> ... of Skinner (who, as everyone also knows, was a total psycho)
Not so fast cowboy. Skinner's theories were far more limited than he or his disciples believed (ditto Chomsky and pretty much every psych or social theorist), but the behaviorists added a great deal to psychological understanding.
It is interesting to contrast the soft sciences (for lack of a better term) with the hard sciences and how they relate to their history. Nobody would say "Newton was an utter psycho" because his theories didn't account for thermodynamic behavior, or because his dynamics were proven to be approximate by Einstein, or because in his later years he spent a lot time analyzing word patterns in the bible. Rather, what he said that was true gets incorporated into the textbooks and we move on. Sometimes Skinnerian dynamics apply, and we should use them in those situations, and learn about them, and toss them when not appropriate. Duh.
I am not sure why the soft/social sciences are so dysfunctional in this respect.
In anthropology this is extremely evident, but they are all psychos there...
Not so fast cowboy. Skinner's theories were far more limited than he or his disciples believed (ditto Chomsky and pretty much every psych or social theorist), but the behaviorists added a great deal to psychological understanding.
It is interesting to contrast the soft sciences (for lack of a better term) with the hard sciences and how they relate to their history. Nobody would say "Newton was an utter psycho" because his theories didn't account for thermodynamic behavior, or because his dynamics were proven to be approximate by Einstein, or because in his later years he spent a lot time analyzing word patterns in the bible. Rather, what he said that was true gets incorporated into the textbooks and we move on. Sometimes Skinnerian dynamics apply, and we should use them in those situations, and learn about them, and toss them when not appropriate. Duh.
I am not sure why the soft/social sciences are so dysfunctional in this respect.
In anthropology this is extremely evident, but they are all psychos there...
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/06/the-perf...