Scientific Premises and Social Proposals in B. F. Skinner Between 1953 and 1960

The present research had as its objective to analyze the development of epistemological, ontological, and methodological assumptions defended by B. F. Skinner and his propositions to intervene in social questions between 1953 and 1960. To a certain extent, we sought to continue the research of Andery (1990, Uma tentativa de (re)construção do mundo: A ciência do comportamento como ferramenta de intervenção [ An attempt to (re)construct the world: Behavioral Science as an intervention tool ] [Doctoral dissertation, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, São Paulo, SP]), in which all of Skinner’s publications from between 1931 and 1953 were analyzed, with Science and Human Behavior as the last analyzed work. We investigated how Skinner advanced in the definition of the assumptions of his science and the proposition of social analysis and interventions in the first years after the publication of Science and Human Behavior. All of Skinner’s available texts, published between 1953 and 1960 after Science and Human Behavior, were identified and collected in order to classify how much of Skinner's explanatory system it had been changed/maintained when compared with its previous development . We analyzed the selected texts based on 2 categories: (a) excerpts related to the constitution of ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions of behavioral science and (b) excerpts related to the constitution of social propositions. There were additions, but no rupture, in all categories analyzed when we compared our data with those of the period analyzed by Andery (1990). The results obtained in the present research allow us to maintain that Skinner improved the assumptions of his science and his social proposals, introducing new conceptual discussions and new data from relevant basic and applied research.