The Behavior Analyst 2002, 25, 235-243 No. 2 (Fall)

Not So Disinterested or Objectivist:John A. Mills' Control: A History of

Behavioral PsychologyEdward K. Morris

University of Kansas

Mills' book begins as a self-stated intellectual history of behavioral psychology, but in the end isa social constructionist critique of the very idea of a natural science of behavior. In between, itoffers brief but welcome coverage of overlooked behaviorists (e.g., Guthrie, Kantor, Kuo), well-researched critiques of neobehaviorists (e.g., Hull), and praise and proper caution about Skinner(e.g., early scholarship and inductive fallacies, respectively). Unfortunately, its treatment of Skinnercontains some rather rudimentary misunderstandings, for instance, that he was antitheoretical, adopt-ed a mechanistic form of materialism, and adhered to an operationism that was explanatory, notdescriptive. In this, and in its treatment of behavioral engineering, the book's scholarship is dated.Still, the book is a must-read for professional scholars of the history of behaviorism.Key words: history of behaviorism, behaviorism, radical behaviorism, B. F Skinner

John A. Mills' Control: A History ofBehavioral Psychology (1998) is a wellinformed but frustrating book. Histo-rians will praise its broad, careful useof archival resources to account for be-haviorism and neobehaviorism in theirown times, yet sense a "presentist" in-tent to justify a postmodern perspec-tive. Social constructionists, who seeknowledge, including scientific knowl-edge, as socially contingent, will warmto the book's placing behaviorism insocial and cultural context, yet never-theless discover some essentialism.Cognitive psychologists will applaudthe book's critical assessment of be-haviorism at mid-century, yet see itsarguments also directed at them. And,behaviorists will eagerly anticipate"the most comprehensive history ofbehaviorism yet written" (inside front

Mills, J. A. (1998). Control: A history of be-havioral psychology. New York: New York Uni-versity Press.

I thank Joseph V. Brady and Charles E. Ricefor prompting me to complete this review andAndrew Winston for providing incisive com-ments on a later version of it, as well as forreferring me to reviews of which I was unaware(Danziger, 1999; Winston, 2001b).

Correspondence may be sent to the author atthe Department of Human Development, Uni-versity of Kansas, 1000 Sunnyside Avenue,Lawrence, Kansas 66045-2133 (e-mail: ekm@ku.edu).

dust jacket), but find mainly the lon-gest history yet published, and some-times wonder whose behaviorism it isanyway-not always theirs. In short,the book's premises will delight somereaders, but its conclusions will dismayothers.

Mills' basic premise is insightful:

Behaviorism remains an enigma because itsdominance in American psychology blocks [ital-ics added] our efforts to understand its role andits nature. American psychologists ... aretrained to think behavioristically from their ear-liest undergraduate years, usually without beingmade aware, or realizing, that this is the case.(p. 1)

That is, American psychologists cannotfully appraise the role and nature of be-haviorism in American psychology be-cause American psychologists are be-havioristic. They cannot step outsidethe stream of their own behavior for adisinterested and objectivist account.This is a point well taken, but it im-plies that behaviorism can be fully ap-praised only by scholars external, notinternal, to the discipline, that is, byscholars not trained to think behavior-istically, and thus not blocked in theirefforts to understand its role and its na-ture. However, not being trained tothink behavioristically does not meanno training at all. It means training to

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236 EDWARD K. MORRIS

think other than behavioristically,sometimes antibehavioristically.As we shall see, Mills seemingly

