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(Lat., instinctus, impulse or urge) The term implies innately determined behaviour, inflexible to change in circumstance and outside the control of deliberation and reason. The view that animals accomplish even complex tasks by nature and not by reason was common to Aristotle and the Stoics, and the inflexibility of their routines was used in defence of this position as early as Avicenna . A continuity between animal and human reason was proposed by Hume, and followed by sensationalists such as the naturalist Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802). The theory of evolution prompted various views of the emergence of stereotypical behaviour, and the idea that innate determinants of behaviour are fostered by specific environments is a guiding principle of ethology. In this sense it may be instinctive in human beings to be social, and for that matter to reason. See also animal thought.