The forgotten militant and his enduring mission: Zing-Yang Kuo and his extraordinary years in behavioral neuroembryology (1929–1939)

ABSTRACT

Zing-Yang Kuo (1898–1970), hailed as China’s behaviorist psychologist, earned “Out-Watsons Mr. Watson” in the international anti-instinct movement. His contributions to the field on behavioral neuroembryology (1929–1939) are often overlooked in comparison to his achievements in psychology. We retrieved the titles of all of Kuo’s publications from 1929 to 1939 and examined those related to his research on the origins and development of embryonic behavioral ontogeny and the neural basis of embryonic behavior. Remarkably, Kuo concurrently focused on embryos during the same period as North American neuroembryologists. He maintained an independent stance in the debate over the sequence of behavioral ontogeny, represented by the embryonic neuroscientists Coghill and Windle, and critically pointed out limitations in research on both sides of the debate. Drawing from his experiments with chicken embryos, Kuo proposed the theory of behavioral epigenesis, which attempted to end the nature–nurture dichotomy and promote the transformation of the research path of behavioral embryology from elementary physiological anatomy toward a deep “comprehensive science.” Kuo’s achievements directly laid the foundation for the interdisciplinary field of developmental psychobiology, constructing a new conceptual framework for the systematic analysis of behavioral development and promoting the establishment and development of a new approach to epiphenotype epigenetics.

KEYWORDS:

• Behavioral embryology
• behavior epigenetics
• behavioral ontogeny
• instinct
• neuroembryology
• Zing-Yang Kuo

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ When Kuo published these English-language articles, he did not use the pronunciation of his original name “GuoRenyuan” (or Kuo Jen Yuan), but chose “Kuo Zing-Yang.” Previously, there was a saying that Kuo felt that the pronunciation of Zing-Yang was closer to the dialect of the Chaoshan area of China. However, according to Blowers (2001), this was due to Kuo’s belief that native English speakers could not easily pronounce the former one. Regarding the meaning of Zing-Yang, Gottlieb (1972) roughly translated it as “enduring mission.” We hypothesized that this corresponded to the context of the Chinese idiom “Ren Zhong Dao Yuan,” which is confirmed by Honeycutt, “when one views the totality of Kuo’s work, he had a persistent goal in mind. Namely, he advocated for a thoroughly objective, rigorous, experimental science of behavior in line with the natural sciences” (Honeycutt 2011, 332).

² In Kuo’s article “Psychology and Me,” he recounted his experience of studying in the United States and the reasons for choosing to pursue behaviorism: “During my time studying in the United States, I initially studied philosophy. However, I later found philosophy to be too abstract and switched to studying education, immersing myself in various social science subjects. It became apparent to me that both education and social sciences were disappointingly shallow, and all of their questions required psychology for resolution. Consequently, I made the decision to switch to psychology, which was probably around the years 1919 to 1920. During that time, behaviorism was highly popular in psychology, and I believed it to be the optimal approach for reforming a psychology deeply influenced by philosophy. As a result, I pledged my allegiance to behaviorism and identified myself as a behaviorist” (Kuo 1940, 1507).

³ In this regard, Kuo (1940) recalled that during the years 1923–1927, after returning to China, his thoughts underwent a significant transformation. He came to the realization that to effect transformative changes in psychology from an experimental standpoint, it was imperative to start with a foundation in biology. Thus, despite his busy administrative duties at Fudan University, he found time to self-study various disciplines, including physics, chemistry, biological sciences, and various methodologies of conducting biological experiments. “I needed a science that merged physiology and embryology—what I now call physiological embryology, or embryonic physiology. … The existing knowledge of embryonic physiology was both fragmented and lacked any readily available research methods for me to borrow. Faced with this predicament, I resolved to find a new approach for conducting research … to seek methods for studying embryonic physiology. It took nearly two years and numerous failures before I stumbled upon the method for studying bird embryo physiology” (Kuo 1940, 1508). In fact, Kuo believed that, regardless of being referred to as a psychologist, physiologist, or embryologist, with the discovery of bird embryo research methods during 1929–1930, he had already shifted his entire research focus to embryonic physiology.

⁴ At Kuo’s request, Carmichael successively addressed letters to the editors of Psychological Bulletin and Science to announce the founding of the Chinese Institute of Physiology and Psychology. In Psychological Bulletin (1941), Kuo was hailed as “the famous Chinese psychologist and experimental embryologist,” noted for his contributions to the foundation of the Chinese Institute of Physiology and Psychology, of which he served as director (Notes and News 1941). According to Science (1941), Kuo, the head of the Chinese Institute of Physiology and Psychology, went to the United States, and actively promoted the growth of cross-cultural ties between China, the United States, and the United Kingdom (Seientific Notes and News 1941).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Key Project of the Philosophy and Social Science Research of the Ministry of Education [21JZD063]; The National Social Science Fund of China [Grant No. 21BZX005]; The Key Support Projects of Shaoxing Key Research Centre of Social Sciences [202328].