May 2022
Cumulative Record. Chapter 9: A Case History in Scientific Method. Quote 20
We are within reach of a science of the individual. This will be achieved, not by resorting to some special theory of knowledge in which intuition or understanding takes the place of observation and analysis, but through an increasing grasp of relevant conditions to produce order in the individual case. (p. 126)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 9: A Case History in Scientific Method. Quote 18
In choosing rate of responding as a basic datum and in recording this conveniently in a cumulative curve, we make important temporal aspects of behavior visible. Once this has happened, our scientific practice is reduced to simple looking. A new world is open to inspection. We use such curves as we use a microscope, X-ray […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 9: A Case History in Scientific Method. Quote 17
When you have the responsibility of making absolutely sure that a given organism will engage in a given sort of behavior at a given time, you quickly grow impatient with theories of learning. Principles, hypotheses, theorems, satisfactory proof at the .05 level of significance that behavior at a choice point shows the effect of a […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 9: A Case History in Scientific Method. Quote 14
I never faced a Problem which was more than the eternal problem of finding order. I never attacked a problem by constructing a Hypothesis. I never deduced Theorems or submitted them to Experimental Check. So far as I can see, I had no preconceived Model of behavior—certainly not a physiological or mentalistic one and, I […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 9: A Case History in Scientific Method. Quote 13
Since I do not wish to deprecate the hypothetico-deductive method, I am glad to testify to its usefulness. It led me to apply our second principle of unformalized scientific method and to ask myself why every press of the lever had to be reinforced. (p. 118)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 9: A Case History in Scientific Method. Quote 12
I can easily recall the excitement of that first complete extinction curve. . . I had made contact with Pavlov at last! Here was a curve uncorrupted by the physiological process of ingestion. It was an orderly change due to nothing more than a special contingency of reinforcement. It was pure behavior! (p. 117)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 9: A Case History in Scientific Method. Quote 11
Now, as soon as you begin to complicate an apparatus, you necessarily invoke a fourth principle of scientific practice: Apparatuses sometimes break down. I had only to wait for the food magazine to jam to get an extinction curve. At first I treated this as a defect and hastened to remedy the difficulty. But eventually, […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 9: A Case History in Scientific Method. Quote 5
So far as I can see, I began simply by looking for lawful processes in the behavior of the intact organism. Pavlov had shown the way; but I could not then, as I cannot now, move without a jolt from salivary reflexes to the important business of the organism in everyday life. (p. 111)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 9: A Case History in Scientific Method. Quote 4
It had been said of Loeb, and might have been said of Crozier, that he “resented the nervous system.” Whether this was true or not, the fact was that both these men talked about animal behavior without mentioning the nervous system and with surprising success. So far as I was concerned, they cancelled out the […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 9: A Case History in Scientific Method. Quote 3
When I arrived at Harvard for graduate study, the air was not exactly full of behavior, but Walter Hunter was coming in once a week from Clark University to give a seminar, and Fred Keller, also a graduate student, was an expert in both the technical details and the sophistry of Behaviorism. Many a time […]
Cumulative Record. Chapter 9: A Case History in Scientific Method. Quote 2
I had had no psychology as an undergraduate but I had had a lot of biology, and two of the books which my biology professor had put into my hands were Loeb’s Physiology of the Brain and the newly published Oxford edition of Pavlov’s Conditioned Reflexes. (p. 111)
Cumulative Record. Chapter 9: A Case History in Scientific Method. Quote 1
… it is a mistake to identify scientific practice with the formalized constructions of statistics and scientific method. These disciplines have their place, but it does not coincide with the place of scientific research. They offer a method of science, but not, as is so often implied, the method. (p. 109)