Two Personal Epilogues

The author's William James Lectures at Harvard University in

1947 closed with material in essentially the following form.

I. THE VALIDITY OF THE AUTHOR'S

VERBAL BEHAVIOR

When me they fly, I am the wings—Emerson.

It is sometimes argued that if a scientific account of human be-

havior is sound, the scientist must be as mechanistically determined
as the people he studies, and hence his verbal behavior cannot be
“valid,” “certain,” or “true.” Russell 1 puts a similar point this way:
When the behaviorist observes the doings of animals, and decides whether
these show knowledge or error, he is not thinking of himself as an ani-
mal, but as an at least hypothetically inerrant recorder of what actually
happens. He “knows” that animals are deceived by mirrors, and believes
himself to “know” that he is not being similarly deceived. By omitting the
fact that he—an organism like any other—is observing, he gives a false
air of objectivity to the results of his observation.… When he thinks he
is recording observations about the outer world, [he] is really recording
observations about what is happening in him.

In one sense, this is a fair shot. The hardiest determinist will recog-
nize a tendency to believe that what he is saying is, for the moment
at least, reserved from the field of determined action. But the student
of behavior is not the only one to face this dilemma. Behaving about
behaving raises the same difficulty as knowing about knowing. Rus-
sell pictures the behaviorist deciding whether the doings of animals
1
Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, p. 14. 

453
454 VERBAL BEHAVIOR

show knowledge or error instead of, as is more likely, measuring pre-

dispositions to act with respect to a given set of circumstances, and
he describes the behaviorist as “reporting his observations about the
outer world,” although observation is suspiciously like “idea,” or at
least “image,” and would probably be avoided in favor of an expres-
sion like “reaction to the outer world.” But the crux of the problem
survives in translation. The present study offers a case in point. If
what I have said is reasonably correct, considering the present state
of knowledge in the science of human behavior, what interpretation
is to be placed on my behavior in writing this book? I have been be-
having verbally and, unless my analysis is deficient at some point, my
behavior must have followed the processes already set forth and no
others. What does this mean with respect to the certainty or truth of
what I have said?
This is no time to abandon our program. Let us see just what I
have been doing. To begin with, I exposed myself to a great deal of
material in the field of verbal behavior. This was the result of a grow-
ing interest in the field, which followed from other circumstances
too remote to affect the present issue. Hundreds of the books and
articles which I read were not a direct exposure to the subject matter
of verbal behavior itself, but they generated verbal tendencies with
respect to it which showed an enormous variety and a fabulous in-
consistency. I have also read books, not for what they said about ver-
bal behavior, but as records of verbal behavior. I have done my share
of comma-counting. I have listened to people speaking and jotted
down slips, curious phrases, or interesting intraverbal sequences, and
I have watched subjects in the laboratory responding to the faint
patterns of the verbal summator, filling out word-association blanks,
and so on.
The notes which I made of all this were my first reactions—both
to verbal behavior itself and to verbal behavior about verbal behavior.
In the course of time I arranged and rearranged this material many
times, using several sorts of mechanical filing systems and an elabo-
rate decimal notation, so that similarities and differences might be
detected and respected. I discarded many classifications and saved a
few which seemed to work. In this way I arrived at what seemed to
be useful and productive properties of verbal behavior—properties
which proved to be worth talking about.
My explorations in this direction were helped by work in the
field of nonverbal behavior. Originally it appeared that an entirely
TWO PERSONAL EPILOGUES 455

separate formulation would be required, but, as time went on, and

as concurrent work in the field of general behavior proved more suc-
cessful, it was possible to approach a common formulation. I believe
that the present book realizes an effective synthesis which represents
the place of verbal behavior in the larger field of human behavior as a
whole. Gradually I settled upon a minimal repertoire which singled
out those aspects of verbal behavior which appeared to be useful as
dependent variables, and identified and classified various kinds of
circumstances in the present and past environments of the speaker
which seemed to be relevant independent variables. So far as possi-
ble, I have tried to conform to the special reinforcing contingencies
of the scientific community in the representation and analysis of
these relationships.
On the other side of the medal, what effect may I presume to have
had on the reader? I have not tried to induce autonomic behavior
and shall not be disappointed if the reader has not salivated or wept
or blushed at anything I have said. I have not tried to arouse imme-
diate overt action and am quite content that he will not have shout-
ed Down with Aristotle! or have tried to burn a library. The effects
which I have hoped to achieve fall in other categories of the behavior
of the listener.
I have not described much new material. The reader has not, I am
afraid, learned many new facts, and I could easily have limited my-
self to material with which all intelligent people could be assumed
to be familiar. It has not been my purpose to present the facts of
verbal behavior as such, and that is why I have not been greatly con-
cerned with experimental or statistical proof. Some “instruction” in
the sense of Chapter 14 has, I hope, taken place in the form of defini-
tions. I have invented a few new terms—“mand,” “tact,” “autoclitic,”
and so on—which are perhaps now part of the reader's vocabulary,
though in what strength I would not undertake to say. I have repeat-
edly used established terms which are perhaps more familiar to the
reader now than when he began the book. I have, as it were, put the
reader through a set of exercises for the express purpose of strength-
ening a particular verbal repertoire. Stating the matter in the most
selfish light, I have been trying to get the reader to behave verbally
as I behave. What teacher, writer, or friend does not? And, like all
teachers, writers, and friends, I shall cherish whatever I subsequently
discover of any “influence” I may have had. If I have strengthened
the reader's verbal behavior with spurious devices of ornamentation
456 VERBAL BEHAVIOR