sets himself up to the task of writing adisinterested and objectivist history ofbehavioral psychology. Among his cre-dentials, he was born in England andtrained in South Africa, and was a stu-dent of Kurt Danziger's, a well-regard-ed social constructionist historian (seeDanziger, 1997). Mills afterwardstaught for many years at the Universityof Saskatchewan but is now retired.His early research was in psycholin-guistics and comparative psychology,whereas his current scholarship is inthe history of psychology. He is along-standing member of Cheiron (theInternational Society for the History ofSocial and Behavioral Sciences) andparticipates in its conferences and gov-ernance. He is a founding member ofthe International Society for Theoreti-cal Psychology and is on the editorialboard of Theory & Psychology, forwhich Kenneth Gergen, a leading so-cial constructionist, is an advisory ed-itor (see Gergen, 1985). Mills, then,stands outside behaviorism, but notoutside a perspective-a perspectiveknown for its antipathy to the fieldwhose history he takes as his subjectmatter.The forums in which Mills presents

and publishes are influential sources ofscholarship on psychology's historyand historiography. Thus, when Mills'colleagues give his text positive re-views (e.g., Danziger, 1999), as well asbook jacket endorsements-for exam-ple, "This book will surely signal aturning point in our historical under-standing of behaviorism" (HenderikusJ. Stam, editor of Theory & Psycholo-gy)-then it warrants notice in the be-havior-analytic literature. Behavior an-alysts need to stay abreast of work thataffects how their field is understood,depicted, and taught. For this reason,Mills' book is worth at least a belatedreview. In any case, it is a must-readfor anyone seriously interested in thehistory of the field.

Returning to Mills' premise that

American psychologists are "blocked"in their efforts to understand the roleand nature of behaviorism becausethey are behaviorists, we can put hisargument this way: Behaviorists-inparticular, methodological behavior-ists-are mainstream in experimentalpsychology, and thus are not oftenasked to define and defend their workin ways that would make them espe-cially cognizant of their intellectualcommitments. However, the implica-tion that all behaviorists are likewiseunaware of their perspectives does notnecessarily follow (see Krasner, 1999).In fact, behaviorists who are commit-ted to psychology as a natural science(e.g., radical behaviorists, interbehav-iorists) are so often asked to define anddefend their nonparadigmatic positionthat many of them are quite aware oftheir intellectual commitments (seeSkinner, 1963, 1971, pp. 241-243, onthe social basis of consciousness).

Mills' thesis is also ironic because itis not reflexive. As noted above, heavers that American psychologistshave perspectives about which theyneed to be cognizant and forthcomingif they are to appraise behaviorism ful-ly. However-although he is undoubt-edly cognizant-Mills is not forthcom-ing about his own perspective, suchthat we can fully appraise his text.Moreover, when the text is a destruc-tive critique of behaviorism-which isoften-it offers no constructive alter-natives. Here and there, we find hintsof a social constructionist and post-modern alternative (see Mills, 1992),but nothing explicit. In fact, in re-sponse to Boakes' (1999) review ofControl, Mills (1999) claimed that al-ternatives were beside the point:

Professor Boakes asks what I would put in Be-haviorism's place. To ask such a question im-plies, I would submit, a misunderstanding of thehistorian's role. As I see it currently, an intellec-tual historian must take a major theory as he orshe finds it and try to discover the forces thatshaped the theory and brought it to prominence.(p. 311)

Mills is here taking an objectiviststance: a positivistic historian gather-

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ing facts (e.g., about behaviorism) fordisinterested analysis (e.g., to discoverforces). Such a stance, however, is notdefensible in either social construction-ism or modem historical scholarship(see Furumoto, 1989). Current histori-ography tends toward historicist andcontextual accounts, not those that arepresentist or decontextualized.

STYLE

As for its style, the book will be off-putting to readers inclined to a behav-ioral perspective, especially to Skin-ner's. For example, Mills often fallsinto pejorative language, commentingfor instance that the friends of neobe-haviorism are "sympathizers"" (p.183), that neobehaviorism had "aco-lytes" (p. 184), and that Skinner was a"polemicist"-"establishing" and"engaging" in "propaganda"-and"fatuously coy about his sources"' (pp.123, 124, 127, 129, 134, 143). As Bra-dy and Heaton (2000) commented,

Mills has an ax to grind, a disdain betrayed bythe emotionally laden language of his writing:He repeatedly equates American psychology'spragmatic emphasis on serving society with aneed to control. The use of the word "control"to trigger a negative reaction is legendary andtiresome. Mills describes behaviorists as sharinga "lust for quantification" and an "obsessionwith prediction and control" (p. 9; italics mine).(p. 187)

Some non sequiturs also appear. Forexample, Skinner "seemed to have hada lowly estimation of his achievementsas a scientist. No sooner had he ex-pressed his ideas in the form of his firstbook than he launched himself intoProject Pigeon, a lengthy piece of ap-plied work" (p. 123; Skinner, 1960).

