Tier-Psychologie. Ist das Tier eine Maschine oder ein sensitives Wesen?... (in English: Animal-Psychology. Is the animal a machine or a sensitive being?...) is a book written by Fritz Knickenberg (6 February 1863 – 14 July 1932). It was first published in 1908, by the Ulrich Moser's bookstore (J. Meyerhoff) in Graz and Leipzig. The book was published for laypeople and was intended to serve as explanatory literature for a previous publishment, namely Der Hund und sein Verstand (in English: The dog and his mind). In this book, Knickenberg aims at combining the Christian worldview with the mechanistic explanation of animal behavior by emphasizing on the uniqueness of the human soul and the perfection of the mechanistic nature created by God.
Context With the publication of his book, Knickenberg aims at providing background knowledge for his book 'Der Hund und sein "Verstand".', published in 1905, in which he addresses dog owners and their tendency to attribute human-like characteristics to their pets and that such analogies should not be made. Because the book did not contain many explanations to why such analogies should not be made, he decided to write a second book in order to introduce laypeople (i.e. dog owners) to the field of animal psychology. His intention for writing the present book was to defend the position of the absence of a soul in animals and to show that this does not cause damage to the Christian worldview, but that it complements it. In the present book, he firmly emphasizes the distinction between the human mind and the animal mind and states that gained knowledge through introspection should not be applied to understand the animal mind. By taking position to the question in the title of his book, Knickenberg enters a scientific debate about the validity of comparative psychology. For the time of his publications, Knickenberg holds a conservative and not widely shared view on animal psychology. The view that animals cannot be compared to humans as they have no soul and function like machines is contrary to the anthropomorphic idea. Knickenberg aims at incorporating the research of his time to make it fit into a Christian worldview. He wants to make a clearer distinction between animals and humans by defining commonalities and differences between them. With the release of Charles Darwin's book 'On the Origin of Species' in 1859, Darwin shared his anthropomorphic view of animals which enabled comparative psychologists to investigate human behavior on animals. Comparative psychology is the movement at the time of Knickenberg to which his publications are opposed to. Knickenberg makes use of Ivan Pavlov's research in classical conditioning from 1897, to emphasize the mechanistic nature of animals. With these findings, Pavlov also influences the field of behaviorism. Behaviorists diverge from Knickenbergs' view by applying the findings of classical conditioning to learn about human behavior. Knickenberg on the other hand, makes use of the stimulus–response model to reinforce the mechanistic view on animals, but not on humans as the human soul allows behavior outside the stimulus–response relationship. The mechanistic nature that is created by God to which Knickenberg is referring to in his book finds his inspiration in William Paley who set the conceptual origin for the term intelligent design.
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