Modes of learning, forms of knowing, and ways of schooling

Seligman (1970) tells us that he once ate some sauce béarnaise in a restaurant and shortly afterwards was violently ill. He could not eat sauce béarnaise for some considerable time afterwards, although he knew that the culprit was not the sauce but gastro-enteritis. Seligman’s vomit was as Newton’s bruised scalp; it suggested a seminal idea, in this case that we are ‘prepared’ biologically to acquire some learnings, in particular those with survival value, much more easily than others. To learn instantly to avoid foods associated with illness is to display phylogenetic wisdom.