Burres Frederick Skinner («B.F.» to the public and «Fred» to those who knew him personally) may well go down in history as an influence on Western scientific thought that is incomparable to that of other psychologists. Skinner’s concept that human behavior is regulated by random reinforcers, if taken with the seriousness he demanded, is revolutionary. It deals a devastating blow to the cherished belief that behavior is caused by internal circumstances such as intelligence, motivation, and free will. This chapter gives an idea of the purely human side of the life of this revolutionary giant, as well as of his contribution to psychological science.
The boy
Fred Skyener was born in 1904. He grew up in the small American town of Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, 30 miles north of Scranton, a few miles from the New York State border. He was the eldest son of an aspiring lawyer for the Iran Railroad, which was the backbone of Suskwehanna’s entire economic life. His mother — a beautiful woman, but with great pretensions — once made her debut on the city stage. She had a pleasant contralto, but she sacrificed her singing career to marry a budding lawyer whose family was of a lower social standing than her parents’ family. Fred had an only brother, younger than him, an athlete and everyone’s favorite.
As a child and teenager, Skinner attended primary and secondary schools located in the same building, and became one of eight high school students who received diplomas. Gifted with a penetrating mind and conscious of his inner strength, he argued with friends and even with teachers when he was sure he was right, and sometimes left the impression that he did not respect his opponents too much. He had deep respect for only one teacher, Mary Graves, who, having early seen his possibilities, supplied him with books, talked with him about literature and about Darwinism. She, more than anyone else in Susquehanna, contributed to his aspirations for an intellectual lifestyle.
Living in Susquehanna had many benefits. She stimulated the development of the spirit of research and ingenuity in the boys.
Between the Irai Railroad and the main street of the city lay the densely wooded hills of northeastern Pennsylvania. Young Fred regularly raided these forests, collecting rich tribute in the form of honeysuckle, dogwood, strawberries, acorns, blackberries, walnuts. He fished for eels in the Susquehanna River and dammed the streams so that they could bathe. He brought home chipmunks, rabbits, bees and pigeons. Once with a friend, they tried to get the pigeons drunk by feeding them alcohol-soaked wheat.
But even more than roaming the woods collecting prey, Fred loved making things. He made roller skates, scooters, trailers, swings, spinning tops, glider models, kites, and even made a cannon with which to shoot potatoes and carrots at neighbors’ houses. At the age of 10, he built himself a secluded place where he could read and dream — a «box» where nothing distracted him. He liked to read books about people who invent something not just out of curiosity, but to survive: Robinson Crusoe, The Swiss Robinson Family, and especially Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island. Fred was closer to Benjamin Franklin than to such American inventors as Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, because he loved the world of books as much as the world of nuts and bolts. Despite the indelible impressions of Skinner’s first 18 years in Susquehanna, the rural way of life began to weigh him down more and more, the intellectual self-satisfaction of his parents, the limited horizons of existence in a small town caused him a feeling of protest. Escape became inevitable.
Student Life
Fred fled not to New York or Boston, but to another small town, Clinton, New York, 9 miles west of Utica, to the town where Hamilton College was located. In 1922, Skinner became one of 111 of his freshmen. Contrary to what he was accustomed to at Susquehanna, at Hamilton he found that he did not stand out in any way from the mass of students. He wasn’t an athlete, which might have given him some advantageous position right away, even though all the rookies wore green caps and were derisively called jerks. His father, William Skinner, unlike the fathers of Fred’s classmates, was not a native of Hamilton. Fred did not enter a prestigious fraternity, he did not have close friends or girlfriends.
Worse, Fred’s sense of academic excellence was also immediately undermined. The speech teacher criticized his rustic accent. Fred was disappointed, he didn’t feel safe, he was just miserable: «They make me do a lot of things I don’t want to do,» he complained, «they don’t know half of what I know about me.» He was looking forward to summer and back to Suskwehanna, where he had at least a few friends who appreciated his uniqueness. In the summer of 1923, at the very end of the semester, a tragedy occurred that aggravated his troubles. When Fred came home for a few days to be with his family, his brother Edward suddenly fell ill and died. Now Fred became the only son, the center of parental attention, and the parents wanted to see him again in the position of «home boy».
