Analysis and/or Interpretation in Neurophysiology? A Transatlantic Discussion Between F. J. J. Buytendijk and K. S. Lashley, 1929-1932.

In the interwar period, biologists employed a diverse set of holistic approaches that were connected to different research methodologies. Against this background, this article explores attempts in the 1920s and 1930s to negotiate quantitative and qualitative methods in the field of neurophysiology. It focuses on the work of two scientists on different sides of the Atlantic: the Dutch animal psychologist and physiologist Frederik J.J. Buytendijk and the American neuropsychologist Karl S. Lashley, specifically analyzing their critical correspondence, 1929-1932, on the problems surrounding the term intelligence. It discusses the inexplicable anomalies in neurophysiology as well as the reliability of quantitative and qualitative methods. While in his laboratory work Lashley adhered to a strictly analytic approach, Buytendijk tried to combine quantitative methods with phenomenological and hermeneutical approaches. The starting point of their discussion is Lashley's monograph on Brain Mechanisms and Intelligence (1929) and the rat experiments discussed therein. Buytendijk questioned the viability of the maze-learning method and the use of statistics to test intelligence in animals; he reproduced Lashley's experiments and then confronted Lashley with his critical findings. In addition to elucidating this exchange, this paper will, more generally, shed light on the nature of the disagreements and shared assumptions prevalent among interwar neurophysiologists. In turn, it contributes to historiographical debates on localization and functionalism and the discrepancy between analytic (quantitative) and interpretative (qualitative) approaches.

["being born with and in its environment" : Frederik Buytendijk's Experimental Conceptualization of an Animal-Environment Unit]. / "mit und in seiner Umwelt geboren" : Frederik Buytendijks experimentelle Konzeptualisierung einer Tier-Umwelt-Einheit.

The Dutch animal psychologist Frederik J. J. Buytendijk (1887-1974) developed an anti-reductionist approach in his ethological research of the 1920s and 1930s distinct from behaviorism, explicitly including in his experimental practices the freedom of animals, variable observations, and the subjective experience of the investigator. Buytendijk thereby developed a scientific theory that methodologically relied on phenomenology, hermeneutics, and concepts of unity based on gestalt theory, but did not abandon quantitative data collection. On the contrary, in his Groningen institute Buytendijk based his work on the biological theories of Jakob von Uexküll and specifically investigated the thesis of an "animal-environment unit". Using this institutional framework and two experiments (1924 & 1931), this article determines to what extent Buytendijk was able to verify his statement that the animal was "born with and in its environment", which at the same time supported his scientific-philosophical concept. Accordingly, Buytendijk understood the environment as an organ of the animal, not only as a metaphor, but also as reality.