Skinner - From Determinism to Random Variation

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Skinner: From Determinism to Random Variation
Author(s): Roy A. Moxley
Source: Behavior and Philosophy, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Spring, 1997), pp. 3-28
Published by: Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies (CCBS)
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Behavior and Philosophy, Volume 25, No. 1, Spring 1997 
SKINNER: FROM DETERMINISM TO RANDOM VARIATION 
Roy A. Moxley 
West Virginia University 
ABSTRACT: The assumption that Skinner was a determinist requires some modification. Although 
Skinner may have favored determinism to varying degrees while he was advancing mechanistic 
accounts of behavior that were aligned with the views such as those of Loeb, Watson, and Russell, his 
advancement of determinism disappeared after his accounts became more closely aligned with 
selectionist views such as those of Mach, Peirce, and Dewey. This realignment entailed a switch from 
finding origins or sources for behavior in deterministic laws to finding origins or sources for behavior 
in random variation. Some sense of the conflict between these views appears early on in Skinner's 
writing, and arguments in favor of both of these views can be found in sources that Skinner identified in 
his writings. Although there were good reasons for Skinner to accept determinism when he was 
advancing a mechanistic behaviorism, there were also good reasons for Skinner to abandon 
determinism when he was advancing a selectionist behaviorism. 
Key words: Darwin, Dewey, determinism, natural selection, operant behavior, Peirce, pragmatism, 
three-term contingency, random variation, selectionism, Skinner. 
Explicitly or implicitly, Skinner is commonly regarded as a determinist. For 
example, some statements in the Special Issue: A Tribute to B. F. Skinner of The 
Behavior Analyst (Spring 1991) suggest that to be a behaviorist is to believe in 
determinism. Czubaroff (1991) aligned radical behaviorists with a tradition in 
science that assumes, "All events are strictly determined" (p. 19). Implying 
determinism is part of the dogma of behaviorism, Nevin (1991) said, "According to 
the most central tenets of our creed, all behavior is determined by genetic and 
environmental processes" (p. 36). And Neuringer (1991) said, "Czubaroff and Nevin 
correctly identify behaviorists as determinists" (p. 46). All of this implies that 
Skinner must have been a determinist because he was a behaviorist and remained a 
determinist as long as he was a behaviorist. However, these views need 
modification. Determinism is not universally accepted by behavior analysts (Day, 
1969, p. 319; Marr, 1982, p. 207; also cf. Rockwell, 1994). In addition, Skinner's 
fluctuating views in regard to determinism shifted to one in which determinism was 
irrelevant. The following shows this change in Skinner's views, why it was 
reasonable for him to accept determinism in his early views, and why it was 
reasonable for him to replace determinism with random variation in his later views. 
To clarify these issues, the traditions for accepting and for rejecting 
determinism will be sketched with primary attention to authors whom Skinner 
indicated that he read (e.g., Bacon, Loeb, Russell, Mach, Peirce, and Dewey). The 
AUTHOR'S NOTE: 
Please address all correspondence to: Roy A. Moxley, 604 Allen Hall, West Virginia University, 
Morgantown, WV 26506. 
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MOXLEY 
point is not to demonstrate that an earlier argument by one of these authors is the 
direct source of an analogous, later argument by Skinner, but to show the nature of 
the arguments that Skinner may have considered. The case will be made that Skinner 
could have been aware from the beginning of his published writings of some of the 
conflicting issues involved between using determinism and using random variation 
as a foundation for behavior. This would explain why Skinner showed some early 
conflict between deterministic and pragmatic values and why his determinism 
showed some waxing and waning before being replaced by his explicit preference 
for random variation as a foundation for operant behavior. 
Background for Scientific Determinism 
The relation of determinism to empirical science can be puzzling. Determinism 
may be seen as a legitimate deduction if it is implied by an a priori concept we 
accept as certain, such as an a priori supernatural being who makes, governs, or 
foresees things in ways that are manifested in determinism. Although it was not 
unusual for natural philosophers to argue this way in the past, today's scientific 
community does not accept such arguments. Nor can determinism be a legitimate 
induction from experience. Event A followed by event B can never be predicted with 
absolute exactness or absolute certainty no matter how many times event A has 
previously been followed by event B. Some degree of probability?short of the 
absolute necessity?is all that can be expected. For example, whenever we have seen 
hanging curtains (event A), we may have found them with windows (event B). We 
may have found this was an invariant experience. However, we cannot thereby 
conclude with absolute certainty that curtains will be accompanied by windows in 
the future. The philosopher Moore made a noted mistake in this regard. 
There was the famous occasion on which G. E. Moore gave as an example of a 
certainty, "I know there is a window in this room" and on which Moore was, in fact 
mistaken (Moore was lecturing in a hall at the University of Michigan which had 
curtains, but no windows behind the curtains). (Putnam, 1987, p. 53; also cf. 
Wittgenstein, 1969, p. 17e) 
Circumstances change, and there is no assurance the circumstances for a future 
proclamation of a statement will not change in a way that renders that statement 
problematic. Consequently, we cannot make an induction to the absolute necessity 
of determinism from invariant experiences we have had because none of those 
experiences, however repeated, can demonstrate that a relation of absolutely exact 
necessity ever existed in the first place. 
To make sense of determinism in relation to science, it must be seen as an 
abduction, or argument to the best explanation (see Gallie, 1966, pp. 93-108; 
Hanson, 1958, pp. 85-92; Overholt & Stallings, 1976; Peirce, 1931-1963, 5.151 
5.317). At a time when the only choice appeared to be between an orderly 
deterministic world and a chaotic world of chance, the assumption of determinism 
appeared as the only way to make sense of the world and the only way to justify a 
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SKINNER: FROM DETERMINISM TO RANDOM VARIATON 
widespread acceptance of beliefs leading to practical action. The question then arises 
as to whether determinism is the best explanation today. 
In general, scientific determinism is a more sophisticatedvariation on the 
ancient idea that events have been predetermined by supernatural powers. In the 
Bible, Ecclesiastes suggested an endlessly recurring cycle of events brought to pass 
by a supernatural being (Suggs, Sakenfeld, & Mueller, 1992, p. 686; also cf. Miles, 
1995, pp. 350-351, 365), and Greek philosophy provided a tradition that affirmed a 
permanently fixed reality (e.g., Parmenides and Plato), as well as a tradition that 
rejected a permanently fixed reality (e.g., Heraclitus and Protagoras). In the rise of 
the mechanistic philosophy, both Bacon and Descartes were among those natural 
philosophers who believed that the natural world should be "understood as 
embodying God's powers and purposes" (Cunningham & Williams, 1993, p. 421), 
and they advanced the view of a reality permanently fixed by God's laws. Skinner 
identified himself closely with Bacon, whose determinism will be discussed later 
with Skinner's views on determinism. Descartes (1985 & 1991), whom Skinner 
(1931/1972, pp. 432-434,456) cited in support of the necessity of the reflex relation, 
claimed that "the existence of God is the first and the most eternal of all possible 
truths and the one from which alone all others proceed" (III, p. 24; Letter to 
Mersenne, 1630) and that "starting from the divine attributes ... we shall see 
. . . 
what conclusions should be drawn concerning those effects which are apparent to 
our senses" (I, p. 202; Pr. Phil. I, 28). One of those attributes was immutability (I, p. 
240; Pr. Phil. II, 36). By applying this attribute to the way he believed God must 
have acted, Descartes derived his three laws of motion (Dutton, 1996, p. 206). 
Descartes thereby advanced the acceptance of his physics by claiming it was a 
deduction from indisputable first principles. 