At the start of his sophomore year of college, Fred entered a college student and faculty circle that encouraged individual expression, breaking his isolation. He became tutor (guardian) of the youngest son of the famous Hamilton chemistry professor, Arthur Percy Saunders. Percy Saunders had a remarkable diversity of interests. He grew peonies that won prizes at exhibitions, he was an amateur astronomer, played the violin and loved literature. In his political convictions, the professor was also a liberal, subscribed to radical journals and criticized American businessmen for their pettiness and philistine values. The Saunders House was a salon of writers and artists who gathered in the music room for conversations and joint music-making. Writers of the caliber of Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Alexander Wolcott and James Agee enjoyed the hospitality of the music hall.
For young Skinner, this was a new, exciting world. He saw in Percy Saunders the living antithesis of his Kaiwanee Club-oriented father. Saunders became a trusted mentor for Fred, who encouraged his intellectual independence and burgeoning literary ambitions. Here he also found a free and at the same time intellectually stimulating environment, which made him forget his mother’s harsh morality, her endless sermons: Grace Skinner never tired of reminding Fred to constantly worry about what people would think of his behavior. In the summer before his senior year at college, Skinner attended an English language school in Vermont. The school was called «Loaf of Bread». There he met Robert Frost, who agreed to read his short stories. Two months before graduation, Frel received a letter of praise from Frost. This finally persuaded him to decide to become a writer. “I must say that you have an artistic streak,” wrote the great poet, “you are worth more than anyone else whose prose I have read this year.” His parents, with great reluctance, agreed to give their son the opportunity to try his luck as a writer. They believed that a literary career could not give a stable position in society and, worse, would bring a dubious reputation to the whole family.
Unsuccessful Writer
Fred didn’t go to New York like most aspiring American writers did. He felt that he should not leave his parents alone, because Edward’s death still weighed heavily on them. So he planned to spend the next school year, 1926/1927, at home doing his writing. His home was now Scranton, where William was a lawyer for the local coal company.
Skinner began his career as a writer by furnishing his workspace. In a small room on the fourth floor, he built a bookcase, a work table, a stand on which he put books when he sat on a chair. In fact, the so-called writer spent much more time reading, swallowing, among other things, the novels of Sinclair Lewis, Dostoevsky, Proust, Wells. He rummaged through literary magazines—Saturday Literary Review, American Mekuri, Daiel, New Massis, Too Much Mapsley, and Exil.
But nothing he read inspired him to write a few short stories, let alone the great American novel. For two months, he actually wrote nothing. The fact is that being just a writer seemed to him insufficient — he wanted to write in a special way, describing the surrounding perfection objectively, purely literary, without ranting about the thoughts and feelings of the characters. Much later, looking back at what he would later call the “Dark Year,” Skinner reflects: “A writer can portray human behavior photographically accurately, but that is not enough to understand that behavior. The behavior of people still interests me, but my literary method has not justified itself.
In trying to write, Fred also wanted to express his philosophy of life. An objective description was supposed to give rise in the mind of the reader to the realization of some truth, which gave a special meaning to everything written. The sources of its occurrence were to be literary visual means and the reader’s own effort.
The opportunity to exercise in mastering the visual means presented itself at a time when Fred had to look after his maternal grandfather, who was dying of prostate cancer. Fred was at the bedside of the old man, agonized by pneumonia, in the last hours of his life. He wrote to Saunders:
“All night this organism — worn out to the point of impossibility — lay here. Some muscles of the diaphragm continued to work — the air in small quantities was convulsively pushed into the remaining unaffected space of the lungs. As if making up for lost time, the heart, supported by strychnine, with tension distilled impure blood, and exhausted its last strength. His pulse weakened — he coughed a little and fell silent. I listened to the beating of the heart — it subsided. I picked it up and some black liquid came out of my mouth” (Hamilton College Library Archives, August 16, 1926).
However, it is not enough to describe dying. What actually happened?
“I am absolutely sure that my grandfather is everything, everything that I know and feel about him, his character, personality, feelings, skills, desires — everything, all of him left as soon as the physical condition of his body ceased to be suitable for a certain kind nervous coordinated activity. Just as the dull ticking of a clock that I now hear will disappear when the parts of it that produce this ticking stop” (Hamilton College Archives, August 16, 1926).
Traditional religious and metaphysical explanations for understanding the essence of death — his grandfather, anyone’s death in general — Skinner did not need. It was enough to focus on what was observed: to observe and register what was happening. All. In August 1926, Fred Skinner showed himself to be quite a behaviorist.