Although Mills' language and itsimplications may sound harsh to theAmerican ear, we should not be overlyprovincial. This is the frank, direct, andpithy style found throughout muchBritish scholarship, and characteristicof intellectual disagreements therein.Still, to the extent that style suggests aperspective, then in this case it sug-gests an antibehavioral bias.

CONTENT

Turning to the book's content, thehistory of behavioral psychology iscovered in an introduction and sevenchapters. The introduction begins withan essentialist account of behaviorism:"The essence of behaviorism is theequating of theory with application,understanding with prediction, and theworkings of the human mind with so-cial technology" (p. 2). Mills extendsthis point by asserting that all behav-iorists share seven "prior commit-ments": commitments to practical ap-plication over theory, science over phi-losophy, pragmatic versions of positiv-ism, materialism, the goal of practical"prediction and control," the empiricalbasis of behaviorism in the animal lab-oratory, and an extreme form of utili-tarianism (e.g., morals are means notends).He afterwards elaborates on these,

criticizing behaviorism (a) for accept-ing "the experiment" as a veridicalrepresentation or mirror of nature butnot an explanatory one (e.g., about the"intrinsic life of the mind," p. 3; the""inner, unobservable, factors [that]control behavior much of the time," p.10), and (b) for maintaining two "co-vert" aims: to provide objective oper-ational definitions for subjective com-monsense terms referring to mind andconsciousness, and to replace the caus-al explanations of commonsense psy-chology with mechanistic explana-tions.

Skinner would generally have dis-avowed the essence of behaviorism de-scribed above, a number of the priorcommitments, and a fair portion oftheir elaboration. However, Mills doesnot much distinguish Skinner's behav-iorism from methodological behavior-ism, and thus the naive reader may in-correctly assume that Mills' critiqueapplies equally to every behaviorismwhen it does not. Not every behavior-ism is a variation of the essentialismMills describes; they often vary signif-icantly among themselves.

238 EDWARD K. MORRIS

The Birth of PsychologicalBehaviorism

Chapter 1 is organized around vari-ous "motivating factors" in the birthof behaviorism: social science's needfor practical application, from Ameri-can progressivism; philosophical re-spectability, found in the neorealistphilosophers, mainly Perry and Holt; abehaviorist body of theory, attemptedby Meyer and Weiss; and an empiricalbasis from animal psychology, pio-neered by Kuo and Hunter. These fac-tors are variously covered in othertreatments of behaviorism, but the be-haviorists Mills cites have often beenoverlooked, and thus he offers a re-freshing perspective. Kuo (1967), inparticular, warrants greater attention(see Gottlieb, 1972).

Mills also offers extended coverageof Kantor's (1959) interbehavioral psy-chology, with which he resonates forits antimechanism, functional defini-tions of stimuli, and emphasis on thecontingent nature of historical causa-tion. These features also characterizeSkinner's radical behaviorism, but thisis not acknowledged, although perti-nent literature is cited (e.g., Morris,1982). Also, Mills' outline of the his-tory of behaviorism is reminiscent ofKantor's (1963, p. 161) two cycles ofnaturalism in the history of psycholo-gy, but on a shorter time scale and todifferent ends. In Kantor's analysis,naturalistic psychology emerged inHellenic Greece, notably through Ar-istotle; it declined thereafter, into theHigh Middle Ages; and it began as-cending in the 18th century. In Mills'outline, behaviorism had two cycles,both in the 20th century: "Behavior-ism was born in a time of social opti-mism, rose to its apogee during a pe-riod of unprecedented economic pros-perity, and collapsed into a group ofobscure sects during the current neo-conservative era" (p. 22). Mills is herearguing that behaviorism was based inprogressivism, political agendas, andeconomic exigencies, not in science,and that its collapse supports this in-

terpretation because, if behaviorismwere based in science, then it wouldhave survived. This is presentist his-tory (Brady & Heaton, 2000; see Kan-tor, 1969; Leahey, 2000).

