Biographical Memoirs Volume 67 (1995) / Chapter Skim
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Burrhus Frederic Skinner
Burrhus Frederic Skinner
Pages 362-377
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From page 362... ...
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From page 363... ...
Skinner's behaviorism represents a reaction from this basically romantic psychology with its focus on the "inner man," possessing an inner theater where "the life of the mind" could be played out inclepenclent of life itself. Skinner was a true descendant of the American pragmatism of William James, John Dewey, and C.S.
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From page 364... ...
There is something in Skinner of Tom Swift, a sort of gee-whiz, can-do attitude. Here is a piece of a letter from Skinner to Fred Keller (erstwhile fellow graduate stuclent, yet-to-be lifelong colleague, collaborator, close friend throughout)
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From page 365... ...
01d ladies wore "creepers," miniature crampons that could be folded into their boot's instep, to avoid slipping on the ice: In cold weather I pulled my underclothes into bed with me to warm them and put them on under the covers. Then I dressed quickly, washed, cleaned my teeth, brushed my hair, and went down to hover (with my brother and in very cold weather my mother)
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From page 366... ...
Skinner's aircrib, his teaching machine, the pigeon-operated guided missile, the Skinner-box itself, are all extensions of his early inventiveness. At Hamilton College (B.A., English literature, ~ 926)
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Stevens. Jerome Bruner and George Miller were university professors, busy with developing the Cognitive Center, and the other big names at Harvard were in the social relations department (a result of undoubtedly baroque political intrigues much above the head of a graduate student)
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Crozier was to Skinner as the biologist Jacques Loeb had been to Watson, a source of support for a biologically based psychology clivorced from introspection. Crozier, like Loeb, was interested in the behavior of organisms as a whole in response to environmental forces.
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Nervous connections in the brain and even at peripheral levels are so incredibly complex Dewey argued that nowhere in this network could one even conceivably identify coherent, selfcontained, isolable structures (organs and suborgans) that could have stimuli leading to them and responses emanating from them.
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From page 370... ...
A reflex, Skinner argued, is thus not a neurological entity at all but a correlation between an environmental stimulus and the organism's overt behavior. Although Skinner was furiously conducting experiments throughout graduate school and afterward as a National Research Council fellow and a junior fellow at Harvard, his
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From page 371... ...
32~. Here are pieces of Skinner's description of a stage in the development of the Skinner box: I built a narrow rectangular track about three feet long, and mounted it like a seesaw: it tilted slightly as the rat ran from one end to the other Like a large lever that the rat walks on]
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From page 372... ...
The Behavior of Organisms contained not only this argument (revolutionary then and still startling in its implications when seriously held) but a series of experiments that demonstrated a hitherto unique degree of behavioral prediction and control.
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Dick Herrnstein, Skinner's successor as Edgar Pierce Professor and my own thesis adviser, tells the story of when as a graduate student he was stancting in a corner of the pigeon lab practicing saying "Fred" instead of "Professor Skinner" when he heard "Yes, Dick" from another corner—and his problem was solved. At Harvard, honors, awards, and honorary degrees came to Skinner.
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From page 374... ...
Not, ~ think, his utopian vision of a self-experimental society, nor the educational technology, nor a highly successful mode of psychological therapy based on behavioral consequences, nor the Skinner box and a host of other useful inventions, nor his contribution to pharmacological testing, nor the journals and societies based on his work, nor the individuals he has influenced, nor the fact that he has put his stamp indelibly on the face of American psychology, although all of these flow from his central conception. That conception and Skinner's most lasting contribution is in my opinion more philosophical than psychological.
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From page 375... ...
The ancient Greeks, Aristotle in particular, conceived of souls as modes of living, as patterns of overt behavior of organisms, more or less complicated depending on species and individuals within species. Psychology for them was the identification and manipulation (the prediction and control)
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12:40-65. 1938 The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis.
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From page 377... ...
Knopf. 1987 Whatever happened to psychology as the science of behavior?
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