That same month, he read a book review in The Dial in which Bertrand Russell spoke favorably of the behaviorist John B. Watson. Skinner does not remember ever having read Watson’s Behaviorism (1925) before early 1928. He was not sure that he had ever read Watson’s Psychology from the Behavioral Perspective (Skinner Archives, 1919). Skinner’s letter to Saunders shows that his turn to behaviorist views took place in the summer and fall of 1926. “We think—we live by thinking? — not with cursed sight!” (Hamilton College Library archive, August 16, 1926). Fred discovered the fundamental paradox of behaviorism: by means of thinking, this theory reduces thinking to behavior.
Harvard discoveries
When Skinner arrived at Harvard as a graduate student in late 1928, he considered all mental interpretations in psychology to be fictitious and thus was predisposed to deal with the psychological phenomenon of behavior. However, he was not yet an experimenter. He has not yet completed a single scientific work and, of course, has not yet become the founder of a new science. His scientific ambitions were great: «I hope to smooth out the wrinkles of the universe,» he told Saunders (Hamilton College Archives, September 26, 1928).
No one at Harvard was as influential in shaping Fred’s experimental approach as the physiologist William Crozier. Crozier specialized in the study of movement, or tropisms, of lower organisms. As a professor, he was impeccable and notorious for kicking the shin and for refusing to patronize mediocre graduate students. Skinner accepted Crozier’s scientific premise: without the ability to exercise complete control over the conditions of an experiment, there can be no experimental science. Crozier allowed Fred to run experiments in his physiological laboratory and, as co-editor of the Journal of General Psychology, in those days one of the most prestigious journals in the field, helped him publish his research. Crozier made such a strong impression on Skyener that he almost completely switched to the study of physiology. However, his best friend, Harvard classmate and future behaviorist Fred S. Keller, will convince Skyener that he should continue to study psychology and develop a little behavioral science.
In late 1929 and early 1930, Skinner worked on a modification of an apparatus that Yale behaviorist Clark L. Hull originally called the «Skinner Box.» Even earlier, Fred will build a soundproof box that will help isolate the animal from distracting noises and thus make the experiment more manageable. Skinner had a design mind. He recalled that at the end of 1929 “became unbearably excitable. Everything I touched was fraught with opportunities to make something new and promising out of it.
Skinner built a treadmill out of spruce boards. The rat was fed at the end of the lane, then hand-carried back to the soundproof box to try again. Moving the rat by hand was ineffective, and he designed a path for the return trip so that the rat, without turning, could return without the intervention of the experimenter. The food stimulus prompted her to try again. But a new unexpected effect was discovered: the rat did not always try again immediately after eating the food. She waited for a while before making another attempt, and Skinner was interested in the animal’s delay. But what if you study the time between eating food and starting a new run? Soon he was able to control this variable (time) during the experiment. Skinner then shortened the rat’s path to a run on a tilting board. When the rat ran along this shortened path, it tilted the board, and, due to the tilt, the disk rotated, from which the food began to pour into the feeder. Since the rat thus obtained its own food, it began to run more often, the kymograph mark was set farther and farther. By drawing lines between the marks, Skinner was able to graphically measure the time between individual runs — this was the most reliably measured value.
One thing clung to the other, and then, unexpectedly, a stroke of luck, insight — perhaps the greatest success in Skinner’s experimental career. The wooden disk that served to feed the feed had a central spindle, the protruding part of which the scientist did not cut off: “Once it occurred to me, what if I wind the rope around the spindle and let it unwind as the disk is empty? In this way I got a new way of registering” (personal interview, December 1, 1989). Now, instead of markings, he had a curve — a curve that allows you to detect changes in the speed of reaction, which was impossible to do with the help of marks. Skinner invented a storage recorder that records curves with remarkable accuracy. He obtained a food intake curve and «the tangent of the curve indicated exactly how hungry the rat was at that point in time» (personal interview, December 15, 1989).
Now the need for an inclined board disappeared: it was enough just a box with a wire bent horizontally, with the participation of which a coom was fed. When the rat was in a hurry, regular changes were noted on the curves of the cumulative recording device. On his 26th birthday, Fred wrote to his parents: «What has always been considered the ‘free behavior’ of a rat has turned out to follow a quite natural law, like the rate of its pulse» (Skinner Archives, late March 1930). The amazing scientific achievement of the young Skinner was the ability to see firsthand how, in front of his eyes, something that he had predicted in advance was actually happening.