Watson, Tolman, and HullThe next three chapters take us from

theoretical behaviorism into neobehav-iorism. Chapter 2 establishes Watson's"true role in behaviorism's history" (p.55), by which Mills means his nonroleas the creator of behaviorism, but thisis not a new assessment (see Leahey,1992). Mills, though, does offer an en-lightening analysis of Guthrie as a tran-sitional figure between theoretical be-haviorism and the behaviorisms thatfollowed (see also Malone, 1990, pp.119-139). Chapter 3 describes the con-ceptual foundations of neobehavior-ism, for instance, (a) the operationismof Boring and Stevens, (b) interveningvariables and hypothetical constructs,(c) Tolman's purposive behaviorism,and (d) the analysis of variance in de-fining experimental psychology. Chap-ter 4 offers a thoughtful and well-re-searched analysis of Hull's work and offactors driving it, most interestingly,the threat of un-American Gestalt psy-chology. In the end, though, Mills re-iterates the usual problems found inHull's theory (e.g., the failure of quan-titative predictions, closed deductivesystems, mechanism; see Koch, 1950).

B. F. Skinner

Chapter 5 addresses Skinner's theo-ry of mind and values, philosophy ofscience, and utopianism, but not for thefirst time. Mills' coverage of Skinneris found throughout the text, beginningwith the misspelling of his name-"Frederick" (p. 2; see also "Skinner,Burrhus Frederick" in the index, p.243); it is, instead, "Frederic" (Bjork,1993, p. 2).More substantively, Mills observes a

few pages later that radical behavior-ism holds "that mental events can befully explicated in a physicalist lan-guage" (p. 3). Actually, not quite.

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Mental events are explicated as func-tional relations among physical events;they are not reducible to physical ac-tion (Skinner, 1971). Mills also notesthat Skinner dismissed "the need fortheory" (p. 4). Not really. He dis-missed the need for certain kinds oftheories about certain kinds of con-structs at certain points in the evolutionof a science (Skinner, 1950). Other-wise, as Skinner (1947) wrote, "exper-imental psychology is properly and in-evitably committed to the constructionof a theory of behavior. A theory isessential to the scientific understandingof behavior" (p. 302).

Mills also argues that Skinner de-veloped a new kind of operationism-a "productive operationism" (pp. 14-15, 101). By this, he presumablymeans the production, in laboratoryand controlled applied settings, of be-havioral relations referred to in ordi-nary-language terms, for example, theproduction of "hunger" by food dep-rivation (Skinner, 1932) or of "cogni-tion" through contingencies (see Ep-stein, Lanza, & Skinner, 1981). Pro-ductive operationism is not, in itself,necessarily objectionable. What Millsobjects to is the assumption that theoperations used to produce these be-havioral relations are also the meansthrough which they develop in the nat-ural environment. Although synthesisand simulation are fundamental in sci-ence, including behavior analysis (seeEpstein, 1984; Hake, 1982), the induc-tive leap from the laboratory to the nat-ural environment is, of course, faulty,and Mills is right to note this, but itwas never inherent in Skinnerian logic.

