Skinner’s Quote of the Day

Attempts to derive a symbolic function from the principle of conditioning (or association) have been characterized by a very superficial analysis. It is simply not true that an organism reacts…

The doctrine that words are used to express or convey meanings merely substitutes “meaning” for “idea” (in the hope that meanings can then somehow be got outside the skin) and…

The weakness of current theories of language may be traced to the fact that an objective conception of human behavior is still incomplete. (p. 417)

We are told that a concept is to be defined “in terms of” certain operations, that propositions are to be “based upon” operations, that a term denotes something only when…

Definition is a key term but is not rigorously defined. Bridgman’s original contention that the “concept is synonymous with the corresponding set of operations” cannot be taken literally, and no…

No very important positive advances have been made in connection with the first three provisions [talking about (1) one’s observations, (2) the manipulative and calculational procedures involved in making them,…

Operationism may be defined as the practice of talking about (1) one’s observations, (2) the manipulative and calculational procedures involved in making them, (3) the logical and mathematical steps which…

There is no reason to restrict operational analysis to high-order constructs; the principle applies to all definitions. This means that we must explicate an operational definition for every term unless…

And now my labor is over. I have had my lecture. I have no sense of fatherhood. If my genetic and personal histories had been different, I should have come…

By analyzing the genetic and individual histories responsible for our behavior, we may learn how to be more original. The task is not to think of new forms of behavior…

Why not continue to believe in our creative powers if the belief gives us satisfaction? . . . To accept a wrong explanation because it flatters us is to run…

For the second time in a little more than a century a theory of selection by consequences is threatening a traditional belief in a creative mind. And is it not…

To deny a creative contribution does not destroy man qua man or woman qua woman any more than Butler’s phrase [“A hen is only an egg's way of making another…

Selection is a special kind of causality, much less conspicuous than the push-pull causality of nineteenth-century physics, and Darwin’s discovery may have appeared so late in the history of human…

The key term in Darwin’s title is Origin. Novelty could be explained without appeal to prior design if random changes in structure were selected by their consequences. It was the…

A biologist has no difficulty in describing the role of the mother. She is a place, a locus in which a very important biological process takes place . . .…

Something does seem to be taken away from the poet when his behavior is traced to his genetic and personal histories. Only a person who truly initiates his behavior can…

Does the poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories? (p. 397)

. . . I agreed to participate [in a BBC television discussion with Chomsky] only if the moderator could guarantee equal time. I suggested that we use chess clocks. My…

Eventually the question was asked, why had I not answered Chomsky? . . . No doubt I was shirking a responsibility in not replying to Chomsky, and I am glad…

. . . Chomsky’s review began to be widely cited and reprinted and became, in fact, much better known than my book. (p. 391)

Let me tell you about Chomsky. I published Verbal Behavior in 1957. In 1958 I received a 55-page typewritten review by someone I had never heard of named Noam Chomsky.…

I intend to raise the question of whether I am responsible for what I am saying, whether I am actually originating anything, and to what extent I deserve credit or…

A person who, as we say, lives for art, for whom art is the most important thing in the world, is not so much one who finds art reinforcing as…

Mutation must . . . be followed by selection . . . The picture eventually left on the canvas is only one product of the combined processes of mutation and…

We may not like to credit any aspect of a successful painting to chance, but, if we are willing to admit that chance does make a contribution, we can take…

The word “origin” in The Origin of Species is important, for the book is essentially a study of originality. The multiplicity of living forms is accounted for in terms of…

Novelty or originality can occur in a wholly deterministic system. A convenient archetypal pattern is the theory of evolution. The living forms on the earth show a variety far beyond…

For Koestler a behavioral analysis of creativity is not only impossible but ludicrous, since novelty cannot arise in a “mechanistic” system. A creative mind must be at work. But a…

The very assignment of producing a creative artist may seem contradictory. How can behavior be original or creative if it has been “produced”? Production presupposes some form of external control,…

Learning the techniques of others does not interfere with the discovery of techniques of one’s own. On the contrary, the artist who has acquired a variety of techniques from his…

It is not true that if we fill the student’s head with facts he will be unable to think for himself. He is not damaged by facts but only by…

When teachers abandoned older forms of discipline, they lost control, and to the extent that they have not found suitable substitutes, it is quite correct to say that they can…

The history of art is to a large extent the history of what artists and viewers have found reinforcing. Universality is the universality of reinforcing effects. Changes in fashion come…

... when free of powerful reinforcers, we are simply more vulnerable to weak ones. Leisure brings the artist under the control of inconspicuous reinforcers. (p. 381)

Pictures are by definition reinforcing in the sense that they are responsible for the fact that artists paint them and people look at them. (p. 381)

The word “reinforcing,” though technical, is useful as a rough synonym for “interesting,” “attractive,” “pleasing,” and “satisfying,” and all these terms are commonly applied to pictures. For our present purposes…

. . . if we can discover the reinforcers which are contingent upon the artist’s behavior when he paints a picture, and upon the behavior of others when they look…

Artists paint pictures because of the consequences, and people look at pictures because of the consequences. (pp. 380-381)

If art springs from an inner life which is truly original, in the sense that it begins with the artist, then there is nothing to be done beyond giving the…

When [artists] talk about their emotions, thoughts, ideas, and impulses, they necessarily use a vocabulary that they have learned from people who have had no contact with these things and…

Why, indeed, do artists paint pictures? The traditional answers are not very helpful. They refer to events supposedly taking place inside the artist himself . . . They represent the…

We usually know why people behave as they do when they “have” to do so, but less compelling reasons are usually less obvious. They exist, however, and if we are…

We are living in an age in which science fiction is coming true. The thrilling spectacle of man-made satellites has turned our eyes toward outer space. What we shall find…

If we are to make a study of behavior sufficiently reinforcing to hold the interest of young men in competition with inner mechanisms, we must make clear that behavior is…

Under the influence of a contrary philosophy of explanation, which insists upon the reductive priority of the inner event, many brilliant men who began with an interest in behavior, and…

In an acceptable explanatory scheme the ultimate causes of behavior must be found outside the organism. (p. 371)

Experimental psychology has suffered perhaps its greatest loss of manpower because competent investigators, beginning with a descriptive interest in behavior, have passed almost immediately to an explanatory preoccupation with what…

Mathematics will come into its own in the analysis of behavior when appropriate methods yield data which are so orderly that there is no longer any need to escape to…

The psychologist who adopts the commoner statistical methods . . . is inclined to rest content with rough measures of behavior because statistics shows him how to “do something about…