In the spring of 1930, two more amazing discoveries occurred. Skinner recalls, «I didn’t set out to prove that ‘reinforcement’ changed behavior, but to my amazement I found that it did.» Indeed, the rat eventually presses the lever, the food spills out and is eaten. However, food does not provide immediate reinforcement. As such, the knock of the feeder, in which the food is located, acts: “If I give the animal food, this does not happen at the same time. When the rat pushes the lever and the “bomm” is heard, this “bomm” is the main thing. It absolutely coincides in time with the movement of the rat, and this is what makes immediate reinforcement possible.” Skinner does not hypothesize about different reinforcement regimens:
“I ran out of food and decided that I would only provide reinforcements, now and then” is another fluke (personal interview January 9, 1990). He had the insight to understand the meaning of the accidents that sometimes accompany the experiment, he saw new possibilities that most other people would not have paid attention to. Surprises led to startling scientific results. However, Skinner was more than just a talented, inventive experimenter. What made him an outstanding scientist was his ability to understand the meaning of new scientific facts. Fred’s dissertation on the topic «The Concept of the Reflex» showed his extraordinary abilities as a theoretician. The history of the study of the reflex from Descartes to Pavlov was the history of hypotheses. Past attempts to distinguish between unconditioned and conditioned reflexes were unnecessary. Concepts such as «reflex arc» or «synapse» have been reduced to a simple correlation: the connection between a stimulus and a response. Meanwhile, Skinner in his research did not focus on what happens inside the body, but on external events. This implied that it was possible to study reflexes without having to study physiology. This was a radical departure from traditional reflexology.
Such a departure was unacceptable to Edwig J. Boring, director of the Harvard Psychological Laboratory and the most influential figure on the faculty. In a five-page printed letter, Boring accused Skinner of pretentiously trying to create a history of the reflex by substituting his own interpretation for scientific facts. «For the convenience of controversy, Skinner is ready to abandon science, he needs only ‘propaganda and school’.» Fred was not at all intimidated by this. In pencil, he scribbled in the margin, «I accept the challenge» (Harvard University Archives, October 13, 1930). Boring approved his dissertation with great reluctance, perhaps only because the Journal of General Psychology had already accepted it for publication.
By 1931 Skinner had a PhD in psychology and a growing reputation as an original experimenter. However, he did not want to leave Harvard until 1936. Instead, he received a prestigious membership in the newly formed scientific society at Harvard as a junior. This allowed him to continue experimenting with the box and the lever and to work further on the separation of Skinner’s behavioral scientific approach from Pavlov’s reflexology, or, as it came to be called, the separation of the operant theory of conditioned reflexes from the classical theory of conditioned reflexes. Skinner read Pavlov’s work «Conditioned Reflexes», he admired how well this scientist controls the conditions of the experiment, he readily accepted the term «reinforcement» borrowed from the great Russian physiologist. And yet, he specifically works to clearly distinguish his scientific approach from Pavlov’s. First, Skinner focuses on the behavior and reactions of a healthy, uninjured organism, while Pavlov mainly studies animals operated on by himself, whose reflexes are inevitably changed. Secondly, the difference between the two methods also lies in the assessment of the effect of intermediate reinforcement: “Pavlov found that it is difficult to maintain salivation if there is no constantly maintained connection between the receipt of food and the conditioned stimulus, however, rats quickly and for a long time press the lever even in the event that reinforcement occurred relatively infrequently. By using different reinforcers, Skinner induces different behaviors when pressing the lever; he studies the behavior of pushing a lever and the variables that this behavior is a function of. This shift in emphasis caused some difficulties. Pavlov always associated a specific stimulus with a specific reaction — the sound of a bell with the separation of saliva. When Skinner observed the behavior of a rat in a box with a lever, it was not directly related to specific stimuli. What specific stimuli elicit responses in the form of box inspection, rearing, front paw manipulation, and the first pull of a lever? He found regular behavior, but for the most part it could not be explained as a stimulus-response relationship because the experimenter could not isolate the specific stimuli causing the behavior.