Inspired by the Cartesian derivation of empirical facts from first principles, the 
encyclopedist Jean D'Alembert (1751/1963) said, "The universe 
. . . would only be 
one fact and one great truth for whoever knew how to embrace it from a single point 
of view" (p. 29). Denis Diderot, D'Alembert's fellow encyclopedist, believed that 
"the science of the entire universe is reduced to but a single fact in the divine 
understanding" (cited in Vartanian, 1952, p. 159). The abbe de Condillac, who 
advanced a thorough-going association psychology that anticipated Hartley (see 
Knight, 1968, pp. 1-33), planned "to reduce to a single principle everything 
concerning the human understanding" (cited in Knight, 1968, p. 28). This 
intellectual tradition extended beyond France (e.g., Comenius; 1642, p. 28; Priestly, 
1790/1972, p. 185) and culminated in the views of Laplace. 
According to Gould (1997), Laplace's focus on stability and eternal laws for 
predicting this stability extended to all events in the universe including organic 
species. Laplace (cited in Gould, 1997) claimed, "It seems that nature arranged 
all 
bodies in the heavens in order to assure the duration of the system, and by means 
similar to those so admirably followed on earth for the conservation of individuals 
and the perpetuation of species" (p. 33). Laplace's views 
were emphatically pre 
Darwinian in respect to "the perpetuation of the species" with little place for 
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MOXLEY 
evolutionary change and development. Laplace (1814/1951) gave what is commonly 
regarded as the classic formulation for scientific determinism: 
We ought... to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its anterior state 
and as the cause of the one which is to follow. Given for one instant an intelligence 
which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective 
situation of the beings who compose it?an intelligence sufficiently vast to submit 
these data to analysis?it would embrace in the same formula the movement of the 
greatest bodies of the universe and those of the lightest atom; for it, nothing would be 
uncertain and the future, as the past, would be present to its eyes. (p. 4) 
In Laplace's formula, rare events were possible?like a total eclipse of the sun in 
which causal chains coincided?but a truly chance novelty was not (cf. Berofsky, 
1995, p. 197). Laplace could not conceive how order could develop out of chance. If 
there was order in the universe, it had to be there in the beginning in a pre-existing 
design?the world formula. Chance was simply a synonym for ignorance of the 
underlying determinism (cf. Gillispie, 1978, p. 284). 
In his detailed discussion of "scientific" or Laplacean determinism?the central 
variety of determinism considered here?Popper (1982) wrote: 
It is characteristic of all forms of the determinist doctrine that every event in the world 
is predetermined: if at least one (future) event is not predetermined, determinism is to 
be rejected, and indeterminism is true. In terms of what I call "scientific" determinism, 
this means that if at least one future event in the world could not in principle be 
predicted by way of calculation from natural laws and data concerning the present or 
the past state of the world, then "scientific" determinism would have to be rejected. 
[Moreover] if every event is to be predictable, it must be predictable with any desired 
degree of precision: For even the most minute difference in measurement may be 
claimed to distinguish between different events, (p. 6) 
The realization of this determinism shows an absolutely fixed, unchanging universe, 
somewhat in the way a roll of movie film shows the fixed form of the motion picture 
we watch on the screen: 
The intuitive idea of determinism may be summed up by saying that the world is like a 
motion-picture film: The picture or still which is just being projected is the present. 
Those parts of the film which have already been shown constitute the past. And those 
which have not yet been shown constitute the future. 
In the film, the future co-exists with the past; and the future is fixed, in exactly the 
same sense as the past. (Popper, 1982, p. 5, also cf. pp. xx-6; also cf. Miles, 1995, p. 
365) 
In other words, the changes we observe in our world are an illusion of our limited 
vision, as when we see a frame-by-frame projection of the movie film. Each frame 
of the film, however, is fixed and unchanging, and all of reality would appear fixed 
and unchanging to a supernatural being who could see at a glance the entire unrolled 
film. 
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SKINNER: FROM DETERMINISM TO RANDOM VARIATON 
Laplace's definition has continued as a central source for the meaning of 
scientific determinism. The opening paragraph for the definition of determinism in 
The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Audi, 1995) reads in part: 
determinism, the view that the state of the world at any instant determines a unique 
future, and that knowledge of all the position of things and the prevailing natural 
forces would permit an intelligence to predict the future state of the world with 
absolute precision. This view was advanced by Laplace in the early nineteenth century; 
he was inspired by Newton's success at integrating our physical knowledge of the 
world. 
Contemporary determinists do not believe that Newtonian physics is the supreme 
theory. Some do not even believe that all theories will someday be integrated into a 
unified theory. They do believe that, for each event, no matter how precisely 
described, there is some theory or system of laws such that the occurrence of that event 
under that description is derivable from those laws together with information about the 
prior state of the system, (pp.196-197) 
Berofsky (1995), who wrote this definition of determinism, identified this doctrine 
as scientific determinism and indicated other formulations and usages of the term 
determinism. Unless marked otherwise, by context or stipulated definition, the 
reader may reasonably expect that references to scientific determinism are to this 
doctrine as formulated above. 
Skinner (1979/1984) began his library with books by authors whose views 
supported determinism: "I began to build a library, starting with Bertrand Russell's 
Philosophy, John B. Watson's Behaviorism, and I. P. Pavlov's Conditioned 
Reflexes?the books which had, I thought, prepared me for a career in psychology" 
(p. 4). Of these authors, Russell gave the most detailed account of determinism. In 
his essay "On Scientific Method in Philosophy," Russell (191471981a) assumed that 
some of the deterministic laws of the universe had probably been discovered or were 
discoverable and seems to have been surprised by their simplicity: 
People often speak as though it were a remarkable fact that the physical world is 
subject to invariable laws. In fact, however, it is not easy to see how such a world 
could fail to obey general laws. Taking any arbitrary set of points in space, there is a 
function of the time corresponding to these points, i.e. expressing the motion of a 
particle which traverses these points: this function may be regarded as a general law to 
which the behaviour of such a particle is subject. Taking all such functions for all the 
particles in the universe, there will be theoretically some one formula embracing them 
all, and this formula may be regarded as the single and supreme law of the spatio 
temporal world. Thus what is surprising in physics is not the existence of general laws, 
but their surprising simplicity. It is not the uniformity of nature that should surprise us, 
for, by sufficient analytic ingenuity, any conceivable course of nature might be shown 
to exhibit uniformity. What should surprise us is the fact that the uniformity is simple 
enough for us to discover it. (p. 78) 
Russell cautioned that it would be "fallacious to generalize" from "this characteristic 
of simplicity in the laws of nature hitherto discovered" to the "supposition that other 
undiscovered laws are equally simple" (p. 78) and pointed out that "almost 
everything in science is found sooner or later to require some correction" (p. 79). 
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MOXLEY 
Russell thereby indicated we could never know with certainty whether the world 
formula or any part of it had been discovered. 
Russell (1914/1981b) also emphasized the importance of achieving a timeless 
picture of the universe and deemphasized the importance of addressing changes over 
time: 
The importance of time is rather practical than theoretical, rather in relation to our 
desires than in relation to truth. A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by 
picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside.. . . 
Whoever wishes to see the world truly, to rise in thought above the tyranny of practical 
desires, must learn to overcome the difference of attitude towards past and future, and 
to survey the whole stream of time in one comprehensive vision, (p. 23; also cf. 
1948/1992, pp. 412-415 on visualization and logic) 
Russell contrasted this view?which emulates the view of Laplace's supernatural 
being?with what he saw as the unwarranted importance given to time in philosophy 
that was "associated with the idea of evolution, and which is exemplified by 
Nietzsche, pragmatism, and Bergson" (p. 23). For Russell?a life-long advocate of 
explanations in terms of timeless logic and a life-long opponent of pragmatism? 