and persuasion, then he will do well to resist, but I plead not guilty.
If I had been solely interested in building a verbal repertoire, I should
have behaved in a very different way.
For a repertoire is not enough. The responses which I have tried
to get the reader to make function by singling out events or aspects
of verbal behavior which should make his subsequent behavior more
expedient. I have emphasized certain facts and ignored others. The
justification for this has been that the facts emphasized seemed to be-
long together and that in talking about them to the exclusion of other
facts, greater progress is made toward a unified account. Perhaps I have
wanted the reader to pay attention to this field and to talk about it in
a special way mainly because I myself have done so with pleasure and
profit. I have assumed a common interest in the field of verbal behav-
ior. It is my belief that something like the present analysis reduces the
total vocabulary needed for a scientific account. It eliminates far more
terms than it creates, and the terms created are derived from a few pri-
or technical terms common to the whole field of human behavior. As
one who has applied the analysis to fields not covered in this book I
believe I can say that it works. It has reached the stage where it does
more work for me than I for it. It swallows new material avidly yet
gracefully, and good digestion seems to wait on appetite. Hundreds
of puzzling questions and obscure propositions about verbal behavior
may be dismissed, while the new questions and propositions which
arise to take their place are susceptible to experimental check as part of
a more unified pattern.
In many ways, then, this seems to me to be a better way of talking
about verbal behavior, and that is why I have tried to get the reader
to talk about it in this way too. But have I told him the truth? Who
can say? A science of verbal behavior probably makes no provision for
truth or certainty (though we cannot even be certain of the truth of
that).

II. NO BLACK SCORPION

In 1934, while dining at the Harvard Society of Fellows, I found
myself seated next to Professor Alfred North Whitehead. We dropped
into a discussion of behaviorism, which was then still very much an
“ism,” and of which I was a zealous devotee. Here was an opportunity
which I could not overlook to strike a blow for the cause, and I began
to set forth the principal arguments of behaviorism with enthusiasm.
Professor Whitehead was equally in earnest—not in defending his
TWO PERSONAL EPILOGUES 457

own position, but in trying to understand what I was saying and (I

suppose) to discover how I could possibly bring myself to say it. Even-
tually we took the following stand. He agreed that science might be
successful in accounting for human behavior provided one made an
exception of verbal behavior. Here, he insisted, something else must
be at work. He brought the discussion to a close with a friendly chal-
lenge: “Let me see you,” he said, “account for my behaviour as I sit here
saying, 'No black scorpion is falling upon this table.' ” The next morn-
ing I drew up the outline of the present study.
Perhaps it is time to consider Professor Whitehead's challenge.
Can we indeed account for the fact that he said, “No black scorpion
is falling upon this table' ” As a particular instance of verbal behavior,
emitted under a set of circumstances now long since largely forgot-
ten, we cannot. It is as unfair to ask a science of behavior to do this as
to ask the science of physics to account for the changes in tempera-
ture which were taking place in the room at the same time. Suppose
a thermo-graphic record had been made from which we could now
reconstruct those changes, at least as accurately as I have reconstructed
Professor Whitehead's verbal behavior. What could now be done with
it? It provides a rough account of a series of changes in a dependent
variable, but it supplies little or no information about the independent
variables of which those changes were a function. The physicist is help-
less because he does not have the whole story. He may, of course, sug-
gest that a sudden drop in temperature might have occurred because
someone had left the door ajar, or that a window was opened at about
that time, or that the heat was turned off. But it is obvious to the phys-
icist and to everyone else that these are merely guesses.
Unfortunately we have been led to expect something else in verbal
behavior. Linguists make extensive use of recorded speech with little
or no information of the conditions under which it was recorded. The
logician analyzes sentences as “form” alone. The critic interprets liter-
ary works written centuries ago although few, if any, facts about the
writer survive. Almost anyone will tell you what a passage “means.”
This is possible only because the linguist, logician, and critic can ob-
serve, in addition to the recorded behavior, its effect upon themselves
as listeners or readers. These data are offered in lieu of the missing
variables. As thermographs which have often reacted in much the
same way, we are much more ready to say what must have caused
a particular deflection. But if it were easy to check the validity of
such inferences—to find out, for example, what a passage actually
458 VERBAL BEHAVIOR

