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Essay on B. F. Skinner
Behaviorist B. F. Skinner, called perhaps the most celebrated psychologist since Sigmund Freud, was born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. A decided atheist at a very young age, he received a B.A. in English from Hamilton College in upstate New York, where he was required to attend chapel daily. He then earned a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Harvard University. Skinner devoted his life to the study of instrumental conditioning--later called Skinnerian conditioning--advancing research methodology by raising the standards for what was considered acceptable research within the field of psychology. In 1945 he was made chair of the psychology department at Indiana University.
In 1948 he published his famous utopian novel, Walden Two, which depicts a society where social problems are solved through a technology of human behavior that renders many traditional values obsolete. In that same year, he returned to Harvard, where he became Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology and taught for the test of his life. In 1969 he wrote Contingencies in Reinforcement and two years later Beyond Freedom and Dignity, philosophical treatises that discuss determinism and responsibility. In 1972 Skinner was named the American Humanist Association's Humanist of the Year. He died August 18, 1990. (Wyatt, 2001)
Humanism is a rational philosophy informed by science, inspired by art, and motivated by compassion. Affirming the dignity of each human being, it supports the maximization of individual liberty and opportunity consonant with social and planetary responsibility. It advocates the extension of participatory democracy and the expansion of the open society, standing for human rights and social justice. Free of supernaturalism, it recognizes human beings as a part of nature and holds that values--be they religious, ethical, social, or political--have their source in human nature, experience, and culture. Humanism thus derives the goals of life from human need and interest rather than from theological or ideological abstractions................
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