B.F. Skinner

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B.F. Skinner With His Skinner Box
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Both Ivan Pavlov and B.F. (Burrhus Frederick) Skinner taught the world a great deal about behaviorism. Pavlov demonstrated how animals learned a behavioral response to stimuli. Skinner showed that animals could learn that their actions would bring a desired response — operant conditioning. His Skinner box was a sound- and light-proof chamber with a response lever. When the rat that was kept in the box pressed the lever, a food pellet was released. Skinner showed that an aspect of the rat's behavior could be conditioned. B.F. Skinner was born on this date in 1904.

Quote

"A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying." — B.F. Skinner

"Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten."

"A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying."

"Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything."

"Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless."

"Physics does not change the nature of the world it studies, and no science of behavior can change the essential nature of man, even though both sciences yield technologies with a vast power to manipulate the subject matters."

"The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do."



我大概看過他的自傳--他動過當作家之念頭 所以寫起自己洋洋灑灑---所以可以和 Herbert Simon 談 所謂學派

• Skinner, B.F. (1976) Particulars of my life: Part 1 of an Autobiography
• Skinner, B.F. (1979) The Shaping of a Behaviorist: Part 2 of an Autobiography
• Skinner, B.F. (1983) A Matter of Consequences: Part 3 of an Autobiography

台灣翻譯過
Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971) and the novel Walden Two (1948).

Bjork, Daniel. 1993. B. F. Skinner: A Life. New York: Basic Books.