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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to reflect about a possible contribution of the ethological approach to Psychology, especially in what concerns to the formulation of a concept of man which preserves its bio-psycho-social unity. Such reflection is developed from two arguments: the challenge of the inaate-acquired dichotomy due to the advances in the knowledge on animal behaviour is presented in order to question the apparent incompatibility between the implications of an ethological approach and the fact of human plasticity. In extension to this argument, the impossibility of opposing biology and culture as determinant factors of the human specificity is sustained, and an attempt is made to clarify the implications of a concept of man as a cultural biological species.