Skinner’s Quote of the Day

Skinner’s Quote of the Day is the project of the B. F. Skinner Foundation, copyright holder for Skinner’s works. On January 4, 2016, we started with Science and Human Behavior, followed by About Behaviorism, Contingencies of Reinforcement, Recent Issues in the Analysis of Behavior, Reflections on Behaviorism and Society, Upon Further Reflection, and Cumulative Record. Quotes are selected by renowned scientists and published every workday (Monday through Friday). The daily quote is also posted on the Facebook forum. RSS feed for “Skinner’s Quote of the Day” is available here: http://www.bfskinner.org/category/quotes/feed/. Please use the Archives function below to access previous quotes, or to search by a keyword.

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Recent Quotes:

• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 4
  Because a verbal environment is composed of listeners, it is understandable that linguists emphasize the listener. (p. 487)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 3
  Strictly speaking, verbal behavior does not evolve. It is the product of a verbal environment, or what linguists call a language, and it is the verbal environment that evolves. (p. 487)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 2
  Verbal behavior left no artifacts until the appearance of writing, and that was at a very late stage. We shall probably never know precisely what happened, but we ought to be able to say what might have happened—that is, what kinds of variations and what kinds of contingencies of selection could have brought verbal behavior… Read more: Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 2
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 1
  Evolutionary theory has always been plagued by scantiness of evidence. We see the products of evolution but not much of the process. (p. 487)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 19
  And now my labor is over. I have had my lecture. I have no sense of fatherhood. If my genetic and personal histories had been different, I should have come into possession of a different lecture. If I deserve any credit at all, it is simply for having served as a place in which certain… Read more: Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 19
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 13
  To deny a creative contribution does not destroy man qua man or woman qua woman any more than Butler’s phrase [“A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg”] destroys hen qua hen. (p. 483)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 12
  The poet often knows that some part of his history is contributing to the poem he is writing. He may, for example, reject a phrase because he sees that he has borrowed it from something he has read. But it is quite impossible for him to be aware of all his history, and it is… Read more: Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 12
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 11
  Selection is a special kind of causality, much less conspicuous than the push-pull causality of nineteenth-century physics, and Darwin’s discovery may have appeared so late in the history of human thought for that reason. The selective action of the consequences of behavior was also overlooked for a long time. (p. 482)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 10
  The key term in Darwin’s title is Origin. Novelty could be explained without appeal to prior design if random changes in structure were selected by their consequences. It was the contingencies of survival which created new forms. (p. 482
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 9
  A biologist has no difficulty in describing the role of the mother. She is a place, a locus in which a very important biological process takes place . . . The poet is also a locus, a place in which certain genetic and environmental causes come together to have a common effect. (p. 481)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 8
  Something does seem to be taken away from the poet when his behavior is traced to his genetic and personal histories. Only a person who truly initiates his behavior can claim that he is free to do so and that he deserves credit for any achievement. If the environment is the initiating force, he is… Read more: Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 8
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 7
  Does the poet create, originate, initiate the thing called a poem, or is his behavior merely the product of his genetic and environmental histories? (p. 479)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 6
  Verbal Behavior was criticized in a different way by an old friend, I. A. Richards, whose interest in the field goes back, of course to the Meaning of Meaning . . . He once asked me to lecture to his freshman course in General Education . . . he said, “I now present the Devil,”… Read more: Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 6
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 5
  … I agreed to participate [in a BBC television discussion with Chomsky] only if the moderator could guarantee equal time. I suggested that we use chess clocks. My clock would be running when I was talking, and Chomsky’s when he was talking, and in that way I planned to have the last fifteen or twenty… Read more: Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 5
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 4
  Eventually the question was asked, why had I not answered Chomsky? … No doubt I was shirking a responsibility in not replying to Chomsky, and I am glad an answer has now been supplied by Kenneth MacCorquodale in the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. (p. 474)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 3
  . . . Chomsky’s review began to be widely cited and reprinted and became, in fact, much better known than my book. (p. 474)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 2.
  Let me tell you about Chomsky. I published Verbal Behavior in 1957. In 1958 I received a 55-page typewritten review by someone I had never heard of named Noam Chomsky. I read half a dozen pages, saw that it missed the point of my book, and went no further. (p. 473)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 1.
  … I intend to raise the question of whether I am responsible for what I am saying, whether I am actually originating anything, and to what extent I deserve credit or blame. (p. 473)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Appendix: The Verbal Community. Quote 13
  The study of the verbal behavior of speaker and listener, as well as of the practices of the verbal environment which generates such behavior, may not contribute directly to historical or descriptive linguistics, but it is enough for our present purposes to be able to say that a verbal environment could have arisen from nonverbal… Read more: Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Appendix: The Verbal Community. Quote 13
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Appendix: The Verbal Community. Quote 12
  The origins of most forms of response will probably always remain obscure, but if we can explain the beginnings of even the most rudimentary verbal environment, the well-established processes of linguistic change will explain the multiplication of verbal forms and the creation of new controlling relationships. (p. 469)

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