This chapter begins by noting that, while psychologists and neuroscientists have almost always studied learning in a laboratory setting, other scientists - ethologists - have mainly studied learning in more natural environments. One form of early learning, imprinting, was studied by the Austrian ethologist, Konrad Lorenz. The chapter describes his claims about this phenomenon and how researchers that were more experimentally oriented than Lorenz tested these claims and rejected many of them. The interaction between ethologists and learning theorists led to studies of how species differed in regard to constraints on what they can learn, a topic that is covered in the second half of Chapter 6. This describes research on topics such a sign- and goal-tracking, conditioning of fear reactions and the work of Garcias group on taste-aversion learning.

In the years since its inception, Wagner’s Ring has generated significant commentary and controversy. Critics of the Ring asserted its influence in public discourse (beyond music criticism of the work and its performances) and generated ambitious intellectual and ideological debates about art, society, and politics. This chapter charts some milestones in these debates, including the contributions of well-known thinkers such as Nietzsche, Shaw, and Adorno, but also some of their French, German, or Russian contemporaries whose influence has waned since the fin de siècle. In the twentieth century, seminal musicological approaches emerged that transcend analytical-technical matters, such as Alfred Lorenz’s ideologically charged investigations of Wagnerian form or Richard Donington’s psychoanalytic explanations. More recently the task of interpreting the Ring has shifted from the written word to the operatic stage, where directors explore and expose its various and conflicting layers of meaning. Whether formulated by philosophers, writers, musicologists, or artists, two basic approaches emerge from these interpretations: They either develop a social or political interpretation from the Ring outward, or they insert the tetralogy into a preexisting worldview.