"Evolutionism, in spite of its appeals to particular scientific facts, fails to be a truly 
scientific philosophy because of its slavery to time, its ethical preoccupations, and 
its predominant interest in our mundane concerns and destiny" (p. 30). In Russell's 
logic, a philosophy that addressed common human concerns and experiences did not 
count as "a truly scientific philosophy." 
When Russell wrote these remarks, the timeless logic of scientific determinism 
was ascendant and "held by physicists, practically without exception, until 1927" 
(Popper, 1982, p. 2), and the task of science was seen as a process of filling in the 
details of timeless principles. According to A. A. Michelson in 1898-1899: 
While it is never safe to affirm that the future of Physical Science has not marvels in 
store even more astonishing than those of the past, it seems probable that most of the 
grand underlying principles have been firmly established and that further advances are 
to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles to all the phenomena 
which come under our notice. An eminent physicist has remarked that the future truths 
of Physical Science are to be looked for in the 6th place of decimals, (cited in 
Gingerich, 1975, p. 242) 
As De Sitter (1932), who advanced a static model of the universe (Kragh, 1966, p. 
12), put it: "It is always a struggle for the last decimal place, and the great triumphs 
of science are gained when, by new methods and new instruments, the last decimal 
place is made into the penultimate" (p. 134). 
When Watson?who may be considered the founder of mechanistic 
behaviorism but not selectionist behaviorism?advanced behaviorism, there was 
little need to detail the mechanistic philosophy and its determinism. It was only 
necessary for early behaviorists to indicate they were joining the scientific enterprise 
that accepted these assumptions. Accordingly, necessary relations (e.g., Watson, 
1924, p. 10) and mathematical formulations (e.g., Hull, 1943) were offered in ways 
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SKINNER; FROM DETERMINISM TO RANDOM VARIATON 
that implied underlying determinism if not explicitly affirming an allegiance to it. 
Some degree of scientific determinism, for example, is implied in Watson's (1924) 
statement that "the goal of psychological study is the ascertaining of such data and 
laws that, given the stimulus, psychology can predict what the response will be . . . 
given the response, it can specify the nature of the effective stimulus 
" 
[emphasis in 
original] (p. 10). This determinism provided support for S-R accounts of behavior. 
As Pavlov (1927/1960) said, "Our starting point has been Descartes' idea of the 
nervous reflex. This is a genuine scientific conception, since it implies necessity" (p. 
7). S-R behaviorism took a reality of necessary relations for granted, and it was easy 
for Skinner to accept determinism as a matter of course when he began his career. 
Background for Replacing Determinism with Random Variation 
In retrospect, however, a change in the attitude of scientists toward grand 
underlying principles had been taking place for some time before Skinner's entry 
into behavior analysis. Speaking of the "hope that finally the smallest parts of this 
material world could be treated according to Newton's laws," Heisenberg (1975) 
said: 
As in the case of the scientific methods, nobody doubted that reduction to the 
mechanical concepts could finally be effected. But here history decided otherwise. In 
the 19th century it gradually became clear the electromagnetic phenomena are of a 
different nature. . . . The physicists began to understand that a field of force in space 
and time could be just as real as a position or a velocity of a mass, and that there was 
no point in considering it as a property of some unseen material called "ether." Heretradition was more a hindrance than a help. Actually it was not before the discovery of 
relativity that the idea of the ether was really given up, and thereby the hope of 
reducing electromagnetism to mechanics, (pp. 230-231) 
It had become increasingly evident that order and predictability could be explained 
empirically in terms of probabilistic relations without the need for a prior 
deterministic design. Sufficient probability, which always fell short of absolute 
necessity, was adequate for practical certainty and the initiation of actions. The laws 
of physics, for example, support effective actions but they never give absolutely 
exact predictability (cf. Cartwright, 1983). 
The positing of an element of chance or randomness acknowledges this lack of 
absolutely exact predictability. We may consider an event (or some feature of the 
event) that occurs to be random when there is no way to predict its occurrence. 
Although we commonly find that predictability can be increased and we are able to 
predict events we could not predict before or with more precision than we could 
before, some element of unpredictability always remains. We are never able to 
predict events with absolutely exact precision in every conceivable detail. The claim 
that there is always a foundational element of chance in the universe is an induction 
from experiences that show some element of unpredictability, however infinitesimal, 
always remains. This position is consistent with Aristotle's recommendation that 
entities?such as a world formula?should not be multiplied beyond necessity and 
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MOXLEY 
with the principle of parsimony recommended by William Occam (Audi, 1995, p. 
545). 
Skinner's eventual acceptance of chance, rather than determinism, as a 
foundational source for behavior may well have arisen as a result of pursuing the 
analogy between natural selection and the learning of behavior and finding that 
arguments advancing a selectionist foundation in random variation were more 
convincing than arguments advancing a foundation in determinism. The analogy 
between natural selection and the learning of behavior (including verbal behavior 
and beliefs) has a long tradition (e.g., Baldwin, 1909; Darwin, 1871/1971, p. 59-61, 
1892/1958, p. 64; James, 1890/1981, pp. 1232-1233; Lyell, 1873, p. 513; Peirce, 
1986, p. 46; Thorndike, 1911/1965, pp. 272-294; Wright, 1870/1971, pp. 115-117). 
More recently, this analogy has been pursued at some length by Skinner (e.g., 1953a, 
1975/1978, 1981, 1984/1987, 1986/1987) and others (e.g., Ashby, 1952; Campbell, 
1956, 1960, 1974, 1990; Catania, 1995; Palmer & Donahoe, 1992; Popper, 1972; 
Pringle, 1951; Staddon & Simmelhag, 1971; also cf Staddon, 1993, p. 115, and 
Gamble, 1988, p. 39, for further sources). This literature is substantial and diverse. 
However, the analogy between natural selection and learning may be advanced 
without advancing the replacement of determinism with random variation, and 
Skinner provides no reference to suggest these more recent authors may have 
influenced his selectionist views and his replacement of determinism with random 
variation. For example, in response to a suggestion that much of his [Skinner's] 
argument in "Selection by Consequences" was anticipated by Campbell's 1960 
paper, Skinner (1988) said "I have not read Campbell's 1960 paper, and it may well 
have anticipated the argument of 'Selection by Consequences.' But I had already 
made my point in Science and Human Behavior published in 1953" (p. 49). Skinner 
(1988) also said his "interest in evolution began with the first five pieces of research 
I ever undertook" (p. 421). 
Given these considerations, the possible sources for Skinner's change in view 
will be selected from authors whom Skinner cited, said he read, or whose books he 
said he owned and who advanced arguments that favored random variation as 
opposed to determinism. Of these authors, Mach, Peirce, and Dewey were 
particularly strong in advancing an alternative to mechanistic determinism. Skinner 
(e.g., 1931/1972, p. 449, 1979/1984, pp. 66, 116, 1989, p. 122) specifically aligned 
some of his views with Mach. Although Skinner did not identify Peirce and Dewey 
in a similar alignment, Skinner (1979/1984) mentioned his growing library included 
"Chance, Love and Logic by C. S. Peirce (recommended by Crozier for the chapter 
called 'Man's Glassy Essence')" (p. 41). This book contained the essay, "The 
Doctrine of Necessity Examined," in which Peirce rejected determinism and 
defended chance. Although Skinner (e.g., 1969, p. 170, 1979/1984, p. 41) only 
occasionally referred to Peirce, Skinner (e.g., 1968, pp. 58, 85, 93, 153, 1969, p. 170, 
1972/1978, p. 144, 1979/1984, p. 343, 1982/1987, p. 176, 1985/1987, p. 42, 1989, p. 
