A Critical Companion to Zoosemiotics: by Dario Martinelli
Author:Dario Martinelli
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht
3. Any action, even the simplest one, never has a unique impact, and by consequence can never be interpreted as monolith. A Canon that promotes simplicity is in practice a canon that prefers to “chain” observation in such a way that it gives the least possible disturbance.
Clever Hans was undoubtedly unable to perform mathematical calculations, so, to Morgan, all we need to know is that this horse was not a good mathematician (what would have been a superior psychic faculty), but simply manipulated his observers (what is an inferior psychic faculty). Period. And one cannot help wondering why are we so superficial with regards to that episode. And why we should evaluate the events only in a negative sense, as something (mathematical calculation) that did not happen. What we also have is a horse that, in front of dozens of observers, was always – or almost always – able to (a) detect an even microscopic facial or postural expression, (b) process these expressions mentally, and (c) understand which one, among the many, was to be interpreted as a message of approval.
And maybe there was even more to it than this. It was not only the ability to detect approval, it was also detecting the right degree of approval. Let us picture the scene: somebody asks Hans to indicate the square-root of 441 (21). The spectators gathered around the horse are very sceptical and determined not to applaude or congratulate unless the horse really stops his counting at 21. Thus, Hans starts to hit his hoof on the ground. After two or three hits there is already a quite interesting range of expressions among the observers: somebody is chatting, somebody is laughing, somebody is betting that the horse will not even reach 10, and so on. Everything is accompanied by some non-verbal language that varies according to the related emotional state, but also to the subject involved (one mat just think of how many ways to laugh exist). Hans understands that all these expressions are not relevant, and keeps on hitting his hoof. After some ten hints, somebody already goes like “Well… not bad!”, and in general there is an increasing attention towards the scene. In this case, too, Hans could not care less, and proceeds with his counting. Here we are at 18–19 hits: people grow excited and surprised: “hey, he’s doing it! He’s really making it!”. These are all expressions that one might easily mistake for a “definitive” approval, the one that Hans is looking for. But no, the horse does not stop yet. He reaches 21, and then, only then, he understands that the type of expression he was looking for is now printed in almost everybody’s face: it is the final approval, the one that suggests he should stop, because people are happy with his performance.
Now, an hypnotist or a psychologist could not do any better: this is for sure. Still, to Morganists, all this seems not to have any importance: what matters is that Hans was not an Einstein.
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