However, this did not faze Skinner. In 1934, he prepared an essay on the general nature of lever pulling. After frankly admitting that some of the behaviors of rats appear to be spontaneous because it is impossible to determine the specific stimuli that trigger such behavior, he moved on to clarify the scope of what is being studied in his scientific approach. All the specific movements involved in pulling a lever were seen as classes of behavior that could be controlled by some sort of reinforcers, which in turn produced reproducible, predictable responses. Thus, actually pressing the lever became exactly the same subject of scientific study as the reflex: «The difference between operant and non-operant research is almost entirely reduced to the extent of the phenomenon under study» (Harvard University Archives, October 28, 1970). In fact, Skinner did not use the term «operant» in relation to pressing the lever until 1937, but as early as 1934 he actually discusses it as such. An operant is an operation, a behavior that occurs without any identifiable triggers. However, it can be brought under the control of reinforcing stimuli with the same reliability as responses to specific detectable stimuli, such as the conditioned response to a conditioned stimulus in Pavlov’s laboratory. The work «The Behavior of Organisms» (1938) was the final experimental evidence that made it possible to distinguish Skinner’s behavioral scientific approach from Pavlov’s. The book formed the basis of all future scientific research on operants. Moreover, Skinner never doubted that operant research could be applied to humans as well. The work Behavior of Organisms, which dealt exclusively with white rats, led to the firm conviction on which Skinner’s entire scientific approach was oriented: «The relevance of the science of behavior largely follows from the possibility of extending it ultimately to problems of human behavior» .
Although Fred began to think about the possibility of applying his approach to the study of human behavior, he did not abandon experiments with rats in order to study human behavior. He remained interested in the operant behavior of animals, but switched from rats to pigeons. His interest in pigeons began in April 1940 while traveling by train to Chicago. Looking out the window at the landscape passing by, he drew attention to the birds that flew next to the train, soared up and described circles, while not violating the harmonious order in the ratio of groups. The birds presented themselves to him as mechanisms with extraordinary maneuverability and the ability to accurately orient themselves. Why not use them as a control device for missiles used to intercept enemy bombs — bombs that kill and maim thousands of civilians? This was the start of a government-funded program to develop the idea of bird-guided missiles called Project Pigeon. Although the government eventually abandoned the use of pigeons for this purpose, Skinner’s efforts to develop «pigeon technology» launched his career as a social inventor. pigeons were trained in a conditioned behavior — they had to peck at a target inside a rocket, which then disabled the bomb.Pigeon technology was simply a way of achieving a social effect — minimal loss of human life during wartime bombing.
In addition to the needs that arose in connection with the Second World War, there were other reasons that turned him to the field of social inventions. When Skinner left Harvard in 1936 to take his first teaching chair at the University of Minnesota, Skinner was no longer a bachelor, his wife was Yvonne Blue, the daughter of a prosperous Chicago ophthalmologist. By 1944, the Skinner family had two daughters, Julia and Deborah. Fred’s closest social environment, his family, greatly influenced his activity as a social inventor.
Yvonne did not really want to have children. Skinner recalls that when Julia was born in 1938, Yvonne was terrified of the birth of her child. How could he make it easier for his wife to care for a newborn? Still reeling from the disappointment caused by the government’s abandonment of the Dove project, in the summer of 1944, spurred on in his creative endeavors by the birth of his second daughter, Deborah, Skinner began to build a special device. At first, he called it a «mechanical nanny», then the device received the trade name «air chamber». Skinner’s device provided a unique living space for his newborn daughter—a thermostatically controlled thermostat, an enclosed chamber with a safety glass viewing window, and a resilient floor with gauze padding that was easily replaced as it got dirty. The child was kept in ideal conditions, comfortable for him, without any pajamas with fasteners and even without diapers. Deborah enjoyed extraordinary freedom of movement and grew up to be a strong, healthy child. In addition, the camera released Yvonne. She no longer needed to constantly monitor Dobora’s condition, although at any time she had the opportunity to take the child out of the cell to hold it in her arms or play.
Fred was on fire with the idea of the commercial success of his «mechanical nanny», but his hopes turned out to be unfounded. General Mills Corporation has banned the sale of «mechanical nanny». What if something happens to the thermostat? As A.E. Bennett, a company spokesman, said, “One fried baby, one frozen baby, one choked baby, blamed on General Mills, can be an unimportant advertisement for the company” (Harvard University Archives, October 27, 1944) . So, Fred decided to take over the production and sale of the «airbag» himself. Unfortunately, the director of his business turned out to be a fraud, and Skinner had to take the trouble to inform deceived customers that they were not destined to become the happy owners of the «air chamber». Between 1957 and 1967, however, the small business Hercrib Corporation sold a total of about 1000 airbags. However, with the death of the company’s chairman, sales ceased, although individuals continued to send Skinner letters asking him to provide them with specifications for building their own chambers at home.
