Science and human behavior: A review of William Baum’s Understanding Behaviorism: Behavior, Culture, and Evolution (2nd ed.)

Abstract

Generally speaking, behavior analysts are acutely aware of the need for increased communication with those in other fields about the characteristics and achievements of behavior analysis. This awareness may be most acute among those of us who have regular contact with those in various areas of psychology, philosophy, communication, computer science, and other fields. Recently, a particularly salient indicator of how far we have to go in making our work clear to others arrived in the mail. It was a complimentary copy of a small book of “classic readings” in the history of the various subfields of psychology. Noticing that a paper by Watson had been included in an early part of the book, I looked ahead to the section on “Learning” to see if behavior analysis was represented through a paper by Skinner, for example. Thirty years of reading and discussion with critics had, I believed, immunized me from whatever absurdity I might find there, but I soon found myself staring at the “classic paper” in the field of learning: Chomsky's (1959) review of Skinner's (1957) Verbal Behavior. The review was a polemic that not only hopelessly misrepresented Skinner's systematic interpretations of verbal phenomena and that is not only hopelessly out of date regarding the respective research fortunes and fates of Chomsky's theory and Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior, but that might also be regarded as a misguided indictment of the entire field of learning. There are a variety of ways in which behavior analysts might reach out to other fields and to the general public. One way, of course, is to expand the literature of general, introductory, or semipopular treatments of the field. There is a great deal of explaining and describing to do to correct the remarkably persistent set of misperceptions surrounding behaviorism in general and behavior analysis in particular (e.g., Friman, Allen, Kerwin, & Larzelere, 2000; Leigland, 2000; Robins, Gosling, & Craik, 1999). The recent second edition of William Baum's Understanding Behaviorism: Behavior, Culture, and Evolution (2005) is an excellent example of an accessible and comprehensive introduction to behavior analysis. The new edition is a refinement of the original work, Understanding Behaviorism: Science, Behavior, and Culture (1994). The small change in subtitle calls attention to expanded and clarified connections between behavior analysis and evolutionary concepts in the new edition. The overall structure and layout of the book are the same as the original, but the new edition includes some changes in style and emphasis. For example, beyond the broader and clarified relations to evolution, this edition also expands the role of the molar analysis of behavior (emphasizing temporally extended contingencies and activities; e.g., Baum, 2002), although the more traditional molecular analysis (emphasizing temporally contiguous relations between momentary events) is given fair treatment throughout. The new edition also increases readability for nontechnical audiences by making greater use of ordinary-language terms in illustrations and examples. Like the first edition, the book is divided into four sections, each of which will serve as the basis for comments below.