Recovering Tinbergen

Tinbergen on mirror neurons.

Fifty years ago, Niko Tinbergen defined the scope of behavioural biology with his four problems: causation, ontogeny, survival value and evolution. About 20 years ago, there was another highly significant development in behavioural biology-the discovery of mirror neurons (MNs). Here, I use Tinbergen's original four problems (rather than the list that appears in textbooks) to highlight the diffe...

Tinbergen rules the Taylor Rule

Tinbergen Rules the Taylor Rule by Thomas R. Michl JEL E12, E52

Darwin , Tinbergen , and the Evolution of Comparative Cognition 28

Darwin and Tinbergen represent two enduring contrasts in comparative cognitive psychology: in the types of behaviors studied and the kinds of explanations sought. Darwin encouraged the search for human-like behaviors in animals as evidence for evolutionary continuity of mental processes. Tinbergen encouraged the careful causal analysis of animal behaviors as such and eschewed interpretations in...

Target Controllability and Time Consistency: Complement to the Tinbergen Rule

Recovering Rationale

Understanding the rationale of the architectural decisions supports software evolution: when developers add functionality, the explicit rationale helps them to track which decisions need to be revisited and which alternatives have already been evaluated. Unfortunately, architectural rationale is hardly ever documented for existing legacy systems. Is there any chance we can recover the architect...