Een biologisch oog voor vrijwel alles. De biologische denkwereld van Dick Hillenius

Abstract

The biological world view of Dick Hillenius, writer and biologist The Dutch author and biologist Dick Hillenius (1927-1987) deserves to be mentioned in the history of biology in the Netherlands because of his role in promoting public understanding of evolution and evolutionary theory in the 1960s and 1970s. Trained in herpetology, Hillenius was curator of the University of Amsterdam's zoological collection, housed in ARTIS, the zoo of Amsterdam, situated in the city's centre. He became well known to the public through his playful essays, newspaper columns, and poetry as well as his Dutch translations of some important books on ethology, including Konrad Lorenz' book Das sogenannte Böse [English translation: On Aggression], which examined aggression in animals and humans. Hillenius described himself as a new variant of the human species who was equipped with 'a biological eye for almost everything'. 'Almost everything', however, included not only human (social and intimate) behavior, but also art and culture. His literary work brought his readers in contact, not so much with new scientific facts, as with new ways of thinking that were founded on evolutionary theory.