RADICAL BEHAVIORISM AND SCIENTIFIC FRAMEWORKS - FROM MECHANISTIC TO RELATIONAL ACCOUNTS

A substantial portion of B. F Skinner's scholarship was devoted to developing methods and terms.for a scientific study of behavior. Three concepts central to scientific accounts-cause, explanation, and theory-are examined to illustrate the distinction between mechanistic and relational frameworks and radical behaviorism's relationship to those frameworks. Informed by a scientific tradition that explicitly rejects mechanistic interpretations, radical behaviorism provides a distinctive stance in contemporary psychology. The present analysis suggests that radical behaviorism makes closer contact with the "new world view " advocated by physicists and philosophers of science than does much of contemporary psychology.