B.F. Skinner
Burrhus Frederic Skinner was a psychologist and professor at Indiana University Harvard (involved in MK Ultra). He played a role in the Behaviorist movement (explaining psychology through human behavior) in psychology with Ivan Pavlov and John B Watson. During WW2 he worked for the US Navy (the war industry, supposedly Project Pigeon) and later for CIA front Esalen Institute. He was influenced by Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Francis Bacon, Edward Thorndike, Bertrand Russell. |
Noam Chomsky played his antagonist. He was awarded with a Guggenheim fellowship and by the National Science Foundation, American Psychological Association and Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
He was a member of Lamda Chi Alpha like Will Geer, Anson Mount, James Rebhorn (The Game), Chester Gould (Dick Tracy), Bill Rasmussen (ESPN), Samuel King Allison (Manhattan Project), Dabbs Greer (Pasadena Playhouse), Fred Borch (General Electric), Richard Clark (Merck), William McGuire (UnitedHealth), Robert Walton (WalMart), Harry Truman and Ron Paul.
In 1973 he signed the Humanist Manifesto of Paul Kurtz with Carl Sagan, Julian Huxley, Corliss Lamont, Betty Friedan, Sidney Hook and Isaac Asimov.
In 1976 he played a role in the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, founded with Carl Sagan, James Randi, Philip Klass (AAAS, UFO researcher), Isaac Asimov. It started Skeptical Inquirer with Douglas Hofstadter (Stanford, AAAS, American Philosophical Society, Scientific American), Martin Gardner and Benjamin Radford.
His behaviorism was based on the concept of stimulus=> response=> reinforcement (= dialectic method of problem =>reaction=> solution, used in media psyops).
He developed the Skinner Box (symbol of Saturn), trapping animals like rats in a stimulus-response cycle. He also invented the Cumulative Recorder, Baby Tender and Teaching Machine.
His pupil Richard Herrnstein (CCNY) was co-author of The Bell Curve with Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute, based on research of Pioneer Fund.
Astrological chart
born 3/20/1904, year of start Aeon of Horus.
Dom: Pisces (the Moon), Aries, Capricorn - Saturn, Neptune, Mars.
died 8/18/1990.
Works
1938 Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis
1948 Walden Two ('utopian' novel about society controlled by conditioning, based on book of Henry David Thoreau, similar to the work of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley)
1953 Science and Human Behavior
1957 Verbal Behavior
1969 Contingencies of Reinforcement
1971 Beyond Freedom and Dignity (chapter about cultural engineering)
1968 The Technology of Teaching
1978 Reflections on Behaviorism and Society