Books in Brief: The Pseudo-Science of B. F. Skinner

The Pseudo-Science of B. F. Skinner, by Tibor R. Machan (Arlington House, 224 pp., $9.95).

Beyond freedom and dignity—to social engineering, the totally controlled environment, the maximalist state: such is Skinner’s goal, and such is the target of Tibor Machan’s weighty and persuasive book, a full-fledged attack on Skinner’s “inadequate, unsupported [but well received], fanciful theory of man and human action.” Dr. Machan ranges widely over 2,500 years of Western philosophy, and probes deeply into the full corpus of Dr. Skinner’s theorizing, revealing the roots of both the determinist obsession and the humanist defense of freedom, exposing the inner contradictions in Beyond Freedom and Dignity, and issuing a ringing affirmation of individual freedom. The book’s weaknesses are two: it sometimes is so dense, so packed with material beyond the ken of the general reader, that it frustrates; and it cuddles too snugly within the Objectivist mold: e.g., “The moral worth of a person is the degree of excellence he has reached by subjecting his life to the uniquely human control of rational thought and guidance”—pure Randianism —and we meet up with such gems as a listing of the “great thinkers . . . from Plato and Aristotle to Spencer and Rand.” Those are minor weaknesses, however, and to them as take their cues from Our Lady Ayn Objectivist, not weaknesses at all. The bulk of the book is splendid: a devastating critique of a degrading philosophy; a very fine libertarian statement of values and principles.

DB

About the Author

David Brudnoy

Featured Tags

The Pseudo-Science of B. F. Skinner, by Tibor R. Machan (Arlington House, 224 pp., $9.95).

Beyond freedom and dignity—to social engineering, the totally controlled environment, the maximalist state: such is Skinner’s goal, and such is the target of Tibor Machan’s weighty and persuasive book, a full-fledged attack on Skinner’s “inadequate, unsupported [but well received], fanciful theory of man and human action.” Dr. Machan ranges widely over 2,500 years of Western philosophy, and probes deeply into the full corpus of Dr. Skinner’s theorizing, revealing the roots of both the determinist obsession and the humanist defense of freedom, exposing the inner contradictions in Beyond Freedom and Dignity, and issuing a ringing affirmation of individual freedom. The book’s weaknesses are two: it sometimes is so dense, so packed with material beyond the ken of the general reader, that it frustrates; and it cuddles too snugly within the Objectivist mold: e.g., “The moral worth of a person is the degree of excellence he has reached by subjecting his life to the uniquely human control of rational thought and guidance”—pure Randianism —and we meet up with such gems as a listing of the “great thinkers . . . from Plato and Aristotle to Spencer and Rand.” Those are minor weaknesses, however, and to them as take their cues from Our Lady Ayn Objectivist, not weaknesses at all. The bulk of the book is splendid: a devastating critique of a degrading philosophy; a very fine libertarian statement of values and principles.