“meant” to the speaker or writer—the practice might long since have

disappeared from the behavior of responsible people.
A few relevant facts about the conditions under which Professor
Whitehead made his remark are available. So far as I know there was
no black scorpion falling on the table. The response was emitted to
make a point—taken, as it were, out of the blue. This was, in fact, the
point of the example: why did Professor Whitehead not say “autumn
leaf ” or “snowflake” rather than “black scorpion?” The response was
meant to be a poser just because it was not obviously controlled by a
present stimulus. But this is, of course, the kind of material the Freud-
ians relish, for it is under just such circumstances that other variables
get their chance. The form of the response may have been weakly de-
termined, but it was not necessarily free. Perhaps there was a stimulus
which evoked the response black scorpion falling upon this table, which
in turn led to the autoclitic No. The stimulus may not have been much,
but in a determined system it must have been something. Just as the
physicist may suggest various explanations of the drop in temperature
in order to show that it could be explained in lawful terms, so it is not
entirely beside the point to make a guess here. I suggest, then, that
black scorpion was a metaphorical response to the topic under discus-
sion. The black scorpion was behaviorism.
Science seems to be inevitably iconoclastic. It usurps the place
of the explanatory fictions which men have invented as prescientif-
ic devices to account for nature. For reasons which are not entirely
unfamiliar to psychologists, the explanatory fictions are usually more
flattering than the scientific accounts which take their place. As sci-
ence advances, it strips men of fancied achievements. The Coperni-
can system elbowed man out of the center of things, and astronomy
has never ceased to reduce his proportionate share of the universe.
Darwinism dealt the fancied pre-eminence of man another blow by
suggesting a greater continuity with other animals than man himself
had wished to recognize. And while the science of chemistry was on
the one hand crowding the supposedly unique accomplishments of
living systems into a tighter and tighter corner, the sciences of anthro-
pology and comparative religion were shaking man's confidence in his
mode of communication with the supernatural. It was inevitable that
psychology should enter these lists. The Freudian emphasis upon the
role of the irrational was offensive; but although Freud was a deter-
minist, certain controlling forces remained within man himself, no
TWO PERSONAL EPILOGUES 459

matter how unworthy they may have seemed. The crowning blow to
the apparent sovereignty of man came with the shift of attention to
external determiners of action. The social sciences and psychology
reached this stage at about the same time. Whenever some feature of
the environment—past or present—is shown to have an effect upon
human conduct, the fancied contribution of the individual himself
is reduced. The program of a radical behaviorism left no originating
control inside the skin.
Those who knew Professor Whitehead will realize that he would
do his best to understand such a view and to interpret it in the most
generous way. He would probably have been happy to discover that
the matter was entirely terminological and that my position was
identical with some earlier one which either had been disproved or
had been shown to leave an opening for human responsibility and
creativeness. It is possible, then, that as I described my position—
doubtless in the most shocking terms I could command—he was
telling himself that the part which he had played in encouraging me
as a young scholar was not entirely misguided, that I was probably
not typical of all young men in psychology and the social scienc-
es, that there must be a brighter side—in other words, that on this
pleasant and stimulating table no black scorpion had fallen.
If that was the explanation—and it is, of course, only a most im-
probable guess—then the statement was appropriate enough. There
was no cause for alarm. The history of science is the history of the
growth of man's place in nature. Men have extended their capaci-
ties to react to nature discriminatively by inventing microscopes,
telescopes, and thousands of amplifiers, indicators, and tests. They
have extended their power to alter and control the physical world
with machines and instruments of many sorts. A large part of this
achievement has been verbal. The discoveries and achievements of
individual men have been preserved and improved and transmitted
to others. The growth of science is positively accelerated, and we
have reached a breathless rate of advance.
There is no reason why scientific methods cannot now be applied
to the study of man himself—to practical problems of society and,
above all, to the behavior of the individual. We must not turn back
because the prospect suddenly becomes frightening. The truth may
be strange, and it may threaten cherished beliefs, but as the history
of science shows, the sooner a truth is faced, the better. No scientific
advance has ever actually damaged man's position in the world. It
460 VERBAL BEHAVIOR

has merely characterized it in a different way. Indeed, each achieve-

ment has in a sense increased the role which men play in the scheme
of things. If we eventually give a plausible account of human be-
havior as part of a lawfully determined system, man's power will in-
crease even more rapidly. Men will never become originating centers
of control, because their behavior will itself be controlled, but their
role as mediators may be extended without limit. The technological
applications of such a scientific achievement cannot now be fath-
omed. It is difficult to foresee the verbal adjustments which will have
to be made. “Personal freedom” and “responsibility” will make way
for other bywords which, as is the nature of bywords, will probably
prove satisfying enough.
I have found it necessary from time to time to attack traditional
concepts which assign spontaneous control to the special inner self
called the speaker. Only in this way could I make room for the al-
ternative explanation of action which it is the business of a science
of verbal behavior to construct. But whatever the reader may think
of the success of this venture, I hope he will agree that the analysis
has shown respect for human achievement and that it is compatible
with a sense of dignity—in short, that no black scorpion has fallen
upon this table.