies of work which created this new scientific discipline.

This was extremely significant to the course of American psychology which, until that time, had grown increasingly dominated by learning theory and the laboratory method. American psychology, influenced by the achievements of physics and medicine,etc., preferred studying behavior under controlled, laboratory conditions as the means for getting nearer "ultimate truth", which, at that time, was thought to almost always involve learning at its core--in accord with the principles and theories of famous American learning theorists such as Thorndike, Watson, Skinner, Hull, et al. Comparative psychology was the American branch that studied similarities and differences between animal species but controlled problems in a laboratory setting were greatly preferred. Observations of behavior, while valuable for designing later lab experiments, were considered less rigorous.

So the truths Lorenz, Tinbergen, Von Frisch and their other European naturalist colleagues reported was as significant as the child's observation of the Emperor's new clothes. The truth of a significant lack was revealed. The laboratory method could not examine or reveal all important aspects of animal behavior; the lab method obscured or eliminated those behaviors occurring in natural settings.

Lorenz and Tinbergen discovered, explored, and brought imprinting to the attention of the scientific behavioral world. Imprinting is the lasting (often irreversible) effects of early experience (occuring within a critical period of development) on the later behavior of animals. This contrasted with the view of normal learning theories which found the strength of a response was mainly a function of the number of practice trials. (Von Frisch's work was in understanding the "language" of bees.)

Lorenz's "King Solomon's Ring" was a significant contribution that enabled lay people to understand the importance of such observations and prepared (sometimes excited) beginning students in the behavioral sciences to take psychology in new directions. Within a few years, learning theory no longer formed the spinal column and much of the skeletal structure of American psychology.

I was a psychology graduate student during these years and the laboratory instructor for my university's professor of comparative psychology. It was an exciting time, seeing the old "truths" and axioms become overthrown and helping to search for new ones.

The "Ring" is still a delightful and interesting read and inclines the reader to look with different eyes at the behavior of our animal friends. Possibly because I've kept current on research on dogs, I think it's weakest chapter is "The Covenant", Ch. 10, which is on dogs. Here Lorenz decides that most domestic dogs descended from the jackal while a few also descended from the wolf. Having advanced that thesis, he then describes in detail the dichotomy of personality and behavior to which these two antecedents lead and which can be commonly found in all their descendents.

WRONG!

For the last 40 years, we've become increasingly certain that almost all domestic dogs descended from wolves. Lorenz speculates an incorrect premise and then proceeds to elaborate (with charm and erroneous fact) on this in great detail. It's interesting and illuminating to see how wrong Lorenz can be in some areas and so right (or right enough) in others.

So read the "Ring" to understand its and its author's deserved place in the history of behavioral sciences. Read it to increase your observational powers of your animal friends. But please do not read it as divine, ordained truth. Many thousands of scientists have since built on the foundations that Lorenz, Tinbergen, & Von Frisch built along with the contributions of Watson, Pavlov, Skinner, Hull, and others. (Serpell's "The Domestic Dog" provides a good source on more recent information about dogs.)

I had the very good fortune to meet Konrad Lorenz at Duke University in 1961. He was arguably the best student of animal behaviour in the 20th century and along with his students led his field to new heights. The book has popular appeal is highly instructive and is filled with humour. If nothing else everybody - and I mean everybody! - should read the chapter on laughing at (really with) animals. May he rest in peace.

Konrad Lorenz, though I've never heard of him, captivated me from the first page. He relates himself to King Solomon, who talked to animals through the use of a magic ring. From there on, he goes to explain animals and their behaviour, how it has affected him, and the passion and joy they can bring into one's life.
His description of animal behaviour is also not solely for scientists. In fact, it is Lorenz's language that is the most astounding. He is able to convey all the complex ideas of animals behaviour into simple terms which all readers can understand.
This is a great book for everyone, willed with passion by a man who loved who and what he was.

This book, King Solomon's Ring: New Light on Animal Ways is a great book on the observations of animal behaviors. The author writes in a style that is easy to read and follow. If you like watching animals and what they do, this is a great book that adds insight and fun to the characteristics of animals and pets, including fish in an aquarium. I love this book.

Konrad Lorenz, though I've never heard of him, captivated me from the first page. He relates himself to King Solomon, who talked to animals through the use of a magic ring. From there on, he goes to explain animals and their behaviour, how it has affected him, and the passion and joy they can bring into one's life.
His description of animal behaviour is also not solely for scientists. In fact, it is Lorenz's language that is the most astounding. He is able to convey all the complex ideas of animals behaviour into simple terms which all readers can understand.
This is a great book for everyone, filled with passion by a man who loved who and what he was.