Practice question · Multiple choice
Ask "why do humans crave sugar?" and a physiologist answers with taste receptors while an evolutionary biologist answers with scarce ripe fruit. Which is right?
Hints
- Write each answer out and check whether they contradict anywhere.
- Tinbergen's point is that there are four questions, not one with four candidate answers.
Show the answer
D. Both, one gives the mechanism and the other the function
Why
They are answers to different questions and can both be entirely true. Treating them as rivals is the standard error in the field, and it runs both ways, with biologists dismissing function as storytelling and social scientists dismissing mechanism as missing the point.
Practise Tinbergen's Four Questions
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