The debate around a profoundly influential scientific experiment, Universe 25, may give us some insight.
Ivan Pavlov’s salivating dogs, Burrhus Frederic Skinner’s ping pong-playing pigeons, Harry Harlow’s love-starved rhesus monkeys — these laboratory animals have entered into the pantheon of behavioral science, aiding us in our understanding of conditioning responses, non-contingent reinforcement, and the importance of contact comfort, among other phenomena. Yet these renowned experimental subjects, through no fault of their own, cannot shed much light on those existential questions concerning the fate of our own species. Enter John Bumpass Calhoun and his self-destructive colonies of rats and mice.
