ABSTRACT
In Chapter 2, learning was described in a somewhat static manner as a mechanism to increase an organism’s behavioral plasticity. Also, the evolutionary relevance of learning as a mechanism leading to higher specificity and greater flexibility of behavior was pointed out, which probably gave rise to the success of the human race when it came to the displacement of other creatures. However, at that level of analysis, the mechanisms presented in Chapter 2 essentially describe the individual potential for behavioral adaptation. Only very simple modes of learning, like classical conditioning, can sufficiently describe even actual behavior, since in this case, learning results from the interaction of the individual organism and its (physical) environment. Also, the experience, or knowledge, gained by learning is lost once the organism dies and has to be acquired anew by successive generations. In many other cases, however, learned behavior is not lost. Knowledge about potentially useful (but not inherited) behavior is transmitted from one organism to the next. At this point, learning has become a social process and, consequently, the individual potential is only one aspect of it, though an essential one. The other part is determined by the social structure and answers the question: who is learning from whom? How does knowledge persist and even develop?