108) referred to Dewey on several occasions. Of Dewey's works, Skinner (1989, p. 
108) specifically identified Logic, the Theory of Inquiry. In addition, Skinner (e.g., 
1979/1984, pp. 151, 213, 281) referred to discussions with Quine, whose philosophy 
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SKINNER: FROM DETERMINISM TO RANDOM VARIATON 
has been associated with pragmatism. Skinner (1979/1984, p. 92, 213) also indicated 
he read The Meaning of Meaning (Ogden & Richards, 1923/1989) and had 
discussions with one of its authors Richards. In The Meaning of Meaning, Ogden 
and Richards discussed pragmatism and the pragmatic views of Peirce, James, 
Schiller, and Dewey. For similarities between the views of Peirce, Dewey, and 
Skinner in regard to Skinner's three-term contingency, see Moxley (1996a). 
Three terms were repeatedly emphasized in Darwin's (1859/1958) account of 
evolution?conditions of life, variation, and selection. Of these, the most puzzling to 
explain was variation: 
In one sense the conditions of life may be said to cause variability, either directly or 
indirectly, but likewise to include natural selection, for the conditions determine 
whether this or that variety shall survive. But when man is the selecting agent, we 
clearly see that the two elements of change are distinct; variability is in some manner 
excited, but it is the will of man which accumulates the variations in certain directions; 
and it is this later agency which answers to the survival of the fittest under nature, (pp. 
132-133) 
How is variability "in some manner excited?" Agreeing with the widely accepted 
view of science at that time, Darwin did not want to say variations were "due to 
chance" (p. 131) because, "it served to acknowledge plainly our ignorance of the 
cause of each particular variation" (p. 131). 
More decisively, Mach (1893/1960) saw no need to postulate hidden 
deterministic causes for variation and rejected the "fantastical exaggeration" of the 
deterministic world view of Laplace and those who identified with the views of the 
French encyclopedists: 
The French encyclopaedists of the eighteenth century imagined they were not far from 
a final explanation of the world by physical and mechanical principles; Laplace even 
conceived a mind competent to foretell the progress of nature for all eternity, if but the 
masses, their positions and initial velocities were given. In the eighteenth century, this 
joyful overestimation of the scope of the new physico-mechanical ideas is pardonable. 
... But now, after a century has elapsed, after our judgment has grown more sober, the 
world conception of the encyclopaedists appears to us as a mechanical mythology in 
contrast to the animistic of the old religions. Both views contain undue and fantastical 
exaggerations of an incompleteperception, (p. 559) 
In place of determinism, Mach (1896) offered accidental circumstances and a 
gradual selection: "The disclosure of new provinces of facts before unknown can 
only be brought about by accidental circumstances" (p. 168); and "[T]hat which has 
resulted slowly as the result of a gradual selection, appears as if it were the outcome 
of a deliberate act of creation" (p. 174; cf. Skinner, 1953a, p. 91) 
In "The Doctrine of Necessity Examined," Peirce (1931-1963) also rejected 
determinism and placed its import in the context of the laws of mechanics and the 
mechanical philosophy: 
I propose here to examine the common belief that every single fact in the universe is 
precisely determined by law. 
. . . The proposition in question is that the state of things 
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MOXLEY 
existing at any time, together with certain immutable laws, completely determine the 
state of things at every other time (for a limitation to future time is indefensible). Thus, 
given the state of the universe in the original nebula, and given the laws of mechanics, 
a sufficiently powerful mind could deduce from these data the precise form of every 
curlicue of every letter I am now writing. . . . Whoever holds that every act of the will 
as well as every idea of the mind is under the rigid governance of a necessity 
coordinated with that of the physical world will logically be carried to the proposition 
that minds are part of the physical world in such a sense that the laws of mechanics 
determine anything that happens according to immutable attractions and repulsions. In 
that case, that instantaneous state of things, from which every other state of things is 
calculable, consists in the positions and velocities of all the particles at any instant. 
This, the usual and most logical form of necessitarianism, is called the mechanical 
philosophy. (6.36-6.38) 
For Peirce, "the essence of the necessitarian position is that certain continuous 
quantities have certain exact values;" however, "any statement to the effect that a 
certain continuous quantity has a certain exact value, if well founded at all, must be 
founded on something other than observation" (6.44). In other words, the 
assumption of scientific determinism cannot be an induction from instances of 
scientific observation: 
Those observations which are generally adduced in favor of mechanical causation 
simply prove that there is an element of regularity in nature, and have no bearing 
whatever upon the questions of whether such regularity is exact and universal or not. 
Nay, in regard to this exactitude, all observation is directly opposed to it; and the most 
that can be said is that a good deal of this observation can be explained away. Try to 
verify any law of nature, and you will find that the more precise your observations, the 
more certain they will be to show irregular departures from the law. We are 
accustomed to ascribe these, and I do not say wrongly, to errors of observation; yet we 
cannot usually account for such errors in any antecedently probable way. Trace their 
causes back far enough and you will be forced to admit they are always due to 
arbitrary determination, or chance. (6.46, also cf. 1.401, 1.402, and 1.407) 
Peirce was prepared for the objection that determinism must be accepted because we 
would otherwise be forced to say that everything was due to chance, which conflicts 
with the orderliness we find in the world: 
To undertake to account for anything by saying baldly that it is due to chance would, 
indeed, be futile. But this I do not do. I make use of chance chiefly to make room for a 
principle of generalization, or tendency to form habits, which I hold has produced all 
regularities. (6.62) 
Peirce was advancing an account for how orderliness evolves from some degree of 
chance to an increasing orderliness in which the element of chance is reduced but 
not eliminated. 
In "A Guess at the Riddle," Peirce (1931-1963) reaffirmed that "uniformities in 
the modes of action of things have come about by their taking habits" (1.409). In 
Peirce's highly general sense of the term, the taking of habits extended not only to 
behavior (and what Skinner would call operant behavior), but to all events in the 
universe: 
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At present, the course of events is approximately determined by law. In the past that 
approximation was less perfect; in the future it will be more perfect. The tendency to 
obey laws has always been and always will be growing. We look back toward a point 
in the infinitely distant past when there was no law but mere indeterminacy; we look 
forward to a point in the infinitely distant future when there will be no indeterminacy 
or chance but a complete reign of law. But at any assignable date in the past, however 
early, there was already some tendency toward uniformity; and at any assignable date 
in the future there will be some slight aberrancy from law.... According to this, three 
elements are active in the world, first, chance; second, law; and third, habit-taking. 
(1.409 also cf. 7.512-515; Peirce, 1992) 
Accepting that Peirce was speaking in highly general terms, his views are more 
understandable in light of widely accepted cosmological theories that favor an 
evolutionary universe on the big-bang model over a comparatively stationary 
universe on the steady-state model (Kragh, 1996, p. 373). Contrasting an 
evolutionary view of the universe with a deterministic view, Ferris (1997) says, "The 
process that hoisted the relative uniformity of the big bang to the incredible variety 
and diversity we see today in the sky seems more properly to be described as 
evolutionary" (p. 199). Although the evolution of the laws of physics?the point that 
Peirce was making?is another issue within evolutionary views of the universe, the 
question was raised by Burbidge in 1988 (cited in Kragh, 1996): "Suppose that the 
laws of physics have evolved, as has everything else" (p. 385). According to Ferris 
(1997), "The very laws of nature seem to have evolved from simpler, original laws, 
which in turn may have arisen from a state of primordial lawlessness" (p. 173). For 
the purpose of presenting Peirce as a suggestive source that may possibly have 
influenced Skinner's acceptance of random variation as foundational to his 
selectionism, we need go no further. 
