Talk:Robert Ardrey

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[edit] Not neutral

The article on ROBERT AUDREY is cruelly incomplete and, as it stands, now i doubt its neutrality. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Maythil (talk • contribs) 01:03, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Ardrey's biography is not neutral at all. The bulk of it contains a "warning" against his theories and beliefs. This section needs MAJOR work. - Ricemaster (talk · contribs) 06:15, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree 100% and have been working on it intermittently since first seeing it (in early October, before I registered!) in its awkward, unreliable original condition. Athaenara (talk) 06:38, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Serious need for editing.

This article is poorly done. We should probably reduce the contents to only what is relevant.Kendirangu 07:44, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lack of Original texts as sources

I just thought I would point out that not a single Ardrey book is listed as a reference, which is a woeful inadequacy. When I was reading through the article and came across the part about the killer ape theory, I immediately remembered how in "The Social Contract" Ardrey writes quite plainly on pages 40-41 "'human evolution is based on injustice' wrote Sir Arthur Keith a quarter of a century ago. I rarely disagree with that most admirable of Anthropologists, but Keith was wrong. The evolution of men, like the evolution of meadowlarks, is based on the recognition and adequate sorting of unequals."

Of course, that alone doesn't demonstrate any contradiction, but for Ardrey to state on the one hand that human evolution is not based on aggression and on the other hand (this according to the wikipedia article on the killer ape theory) that human aggression stems from an evolutionary process and has resulted in the instinct for murder and violence today, seems suspect to me. I'm also wondering whether it should be pointed out that Ardrey seems to have adopted Konrad Lorenz's argument from animal psychology for a hydraulic mechanism behind aggression, as that seems to be a fairly central theme in Ardrey's writings.

Cheers, Zach Chidester 17:15, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I've found no mention (zero) of the so-called hydraulic theory (which was Freud's) in any of the four major Ardrey works. — Athaenara ✉ 06:18, 8 January 2008 (UTC)