Science and Human Behavior

Skinner argues that human conduct can be studied with the methods that have succeeded in the other natural sciences, and that no special exemption is required for what people do. The book is a detailed study of scientific theories of human nature and of the ways in which human behaviour might be predicted and controlled. Its premise is that behaviour is lawful, that its causes lie in the environment and in an organism's history of consequences rather than in inner agents such as will, mind or personality, and that explanations appealing to such agents only postpone the analysis. Skinner first sets out the case for a science of behaviour and the tools of its analysis, chiefly reinforcement and the shaping of responses by their effects, then turns to the individual as a whole and recasts the familiar vocabulary of self, thinking and emotion in those terms. He next takes up the behaviour of people in groups, covering social behaviour and personal and group control, and then the controlling agencies of government and law, religion, psychotherapy, economic control and education, treating each as an arrangement that selects some behaviour and suppresses other behaviour. The closing part argues that such a science makes the deliberate design of a culture possible.

Written from the publisher description, Simon and Schuster.

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• B.F. Skinner