Books, Arts & Manners: The Tautology of B. F. Skinner

Beyond Freedom and Dignity By B. F. Skinner

Knopf, 225 pp., $6.95 B. F. Skinner is a man of many talents. He is a superb writer, a brilliant polemicist, a clever inventor and a trained scientist. He is also a philosopher manqué and an incredible egotist. Skinner asserts behavioral science has found x, y and z to be true, thereby making it imperative we change our society to conform to these newly discovered truths. In fact, science has found nothing of the sort. There is not a single major life scientist who takes his philosophical ideas seriously, a point that is somehow lost in popular discussions of his work.

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Michael Gazzaniga

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Beyond Freedom and Dignity By B. F. Skinner

Knopf, 225 pp., $6.95 B. F. Skinner is a man of many talents. He is a superb writer, a brilliant polemicist, a clever inventor and a trained scientist. He is also a philosopher manqué and an incredible egotist. Skinner asserts behavioral science has found x, y and z to be true, thereby making it imperative we change our society to conform to these newly discovered truths. In fact, science has found nothing of the sort. There is not a single major life scientist who takes his philosophical ideas seriously, a point that is somehow lost in popular discussions of his work.