Despite the commercial failure, the «mechanical nanny» brought Skinner the first joys of all-American fame. Ladies’ Home Magazine bought Fred’s article «How to Modernize Baby Care» describing all the benefits of an «airbag» for $750. The publisher renamed the work, calling it «The Baby in the Box». «The Skinner Box» and «The Baby in the Box» overlapped, making it seem like the professor was doing practical experiments on his own daughter, Deborah. There were rumors that Deborah Skinner tried to commit suicide, that she suffered from serious nervous disorders due to two years of imprisonment in the «box» during infancy. It should be noted that Deborah is not only alive and well, but also became a wonderful artist and writer and lives in London. The only consequences of two years spent with a «mechanical nanny» are unusually prehensile toes and a habit of sleeping under the same sheet.
Deborah Skinner was the cause of another invention with great social potential. After 9 years in Minnesota and 1947 years at the University of Indiana, Skinner returned to Harvard in 1957 as William James lecturer in theory. Its theme is «Verbal Behavior: A Psychological Analysis». This work was eventually published under the title Verbal Behavior (1948), a complex study not of language per se, but of the accidents that shape verbal behavior. Fred’s interest in verbal behavior skyrocketed due to his observation of the development of language skills in his own daughters after the family moved permanently to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1953. Deborah learned to read much more slowly than her sister Julia, which greatly distressed both her and her father. Fred was naturally concerned about the quality of teaching at Shady Hill, a private school attended by the children of many Harvard employees, including Debbie. One fine day in XNUMX, Skinner visited his daughter at Shady Hill and was horrified by the way mathematics was being taught. Some children had already finished solving problems and had nothing to do; others fought the mission unsuccessfully; The results of the test were not available until the next day. It seemed to Fred that there must have been a more rational way of learning. And he designed the first primitive teaching machine — a device in which mathematical problems were printed on an accordion-folded paper tape, and later on cardboard cards. The questions were chosen with gradually increasing difficulty, so as to provide the answerer with the opportunity to receive the correct answers. The movable lever with the help of a transparent window showed whether the problem was solved correctly. If the student’s answer was correct, another lever would be moved to expose the next question. If the answer to a question turned out to be wrong, the lever could not move, and the student was given the opportunity to try to solve the problem correctly. The machine could not read the correct or incorrect answer; all she could do was to use a mechanical device to show whether the task was completed correctly. The essence of Skinner’s invention was the development of training schemes in which the student was ensured to progress from the simplest task of arithmetic or spelling to more and more difficult, but so gradually that the student rarely made mistakes. Reinforcement in the form of a demonstration in the window of the correct answer to the question prompted the student to move on to the next question, then to the next, allowing him to finally master the subject. Thus, the student mastered the topic not by trial and error, but driven by a stimulus in the form of reinforcements — his own correct answers to the questions appearing in the window.
Skinner assembled a group of brilliant young behaviorists who developed a wide range of machine learning programs of varying degrees of sophistication. He also spent a lot of time and effort trying to get in touch with large corporations, especially IBM and Rheem, who expressed interest in the project, but did not develop and sell effective teaching machines at a reasonable price. No company was willing to take the risk of making learning machines before they were convinced that there was a mass market for the product. The reluctance of big American business to take part in the development of the learning technology that Fred believed would revolutionize American education was the cause of bitter disappointment—the biggest downfall of his hopes as a social inventor. He blamed himself for not being able to interest the representatives of the business world with his invention: “My casual manner of dressing, my willingness to respond to address by name was a mistake. If I behaved like the ‘professor’ of the conventional script according to which the business man exists, I might be heard» (Skinner Archives, November 20, 1962).
Skinner did not fully understand that the scenario according to which a business person lives is a little romantic thing. In fact, behind the lofty images of the myth of American free enterprise, there was a hard reality — a banal desire to ensure a safe and profitable investment of money. Paradoxically, Fred had to deal with people whose beliefs suspiciously resembled the foundations of an elite club, which he had not liked even in his senior year at Hamilton College. The commercial fate of the airbag and the learning machine as promising social inventions was in the hands of risk-averse functionaries with whom Skinner, despite his best efforts, had too little in common.
After dozens of public appearances touting machine learning, Skinner finally realized that it wasn’t just his inability to find the right approach to American entrepreneurs that was hindering the success of his invention. School teachers and administrators feared that the teaching machines would take their jobs. By the time The Technology of Learning (1968) was published, Fred was already convinced that only behaviorists would see something useful in it. At the end of his life, when he could not help but see how, with the advent of computers, his teaching machines were hopelessly outdated, he was still very worried about the problems of the educational system in America and his own tragic failure in trying to use learning technology to solve problems of mass education that were insoluble in other ways. (personal interview, March 9, 1990).
