Throughout his entire history, man has learned to understand other living beings. And since they cannot tell about themselves in a language accessible to us, one guideline remains - their behavior. The book by scientific journalist Boris Zhukov is a kind of map of the roads along which humanity has tried to come to an understanding of this phenomenon. Following the historical outline, the author examines various theoretical approaches to the study of behavior, the complex relationships of different scientific directions with each other and with related disciplines (physiology, psychology, theory of evolution, etc.), the connection of ideas about behavior with general scientific and general ideological principles of one or another era. The development of science is presented not as a simple accumulation of knowledge, but as a “drama of ideas,” a complex and often paradoxical process, where the final conclusions sometimes contradict the original postulates, and remarkable discoveries become the basis for new misconceptions.