Festschrift For B F Skinner

Published in the year 1987, B.F.Skinner: Consensus and Contribution is a valuable contribution to the field of Education.

An autobiography fo B.F. Skinner, including a selection of his papers.

As the world faces up to the challenges of climate change and the threat to security, Skinner's contributions on these issues continue to resonate today. In this stimulating introduction for students and general readers, Toates places Skinner's ideas within the context of mainstream psychological thought, presenting a balanced synthesis of the psychologist's work and his approach. The author reveals the links between Skinner's perspective and other branches of psychology, highlighting his solutions to problems at individual, society and global levels.

Behaviorists, or more precisely Skinnerians, commonly consider Skinner's work to have been misrepresented, misunderstood, and to some extent defamed. In this book, the author clarifies the work of B F Skinner, and puts it into historical and philosophical context. Though not a biography, the book discusses Skinner himself, in brief. But the bulk of the book illuminats Skinner's contributions to psychology, his philosophy of science, his experimental research program (logical positivism) and the behavioral principles that emerged from it, and applied aspects of his work. It also rebuts criticism of Skinner's work, including radical behaviorism, and discusses key developments by others that have derived from it.