The Behavior Of Communicating: An Ethological Approach
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good
At the crossroads of biology, animal behaviour, and communication theory stands a landmark scientific treatise that permanently reshaped how scholars understand the signals living creatures send and receive. The Behavior of Communicating: An Ethological Approach presents a rigorous, systematic analysis of communication as a biological phenomenon, arguing that the act of signalling — across species from birds to primates — is governed by evolutionary imperatives as fundamental as any other adaptive behaviour. W. John Smith draws on decades of field observation and ethological research to detail the mechanics, functions, and contexts of communicative acts, illustrating how meaning emerges not from signals in isolation but from the dynamic interplay between sender, receiver, and environment. Smith's methodology is both meticulous and visionary, grounding abstract concepts of meaning and information firmly within the observable natural world, a bold move that bridges the gap between the life sciences and semiotics. His prose is precise and authoritative, befitting a scholar who spent years cataloguing avian behaviour, yet the work carries a sweeping intellectual ambition that elevates it well beyond a specialist monograph. Published by Harvard University Press in 1977, the book remains an essential cornerstone of ethology and animal communication studies — a work that prompts the reader to ask, with fresh urgency, whether humanity's own complex languages are quite as unique as we have always assumed.
Author: W. John Smith
Format: Hardback
Published: 1977, Harvard University Press
Genre: Biology
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good
At the crossroads of biology, animal behaviour, and communication theory stands a landmark scientific treatise that permanently reshaped how scholars understand the signals living creatures send and receive. The Behavior of Communicating: An Ethological Approach presents a rigorous, systematic analysis of communication as a biological phenomenon, arguing that the act of signalling — across species from birds to primates — is governed by evolutionary imperatives as fundamental as any other adaptive behaviour. W. John Smith draws on decades of field observation and ethological research to detail the mechanics, functions, and contexts of communicative acts, illustrating how meaning emerges not from signals in isolation but from the dynamic interplay between sender, receiver, and environment. Smith's methodology is both meticulous and visionary, grounding abstract concepts of meaning and information firmly within the observable natural world, a bold move that bridges the gap between the life sciences and semiotics. His prose is precise and authoritative, befitting a scholar who spent years cataloguing avian behaviour, yet the work carries a sweeping intellectual ambition that elevates it well beyond a specialist monograph. Published by Harvard University Press in 1977, the book remains an essential cornerstone of ethology and animal communication studies — a work that prompts the reader to ask, with fresh urgency, whether humanity's own complex languages are quite as unique as we have always assumed.