Skinner’s career in social education was associated not only with technical inventions, but also with his literary activities. Only a year after the «mechanical nanny» was constructed, he tried to satisfy his ambition by demonstrating the social application of behavioral science. It was a utopia written in the «white tremens» of the summer of 1945. The novel was called Walden Two (1948), and described a society controlled by positive reinforcements. Children were raised in «air chambers» in public kindergartens. All adult members of society were considered the parents of all children. Private property has been abolished. In fact, there was no government. The division of labor has disappeared; competition was not encouraged.
At first, Walden Two was able to attract general attention, especially due to the publication in the Life review, which called the novel a «distortion» of Henry David Thoreau’s classic Walden, or Life in the Woods. However, until the start of the counterculture era in the 1960s and early 1970s, only a few copies of Skinner’s book were sold. By that time, several experiments of life in the commune had already been set up, to one degree or another based on behavioral technologies; only two of them managed to stay afloat: «Twin Oaks» in Virginia and «Los Orcones» in Sopor, Mexico. Skinner’s ideas made him a kind of countercultural guru for those who joined such communes. One enthusiastic member of the Twin Oaks community, known as Josh, described Fred as a kind of secular messiah:
“And it came to pass that among the scribes and magicians there arose a prophet named B.F. Skinner, and Skinner addressed the elders and scribes, saying, “Your teachings are false. Listen to me and I will tell you the science of human behavior.» And they mocked him: however, he remained imperturbable and said: «You lack understanding.»
Skinner was partly responsible for this halo around his name. To Frazier, his Walden Two alter ego, he attributed a man-god complex. Fred was painfully aware that since childhood he had suffered from a vain desire for godlikeness. His associates, indeed, treated him as a secular deity whose science was to save the world, and his slanderers, in turn, described him as a devil whose science would destroy human freedom.
If «Walden Two» allowed the author to taste the glory, brought on him streams of abuse and praise, then his book «Beyond Freedom and Dignity» (1971) caused a heated controversy. After the commercial failure of his last great invention, the learning machine, Skinner again attempted to «create his own world» by means of literature. Once again, the occasions—the instantaneous decision—contributed to the effect. The original title of the book was Freedom and Greatness, but Fred’s publisher in Knopf remarked that after reading the book, very little can be said about freedom AND greatness. Immediately Skinner suggested, «Beyond freedom and dignity.» The new title infuriated readers, who picked up the book with the conviction that Skinner’s goal was to destroy freedom and dignity. «On the other side» they read as «instead of.»
However, this did not contradict his basic conviction: ideas about autonomous human activity, “literature about freedom and greatness” hinder the scientific solution of the problems of overpopulation, environmental pollution, and the prospect of a nuclear catastrophe. Humanity’s time as a species is up. The survivors could only hope for the behavioral scientists to apply their science.
Although a few positive reviews were printed, most of the criticism was negative — no, even scathing. Such well-known figures in the intellectual world as the linguist Noam Chomsky, the novelist Ayn Rand felt deeply hurt. Chomsky (1971) stated that Skinner’s behavioral technology is not «incompatible with a police state». Rand, in his writings from 1971-1973, accuses Skinner of an obsessive hatred of «human intelligence and virtue: reason, scientific achievement, independence, enjoyment, moral pride [and] self-respect.» Dozens of public appearances, including one particularly pithy performance by William Buckley in Line of Fire (October 17, 1971), turned B.F. Skinner into the dishonest scientist Darf Vader. Skinner did not fully understand the reasons for the popular outrage. He criticized the utilitarian value of individual freedom in the face of a people whose entire culture was built precisely on this tradition. Even worse, he claimed that controlling a person’s behavior through positive reinforcement could IMPROVE the world. To a people who, only three decades earlier, had challenged the control fanatic Hitler and his diabolical plans for a «better future», Skinner’s behavioral technology sounded like a disturbing echo and a warning in the eyes of a people caught up in the early 1970s by the whirlpool of the anti-war movement. , the struggle for civil rights, the rising self-consciousness of women and sexual minorities, the book «Beyond Freedom and Dignity» outrageously fell out of the offensive procession of human freedom. He tried to justify himself, to clarify his position in numerous public speeches and in the next book, On Behaviorism. From now on, he was not so much a social inventor as an aging champion of science.
