Throughout its history, humankind has learned to understand other living beings. But if they can’t tell us about themselves in a language we can access, then there’s one remaining compass: their behavior. This book by science journalist Boris Zhukov is like a map of the roads that humanity has taken in an attempt to come to understand this phenomenon. Following the historical thread, the author examines various theoretical approaches to studying behavior, the complex relationships between different scientific fields and neighboring disciplines (physiology, psychology, evolutionary theory, and so on), and how ideas about behavior connect with general scientific and worldview assumptions of a given era.
The development of science is shown not as simple accumulation of knowledge, but as a “drama of ideas”—a complex and often paradoxical process in which final conclusions sometimes contradict the original postulates, and remarkable discoveries become the soil for new misconceptions.