[Reprinted from THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR, Winter, 1955-56, Vol. 25, No. 1]

# Freedom and the Control of Men

B. F. SKINNER

THE SECOND HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY may be remembered for its solution of a curious problem. Although Western democracy created the conditions responsible for the rise of modern science, it is now evident that it may never fully profit from that achievement. The so-called "democratic philosophy" of human behavior to which it also gave rise is increasingly in conflict with the application of the methods of science to human affairs. Unless this conflict is somehow resolved, the ultimate goals of democracy may be long deferred.

## I

Just as biographers and critics look for external influences to account for the traits and achievements of the men they study, so science ultimately explains behavior in terms of "causes" or conditions which lie beyond the individual himself. As more and more causal relations are demonstrated, a practical corollary becomes difficult to resist: it should be possible to *produce* behavior according to plan simply by arranging the proper conditions. Now, among the specifications which might reasonably be submitted to a behavioral technology are these: Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved and productive.

This immediate practical implication of a science of behavior has a familiar ring, for it recalls the doctrine of human perfectibility of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century humanism. A science of man

B. F. SKINNER is professor of psychology at Harvard University. His major field of interest is the experimental analysis of behavior. In addition to technical books and articles, he has published a utopian novel, *Walden Two*, and a general analysis of the implications of science for human affairs called *Science and Human Behavior*.