Dewey (1916/1985) also found that determinism was implicit in the meaning of 
"a mechanical philosophy" (p. 293), and, after quoting Laplace's formulation, 
Dewey (1940/1991) criticized its weakness in addressing time: 
No more sweeping statement of the complete irrelevancy of time to the physical world 
and of the complete unreality for individuals of time could well be uttered. But the 
principle of indeterminacy annihilates the premises from which the conclusion follows. 
The principle is thus a way of acknowledging the pertinency of real time to physical 
beings. The utmost possible regarding an individual is a statement as to some order of 
probability about the future, (p. 107) 
For Dewey, time was central to discussions "in terms of development, 
or if one 
prefers the more grandiose term, evolution" (p. 108). 
Given Skinner's insistence that all operant behavior is a function of 
probabilistic contingencies, we can construct 
a plausible line of reasoning?not 
necessarily Skinner's?that traces the origin of behavior to random variation, 
but no 
further. To the extent that behavior is a function of probablistic contingencies, all 
ouractive experiences entail probability or shifts in probability. Similarly, to the 
extent that all human statements are a function of probablistic contingencies, all 
statements entail probability, not necessity. Even if every investigation of apparently 
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MOXLEY 
random variation leads to a more orderly account of higher probability, this would 
still be consistent with movement from lower to higher probability without any 
implication of necessity. Along with experiences of increasing disorder?as in 
thermodynamic entropy, warfare, and disturbing surprises?we also have 
experiences of increasing order?as in finding useful rules for effective action, 
having our questions answered, and pleasant surprises. These experiences of shifting 
probabilities can be addressed by selectionist accounts, and these accounts can be 
used to facilitate increases in the probability of creative as well as routine behavior. 
On this view, the world we experience is the real world, and a description of it 
entails a description of changing probabilities among functional relationships 
without postulating eternal, immutable forms. 
Skinner's Replacement of Determinism With Random Variation 
Skinner's original receptivity to determinism is evident from his early 
educational and religious background and the widespread acceptance of mechanistic 
determinism by the scientific community at the beginning of his career. Skinner 
said, "Much of my scientific position seems to have begun as Presbyterian theology, 
not too far removed from the congregational of Jonathan Edwards" (1983/1984, p. 
403). That theology assumed deterministic predestination. Skinner (1976/1977, pp. 
128-129, 161, 295; 1979/1984, pp. 49-50; 1983/1984, pp. 406-407, 412-413) also 
credited Bacon as having a strong early influence on his views and characterized 
himself as "thoroughly Baconian" (1983/1984, p. 406). Bacon?who shared with 
Skinner a background in the determinism of Calvinistic predestination?may well 
have been another source of Skinner's early determinism. 
In his "A Confession of Faith," which "shows many points of contact with 
Calvinist theology" (Vickers, 1996, p. 562), Bacon (c. 1602/1996) said, "[God] 
created heaven and earth . . . and gave . . . constant and everlasting laws, which we 
call Nature, which is nothing but the laws of the creation" (p. 108). Bacon 
(1620/1960) also assumed a metaphysics of fixed necessity outside his discussion of 
what a supernatural being had done, for example, "Thus, let the investigation of 
forms, which are (in the eye of reason at least, and in their essential law) eternal and 
immutable, constitute Metaphysics" (p. 129) and "When I speak of forms I mean 
nothing more than those laws and determinations of absolute actuality which govern 
and constitute any simple nature" (p. 152). In contrast, Bacon (1620/1960) also 
noted pragmatic indicators of truth, for example, "What in operation is most useful, 
that in knowledge is most true" (p. 124) and "Truth therefore and utility are here the 
very same thing" (p. 114). Bacon apparently did not see the incompatibility that 
others would see between a belief in eternal and immutable forms on the one hand 
and usefulness as a criterion for truth on the other. 
Scharff (1982) noted a similar conflict in Skinner's early positions, "It would 
appear that [Skinner] wanted to have his science both ways. On the one hand, the 
study of behavior was to be entirely descriptive; on the other hand, it would 
supposedly retain the right to speak of necessary relations" (p. 47), and Skinner's 
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SKINNER: FROM DETERMINISM TO RANDOM VARIATON 
subsequent struggle with this inherent conflict showed periods in which one view 
appeared to gain at the expense of the other. In saying, "The reflex is important in 
the description of behavior because it is by definition a statement of the necessity of 
this relation [between behavior and its stimulus]" (p. 449), Skinner (1931/1972) 
echoed one of the assumptions of the deterministic tradition in physiology, for 
example, as stated by Pavlov (1927/1960, p. 7). At the same time, Skinner 
(1931/1972) also showed an early pragmatic orientation in saying that "explanation 
is reduced to description and the notion of function substituted for that of causation" 
(p. 449). In adopting this descriptive, functional, and pragmatic position, Skinner 
(see 1931/1972, p. 449, 1979/1984, pp. 66, 116, 1989, p. 122) was endorsing the 
pragmatic functionalism of Mach that Skinner found in The Science of Mechanics 
(1960), in which Mach rejected determinism. 
Initially, Skinner appeared to believe the discovery of necessity might be 
accomplished in formal detail. In addition to his early affirmation of the importance 
of the necessity of the reflex, Skinner presented mathematical formulas such as "R= 
f(S,A)" (1931/1972, p. 454); "N=Ktn" (1932, p. 47); or "N= K log t + C + cf9 (1933, 
p. 341); but Skinner (1938) also showed a pragmatic skepticism in regard to whether 
the exactingly detailed implications of mechanistic determinism would ever be 
empirically observed and whether it was important that they be so: 
[The Behavior of Organisms] is "mechanistic" in the sense of implying a fundamental 
lawfulness or order in the behavior of organisms, and it is frankly analytical. It is not 
necessarily mechanistic in the sense of reducing the phenomena of behavior ultimately 
to the movement of particles, since no such reduction is made or considered essential, 
(p. 433) 
In addition, Skinner (1938), with an explicit contradiction of Watson's 1924 
statement, affirmed "the impossibility of any wholesale prediction of stimulus or 
response that could be called exact" (p. 11). In a retrospective comment, however, 
Skinner (1977a) said of Herrnstein's (1977) account of his (Skinner's) views in The 
Behavior of Organisms: "Nevertheless, I did not, as Herrnstein says, express 
'pessimism about a completely predictive science of behavior' (p. 595). I thought it 
might be possible in the laboratory" (p. 1008). But this personal qualification was 
not in The Behavior of Organisms. On balance, Coleman (1984) finds the 
determinism in The Behavior of Organisms to be "a rather 'loose' sort" (p. 495). 
Skinner (1945/1972, p. 383) continued to show a pragmatic orientation in 
which effective action is what counts, but he also advanced a determinism that was 
less cautious than his 1938 position and more closely in line with scientific 
determinism. Skinner (1947) explicitly stated that it was essential to assume that 
behavior was completely determined: 
To have a science of psychology at all, we must adopt the fundamental postulate that 
human behavior is a lawful datum, that it is undisturbed by the capricious act of any 
free agent?in other words, that it is completely determined, (p. 23) 
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MOXLEY 
Note the argument. If there is to be a science of behavior, the origin or source of the 
data must be completely determined and not capricious. 
Skinner did not say what the role for the probabilistic relations he advanced 
would be here, but elsewhere Skinner (e.g., 1932, p. 32, 1953a, p. 112) suggested 
that probability simply reflected an incomplete account of all the relevant variables. 