Final accidents
In August 1990, at the age of 86 years and 8 days, just before his death, Skinner gave a 20-minute speech at the annual meeting in Boston. Most of those present understood that this was most likely his last public appearance, because in November 1989 he was diagnosed with leukemia. When the feeble, grey-haired founder of operant science and several interesting but not entirely successful social inventions addressed his audience, his voice was loud and firm. He did not use cheat sheets, his speech was unmistakable and clear. Psychologists usually fail to patronize the doctrine of behavioral (behavioral) analysis, preferring, in contrast, the embrace of the mythical power of the mind. Skinner gave an analogy that makes sense of the pain of misunderstanding, dismay, and/or approval: creationist resistance to Darwin’s theory of natural selection has been compared to modern cognitive psychologists’ resistance to behavioral analysis.
The juxtaposition of cognitive creationist non-science with Darwinian operant science was entirely appropriate. Much of Skipner’s intellectual effort in the late 1970s and 1980s focused on critiquing cognitive psychology and relating selective behavior to natural selection. The followers of the new mentalism have forgotten why introspection failed as a science. Although introspection, as a favorite path of the researcher studying sensations and perceptions, has lost its former popularity, supporters of cognitive psychology, trying to describe the activities of the mind, still focused on the brain, considering it to be something like an information processor. Indeed, cognitivists have increasingly turned to the doctrine of the brain when they tried to talk about the nature of the mind.
Cognitive psychologists are fond of saying that “the mind is the product of the brain,” but there is no doubt that the rest of the body is also involved in this process. The mind is the product of the activity of the body. It is a product of the activity of the individual. In other words, it is behavior, and behaviorists have been claiming it for more than half a century now. To limit one’s attention to only one organ would mean to be at the level of thinking of the Greeks of the Homeric era.
Although the study of the brain is undoubtedly very important, neuroscience could never reveal the nature of the mind.
Cognitive psychologists have not moved far ahead of William James. They experienced serious difficulties in trying to rely on another science — neuroscience — as a basis for their own conclusions.
Skinner built operant science on the basis of experimental analysis, which was not based on psychology. Behavior can itself be the subject of scientific study. In the 1930s, Skinner created the doctrine that John B. Watson predicted, a doctrine that, as we can see, was different from Pavlovian. In the 60s, Skinner not only responded to the challenge of the cognitive revolution, he also realized that advances in ethology and genetics had opened up a new perspective on Darwin’s teachings. His 1966 paper «Phylogenesis and Ontogeny of Behavior» states that the science of behavior is more concerned with the analysis of ontogenetic (individual) accidents than phylogenetic (species). However, he easily recognized that «behavioral features of the organism … always inherit from the ancestors.» He certainly held the view that only past influences, both genetic and cultural, determine behavior—behavior is determined by primary inferences.
The key moment in evolution, which allowed man to manage complex verbal behavior and thus create a culture, was the development of vocal muscles. Late in life, however, Skinner became increasingly pessimistic about humanity’s ability to build a viable future. “Our evolutionary history has prepared us for the past,” he often repeated. “I always knew that I must die,” he remarked with a slight grin; however, at the end of his journey, he was also sure that the end was waiting for this whole world, and it would not be long to wait:
“I believe that the world is going to do what Shakespeare says in his sonnet “The world will be swallowed up by what fed it.” I believe that evolution is a random, probabilistic process in which there is no intention whatsoever. I believe that the evolution of the vocal musculature, which has made it possible for human beings to talk about the world, to have science and culture, is not enough to take into account the future. And I am convinced, quite convinced that we have already passed through a critical point from which there is no way back” (personal interview, March 9, 1990).
However, Skinner did not end his life in gloom and despair. Even suffering from leukemia, he continued to fight for his science, answered letters, fiddled in his workshop in the basement. Every day he planned so that the most productive hours were devoted to working with manuscripts. He got up on an alarm clock and wrote, obeying the daily rhythm, from 5 to 7 in the morning. In the end, he knew the features of his body better than anyone else. His personal experience and cultural heritage created the image of a remarkable person and served as the basis for creating an even more remarkable science, but despite all this, Skinner did not claim any personal honors. A chain of accidents led to his success. Here is what he writes in the last lines of his autobiography: “Being inclined to believe that everything I have done is not the fruit of a mysterious creative process, but the product of a combination of circumstances, I give up all hope of bearing the name of the Great Thinker.”