Key thinkers
Discover more about pychology’s ‘Key Thinkers’ throughout history.
B.F. Skinner (1904–1990)
Skinner appeared when Watsonian behaviorism was waning and he gave it a second impetus. He would seek to provide the science of behavior with a priority over that of the life-world, i.e., subjective experience. Not only that, his position was that a science of behavior would not involve physiology, that more could be accomplished in the domain of behavior by confining study to behavior alone. Skinner had no intention of studying anything with the aim of inferring something regarding what was not directly studied. Skinner, in this attitude, was indebted to Mach.
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Practice: The Key Thinkers Involved
Throughout human history it has been practice that has led to all of the advances that we have made over our ancestors of 20,000 years ago. It is that, too, that has contributed to the accumulating store of knowledge that is collectively called culture (including scientific, technical, and practical knowledge stored in individuals and libraries). We have steadily gone from little knowledge of things-in-themselves to an expanding knowledge of things-for-us. We have gradually learned what uses things can be put to and made them ever less things-in-themselves.