For example, Skinner (1953a) said that inevitable or necessary relations, even for the 
relation between two classes of events, is not readily demonstrable: "The 
discriminative stimulus, onthe other hand, shares its control with other variables, so 
that the inevitability of its effect cannot be easily demonstrated" (p. 112). But this 
acknowledged weakness in the empirical evidence did not keep Skinner from 
maintaining necessity was really there: "But when all relevant variables have been 
taken into account, it is not difficult to guarantee the result?to force the 
discriminative operant as inexorably as the eliciting stimulus forces its response" (p. 
112). No account was provided, however, to show how empirical data supported this 
claim. 
Skinner (1947) also assumed a thorough reductionism?the machines within 
machines of mechanistic determinism?would be forthcoming: "Eventually, we may 
assume, the facts and principles of psychology will be reducible not only to 
physiology but through biology and chemistry to physics and subatomic physics" (p. 
31), and Skinner (1947) looked forward to a time when theory would account for 
"the behavior of an individual in such a way that measurement would be feasible if 
he were the only individual on earth. This would be done by determining the values 
of certain constants in equations describing his behavior" (p. 39). Skinner (1953b) 
likened the development of the appropriate equations for behavior to the 
development of equations in Physics: 
It is true that the momentary condition of the organism as the tangent of a curve is still 
an abstraction?the very abstraction which became important in the physical sciences 
with Newton and Leibniz. But we are now able to deal with this in a rigorous fashion, 
(p. 77) 
These statements, of 1947 and 1953, may be regarded as the high tide of Skinner's 
explicit advocacy of determinism. 
Skinner rode this high tide of deterministic assertions on into Beyond Freedom 
and Dignity (1971), saying, "Personal exemption from a complete determinism is 
revoked as a scientific analysis progresses" (p. 18). The critical reaction to this 
publication was widely negative and often vitriolic. As a venture in increasing public 
acceptance of Skinner's operant analysis, Beyond Freedom and Dignity was a public 
relations disaster. 
Afterwards, Skinner continued to advance determinism for a period of time, but 
with judicious qualifications. For example, Skinner presented determinism as an 
issue of plausibility rather than a necessary assumption: "We cannot prove, of 
course, that human behavior as a whole is fully determined, but the proposition 
becomes more plausible as facts accumulate" (Skinner, 1974, p. 189). However, no 
accumulation of facts in terms of probabilistic contingencies could justify the 
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SKINNER: FROM DETERMINISM TO RANDOM VARIATON 
necessary relations of determinism. Perhaps aware that a selectionist theory is not 
supported by and does not lead to determinism, Skinner (1988) indicated a possible 
return to mechanistic explanation when "selection as a causal mode has done its 
work and a mechanical model may suffice" (p. 25). From the more confident 
statements of 1947 and 1953, the establishment of determinism is now qualified with 
"cannot prove," "more plausible," and "may." 
However, strains began to appear in Skinner's acceptance of determinism even 
before the publication of Beyond Freedom and Dignity. These strains show up in the 
way that Skinner stretched his use of the term determinism to a broader coverage at 
odds with its more commonly used sense. For example, in discussing the creative 
artist, Skinner (1970/1972) presented determinism as an assumption which he 
illustrated in a way that contradicted the classical sense of determinism: 
Novelty or originality can occur in a wholly deterministic system. A convenient 
archetypal pattern is the theory of evolution. The living forms on the earth show a 
variety far beyond that of works of art. . . . The multiplicity of living forms is 
accounted for in terms of mutation and selection, without appealing to any prior 
design [emphasis added]. ... We may not like to credit any aspect of a successful 
painting to chance, but, if we are willing to admit that chance does make a 
contribution, we can take steps to improve the chances, (pp. 339-340) 
Classical determinism, however, does appeal to designs such as a Laplacean 
formula, and these designs are commonly presumed to have an existence that awaits 
discovery. Repudiation of prior designs is a repudiation of what was understood as 
determinism. In addition, Skinner gave chance a role at odds with his previous views 
and the traditional view of determinism that regards chance as an abhorrent 
alternative to an orderly deterministic universe (cf. Gigerenzer, Swijtink, Porter, 
Daston, Beatty, & Kruger, 1989; Hacking, 1975, 1990; Schweber, 1977). Previously, 
for example, Skinner (1947, p. 53, 1968, p. 171) had presented "capricious" action 
as the unacceptable forced choice alternative to "determinism." Now Skinner is 
looking at mutation and selection and sees how chance can "make a contribution" 
here and elsewhere. Pejorative capricious actions had now become more respectable 
chance actions. 
The strains on Skinner's determinism continued to appear when Skinner (1974) 
acknowledged that a role for chance appeared at odds with a deterministic system 
and he passed up the opportunity to defend or reassert his acceptance of 
determinism: 
As accidental traits, arising from mutation, are selected by their contributions to 
survival, so accidental variations in behavior are selected by their reinforcing 
consequences. 
That chance can play a part in the production of anything as important as 
mathematics, science, or art has often been questioned. Moreover, at first glance, there 
seems to be no room for chance in any completely determined system. 
. . . Yet the 
biographies of writer, composers, artists, scientists, mathematicians, and inventors 
all 
reveal the importance of happy accidents in the production of original behavior. 
The concept of selection is again the key. The mutations in genetic and evolutionary 
theory are random, and the topographies of response selected by reinforcement are, 
if 
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MOXLEY 
not random, at least not necessarily related to the contingencies under which they will 
be selected, (p. 114) 
Instead of reconciling chance and variation with determinism, Skinner went on to 
stress the role of accidental or random variation in human behavior in analogy with 
natural selection. 
This failure to defend determinism takes on further significance in Skinner's 
autobiography, where he passed up another opportunity to defend or reassert a 
maintained belief in determinism. Skinner (1983/1984, p. 60) commented on being 
"caught" by Bridgman in regard to his (Skinner's) assumption of determinism. 
Previously, Skinner (1953a) had defended determinism against the objection "that 
physical science has been unable to maintain its philosophy of determinism 
particularly at the subatomic level" (p. 17). Skinner argued in part, "The Principle of 
Indeterminacy states that there are circumstances under which the physicist cannot 
put himself in possession of all relevant information" (p. 17). In saying this, Skinner 
implied the relevant information existed somewhere, and Bridgman criticized 
Skinner for this claim. As Skinner (1983/1984) presents Bridgman's response, 
When [Bridgman] saw the manuscript of Science and Human Behavior, he caught me 
up on two subtle points. He wrote: "I think it would be better in discussing the 
principle of indeterminacy to say that relevant information does not existthan to say 
we cannot put ourselves in possession of it. And I would not like to say, as seems 
implied, that science has to assume that the universe is lawful and determined, but 
rather that science proceeds by exploiting those lawfulnesses that it can discover. 
Anything smacking of faith I think we can get along without." (p. 60) 
The way that Skinner recounts this episode suggests he was aware of difficulties in 
assuming determinism within a descriptive, functional, and pragmatic view of 
science; and he did not offer a defense against Bridgman's objection. One reason for 
this may have been Skinner's (1979/1984) growing skepticism about explanatory 
accounts that appealed to deterministic sources as a foundation for behavior: "A 
science of behavior cannot be closely patterned after geometry or Newtonian 
mechanics" (p. 206). 
A major turning point in Skinner's explicitly stated views occurred with the 
publication of "Selection by Consequences" (1981). Here, Skinner aligned operant 
behavior in close parallel with Darwin's natural selection. The import of this article 
was stated in its summary: 
Summary. Selection by consequences is a causal mode found only in living things, or 
in machines made by living thing. It was first recognized in natural selection, but it 
also accounts for the shaping and maintenance of the behavior of the individual and 
the evolution of cultures. In all three of these fields, it replaces explanations based on 
the causal modes of classical mechanics. The replacement is strongly resisted. Natural 
selection has now made its case, but similar delays in recognizing the role of selection 
in the other fields could deprive us of valuable help in solving the problems which 
confront us. (p. 501) 
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SKINNER: FROM DETERMINISM TO RANDOM VARIATON 
Skinner saw selection by consequences as replacing "explanations based on the 
causal modes of classical mechanics." This position had direct implications for 
determinism. A major function of determinism was to support "the causal modes of 
classical mechanics." There was now no longer a reason to maintain the determinism 
implied by mechanistic accounts, particularly since Skinner had spoken out against 
needless theory. Skinner (1950/1972) had objected, "We are likely ... to use the 
theory to give us answers in place of the answers we might find through further 
study ... to create a false sense of security, an unwarranted satisfaction with the 
status quo" (p. 71). Considering all the changes Skinner had made in his views in 
moving away from a mechanistic behaviorism (cf. Moxley, 1992), this would have 
been an appropriate time to complete the break with an abandonment of 
determinism; however, Skinner did not explicitly reject determinism. 
Instead, Skinner ignored determinism and presented random variation as a 
foundational source for his explanatory accounts. Skinner (Trudeau, 1990) insisted, 
"The origin of human behavior, like the origin of species, has got to be interpreted in 
terms of randomness and accident" (p. 2). In discussing natural selection, operant 
conditioning, and cultural evolution, Skinner (1990a) said that "variations are 
random and contingencies of selection accidental" (p. 1207) and that "if there is 
freedom, it is to be found in the randomness of variations" (p. 1208). Here, freedom 
is not simply a feeling of being free?such as the feeling that results from escaping 
aversive conditions?it is a freedom from absolute necessity and a freedom from 
anyone being able to always predict someone else's behavior exactly. To avoid any 
confusion, it may be worthwhile to point out that the term freedom, as commonly 
used, is not necessarily in conflict with determinism. In regard to their own 
behavior, people often use the term in a way that reflects their awareness of the 
alternatives they confront, the consequences of the selections they may make, their 
feelings, and so on. These issues remain whether or not people believe in the 
existence of an absolute or a relatively high predictability of their behavior (cf. 
Moxley, 1972; Staddon, 1993, pp. 63-83). Nevertheless, Skinner's (1990a, p. 1208) 
statement as far as predictability goes is in sharp contrast to his previous claims for 
attaining mathematically predictable behavior. Skinner (1990b) also found: 
A planned world was one of the casualties of evolutionary theory, and the belief that a 
life or a culture has evolved according to a plan is suffering the same fate. Too much 
of what will happen depends upon unforeseen variations and adventitious 
contingencies of selection. The future is largely a matter of chance.... (p. 104) 
Determinism is a plan, the world formula, without necessarily a planner; and if plans 
fail to explain a world, a life, or a culture, then neither does determinism. Some 
element of chance is needed. 
The irrelevance of determinism for Skinner's selectionist account of behavior 
can perhaps be seen more clearly in Skinner's role for verbal behavior within his 
three-term contingency. For Skinner (1988), the "verbal descriptions of reality are 
never as detailed as reality itself, and rule-guided or rule-governed behavior is never 
as subtle as behavior shaped directly by the contingencies described by the rules" 
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MOXLEY 
(p. 325). Skinner (1969, pp. 137-144; also cf. Dewey, 1902/1976, pp. 283-284; Ryle, 
1949, pp. 289-291) clarified this point with an analogy between the origins for trail 
blazing and the origins for a verbal statement. Originally, the path need not be 
deliberately planned and any signs of a trail may be inadvertent, "but the advantages 
gained may reinforce the explicit leaving of traces. A trail is 'blazed,' for example, 
precisely because it is more easily followed. Comparable reinforcing advantages 
have led men to construct pictures and verbal description of paths" (Skinner, 1966, 
p. 28). We also derive more streamlined descriptions or rules from previous 
descriptions without directly exploring the situation described. Although we may 
explain our behavior by a rule we are following, the source for that rule lies in 
previous contingencies such as those for initially leaving marks leading to paths. 
When we now follow a path, we are not brought into contact with the contingencies 
for making the marks. Similarly, when we now follow a verbal rule, we are not 
brought into contact with the contingencies for making the rule. A more complete 
explanation, however, indicates those origins. This is a common experience. We 
respond, often creatively, to multiple, diverse, informal contingencies in new and 
unfamiliar settings. Later, after a series of selection by consequences, our responses 
become more formally related to particular discriminative stimuli and rules. These 
outcomes accumulate in personal histories, and some may be described and passed 
on by cultures. 
Thus, verbal behavior that expresses exact necessary relations cannot be the 
explanatory origin for any empirical event. Probabilistic contingencies underlie rules 
that express necessary relations. Rules do not underlie contingencies. This view 
extends to logic, and if it "invalidates our scientific structure from the point of view 
of logic and truth-value, then so much the worse for logic, which will also have been 
embraced by our analysis" (Skinner, 1945/1972, p. 380). No logical rule or world 
formulation can come first because "The contingencies always come first" (Skinner, 
1989, p. 44). From an analysis of contingencies, scientific laws are made by humans 
and obeyedby humans for an indeterminate period of time (cf. Skinner, 1969, p. 
141). No formulation of scientific law escapes the probabilistic origins of verbal 
behavior; and Skinner (1983/1984) cautioned against accepting any truth as 
permanent: "Regard no practice as immutable. Change and be ready to change again. 
Accept no eternal verity. Experiment" (p. 346). Although Skinner may never have 
explicitly rejected determinism, he rendered it irrelevant for any behavior analysis 
that relied on his three-term contingency. 
Discussion 
A selectionist account of behavior does not require the positing of determinism. 
Nevertheless, if thought worthwhile, determinism in some form may be rescued. For 
example, elaborating on what random variation might mean, Neuringer (1991) 
hypothesized endogenous random generators?or "influences internal to the 
organism which contribute randomly to behavioral output" (p. 9)?to account, at 
least in part, for variability in behavior. He found this "generator" may be chaotic 
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SKINNER: FROM DETERMINISM TO RANDOM VARIATON 
and consistent with philosophical determinism, but it may also be stochastic or 
"truly random" and incompatible with absolute predictions of behavior. 
The question may be raised, however, Why bother to rescue determinism? 
What contribution does determinism make to advancing a selectionist account of 
behavior? At no point does a selectionist account of behavior require determinism 
for support. Mach (1893/1960, pp. 580-581), Peirce (1931-63, 6.65), and Dewey 
(1940/1991, p. 107) all rejected the fixed necessity of determinism. Day (1969), who 
considered radical behaviorism as Skinner's behaviorism, found it was inconsistent 
for a radical behaviorist to assume a preexisting mechanistic determinism in the 
search for functional relationships: "In attempting to discover functional 
relationships the radical behaviorist does not accept any a priori logical assumption 
of a universe that is orderly in a mechanical sense" (p. 318). For Day, a radical 
behaviorist "is suspicious of ... a facile determinism which views the aim of 
research as isolating the fundamental elements of nature which are thought of as 
existing in some kind of mechanical interrelationship" (p. 319). In fact, Day thought 
a radical behaviorist was "led to a position which is peculiarly anti-ontological" (p. 
319). And Marr (1982) remarked, "The abandonment of mechanistic determinism 
should not be viewed by behaviorists with despair, but rather be looked upon as 
liberating (as it has been for physics)" (p. 207). 
In addition, from points that Skinner raised, a case may be made that insisting 
on determinism as a prerequisite assumption for behavior analysis brings 
distractions to the study of behavior?in supporting misleading models and in 
encouraging a search for underlying necessity at "deeper" levels. Skinner was 
suspicious of models (and theories) that added properties for the sake of an easier 
understanding. In doing so, a model may be used that falsifies what is being 
described: "In the process of modeling one tends to add properties which make the 
relation easier to think about but which actually falsify the account to some extent" 
(Skinner, 1988, p. 371). In reference to mechanical models of thinking, Skinner 
(1977b) found, "The struggle to make machines that think like people has had the 
effect of supporting theories in which people think like machines" (p. 7). This 
argument also applies to mathematical models, and Skinner (1961/1972) spoke 
disparagingly of them : 
Some psychologists have ... fled to an ivory image of their own sculpturing, mounted 
on a mathematical pedestal. ... An examination of mathematical models in learning 
theory will show that no degree of disorder in the facts has placed any restriction on 
the elegance of the mathematical treatment, (p. 323) 
Given such a view, it is not surprising that Skinner's early mathematical 
formulations disappeared from his later writings as well as metaphorical allusions to 
force, drive, and reflex reserve that suggested visualizable mechanistic models. In 
addition, instead of searching for underlying determinants in physiology, Skinner 
(1979/1984) advocated a direct analysis of behavior: 
The argument against physiology is simply that we should get more done in the field 
of behavior if we confine ourselves to behavior. When we rid ourselves of the delusion 
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MOXLEY 
that we are getting down to fundamentals when we get into physiology, then the young 
man who discovers some fact of behavior will not immediately go after the 
"physiological correlates" but will go on discovering other facts of behavior, (pp. 166 
167) 
In particular, the investigator attracted to an investigation because it may be the path 
to exact pre-existing rules is liable to go astray. 
Skinner may have had the physiologist Jacques Loeb in mind when he said this. 
For Loeb (1915, pp. 768-769, also cf. p. 772), the task of mechanistic science was 
the complete and correct visualization of underlying elements and relations (cf. 
Moxley, 1996b). In furthering this task, Loeb (1915) said it was "very important for 
the mechanistic conception to prove that life phenomena can be imitated by 
machines," and maintained, "Living organisms may be called chemical machines" 
(1906, p. 1). Pursuing the machine model and its underlying deterministic 
assumptions instead of investigating the behavior of organisms, Loeb turned to 
chemistry and "from 1917 to his death in 1924 investigated the physicochemical 
properties of gelatin" (Pauly, 1987, p. 131). 
A key feature of deterministic-mechanistic accounts appears to be their 
visualization in pictureable metaphors and mechanical models of human 
construction, for example, the hydraulically moved statues in the royal gardens 
(Descartes, 1985 & 1991,1, p. 100), the cyclically moving figures of the Strasbourg 
cathedral clock (Boyle, 1686/1996, p. 13), and Hammond's heliotropic, selenium 
eyed dog (Loeb 1915, p. 780-781). The history of mechanical contrivances and 
explicit or evident references to them in support of philosophical thought is ancient 
(cf. Brumbaugh, 1961; Cornford, 1957, p. 74 and Cicero, ca 45-46 B. C./1972, pp. 
159-163 on Platonic and Stoic origins of the universe). The mechanical philosophy 
is aptly designated as mechanical because it is readily seen as an idealized 
abstraction from machines, their design, and the apparent ideal objective of 
machine-makers to have machines operate with necessary connections between any 
two parts so that the operating machine runs with exact predictability until stopped. 
As Boyle (1686/1996) put it, 
It more recommends the skill of an engineer to contrive an elaborate engine so as that 
there should need nothing to reach his ends in it but the contrivance of parts devoid of 
understanding, than if it were necessary that ever and anon a discreet servant should be 
employed to concur notably to the operations of this or that part, or to hinder the 
engine from being out of order, (p. 11) 
The search for perpetual motion machines in the middle ages reflected this value in 
the idealization of an eternally moving, eternally repeating, machine (see Price, 
1959), much as the motions of heavenly bodies were thought to repeat eternally. In a 
universe designed by a supernatural craftsman, such idealization was commonly 
regarded as a necessary assumption. In brief, the mechanical philosophy and 
determinism can be seen as the consequences of idealizing the design of machines. 
These consequenceswere then regarded as causes, not only of machines, but of 
everything in the universe. 
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SKINNER: FROM DETERMINISM TO RANDOM VARIATON 
Skinner's skepticism in regard to the utility of theories and models is applicable 
here. Although the visualizations offered in deterministic-mechanistic models and 
abstractions from them may be readily grasped, the changes accounted for in natural 
selection or the changing probabilities among class concepts in Skinner's three-term 
contingency are less easily visualized. This does not mean the more easily visualized 
account should be preferred. A premium on visualization does not necessarily lead 
to more effective action. The drunk who looked for his lost keys under the lamp 
post?not because he lost them there, but because the light was better?was not 
acting effectively. 
In conclusion, the relation of determinism to a selectionist account of behavior 
may be clarified by the following analogy. When Darwin advanced his selectionist 
account of evolution and natural selection, it met resistance from those in the 
scientific community who held that God would have done things differently. 
Eventually, it became customary to keep arguments that appealed to the way that a 
supernatural being did things out of scientific accounts because these supernatural 
dependent arguments were seen as scientifically unproductive if not counter 
productive. One way that appeals to divine agency interfered with selectionist 
accounts was through The Argument from Design. This argument found the order in 
nature could only be produced by a divine designer; and many religious people who 
accepted this argument assumed that such a designer would only design perfected 
species whose essence did not change. Those who accepted these assumptions 
included respected scientists such as Louis Agassiz, and they opposed natural 
selection and evolution. Determinism can be seen as another kind of argument from 
design. In this argument, a preexisting design?the world formula?explains the 
order in nature, and theories were commonly offered that would be consistent with 
that formula, for example, mechanistic S-R theories with necessary if-then 
connections. However, natural selection explains the order we find without any need 
to argue what a divine designer would do or what the manifestation of a preexisting 
design (i.e., the world formula) would be like. 
In respect to what this might mean in regard to belief in a supernatural being, 
neither the acceptance of natural selection nor the acceptance of determinism has a 
necessary implication for a belief or disbelief in a supernatural being. Any claim of 
implication has to do with what someone says who claims to speak for how 
a 
supernatural being would do things, and such claims are not compelling in modern 
science. Although the 19th century saw religiously motivated attacks on Darwinian 
evolution, Darwin (1879/1958) said, "It seems absurd to me to doubt that a man can 
be an ardent Theist and an Evolutionist" (p. 88). Asa Gray (1876/1963), for example, 
was a prominent contemporary example of a man who was both. Somewhat 
ironically, the post-1920 controversy in cosmology between those who advocated a 
stationary theory of the universe and those who advocated an evolutionary (or big 
bang) theory of the universe saw Pope Pius XII as endorsing the evolutionary theory 
as the way that God would do things (Kragh, 1996, p. 256). Biological and 
cosmological evolution are widely accepted theories today, but their acceptance in 
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MOXLEY 
modern science has little to do with whether these theories follow someone's claim 
for the way that God would do things. 
Although Skinner may never have completely abandoned some belief in 
determinism, it no longer played the important role it had played earlier. In his later 
selectionist accounts of behavior, Skinner did not refer to determinism as a source 
for radical behaviorism. Determinism was irrelevant to those explanations. 
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