Mills also aligns Skinner's opera-tionism with another form of opera-tionism, but a qualitatively differentone, that of Boring and Stevens, la-menting that it "captured psychology'slanguage and effectively robbed allneobehaviorists of the power ofspeech. And, of course, the operationistsays that those who cannot speak can-not think" (p. 179). Skinner (1945),however, explicitly broke with Boringand Stevens and adopted a descriptive

account of psychological terms inwhich meaning lies in the variablesthat control use (see Moore, 1975;Smith, 1986, pp. 259-297). On this ac-count, speaking of "hunger" and"cognition" is controlled by patternsof behavioral relations in context asopposed to underlying psychologicaland physiological constructs (see alsoDay, 1969, on Wittgenstein, 1953).

The behaviorist as philosopher. Inhis chapter on Skinner, Mills oftenpraises him but ultimately damns him.In his opening sentence, for instance,Mills writes, "Behavioral sciencereached its highest and most completedevelopment in Skinner's writings" (p.123), but adds-borrowing a line fromWinston Churchill-that Skinner "wasa riddle wrapped in a mystery insidean enigma" (p. 123). To be sure, Skin-ner's work sometimes needs consider-able unpacking (Morris, 1992), but thesituation is not that dire.

Following this, Mills orients thechapter around three themes in Skin-ner's intellectual life:The conflict between his incorporation into an-imal science and his desire to be a technologistof behavior; the contrast between his self-pre-sentation as a polemicist and his apparent wishto be taken seriously as a scholar, especially aphilosopher of mind; and the disjunction be-tween his love of art and culture and his appar-ent brusque, indeed crude, dismissal of human-istic values. (p. 123)

As for the first theme, Mills writes thatSkinner "showed psychologists what itmeant to be a creative scientist" (p.123) but then offers the non sequiturquoted earlier, "Skinner himselfseemed to have such a lowly estima-tion of his achievements as a scientist"(p. 123), and reinforces it:It is, in my view, impossible to give an instanceof a substantive Skinnerian finding [in the prin-ciples of operant conditioning] whose truthwould not be seriously contested. Skinner mighthave acted the part of a creative scientist per-fectly, but the lines he delivered have been con-signed to psychology's history. (p. 124; seeMills, 1988)

In discussing Verbal Behavior (Skin-ner, 1957), Mills adds that Skinner'stheory of operant principles was "con-

240 EDWARD K. MORRIS

ceptually and empirically bankrupt"(p. 134; e.g., circular; cf. Chomsky,1959; but see Andresen, 1990; Catania,1998, pp. 68-71; MacCorquodale,1970).On the second theme, Mills writes

that "as a theory of mind, Skinner'sversion of behaviorism has much torecommend it" (p. 124), but concludesthat Skinner was mainly a "polemi-cist" whose theory of mind consistedof little more than demonstrating that"seemingly cognitively controlled be-haviors could be patiently shaped inthe Skinner box [i.e., productive oper-ationism]" (p. 124).As for the third theme, Mills writes,

His early articles were beautifully argued andwere models of scholarship. But from the 1950sonward his writings consisted of a repetitive(and it must be said, frequently rebarbative)stream of unsubstantiated, unscholarly platitudes[e.g., against humanism and subjectivity, and forsocial control]. (p. 127)

This is not a new claim and is worthclarifying and analyzing (see Staddon,2002).

Mills' chapter also offers someSkinner biography, describes his un-acknowledged "theoretical impera-tives" (e.g., physicalism, mechanism,positivism, utilitarianism), and analyz-es Walden Two (Skinner, 1948) andVerbal Behavior (Skinner, 1957) insome detail (e.g., autoclitics). In theprocess, Mills offers useful challenges(e.g., to fallacies in the arguments fromanalogy), but sometimes misunder-stands Skinner's unique take on theisms, as well as some more basicpoints (e.g., "Skinner took the sen-tence as the fundamental linguisticunit," p. 131). He concludes by assert-ing "the ultimate vacuity of Skinner'stheory" (p. 150).

Behaviorists as Social Engineers

In chapter 6, Mills begins with thispremise: "To study the history of be-havior modification is to prove thatideology, [italics added] not science,controlled the movement" (p. 152). Hehad not previously made so bold a

claim about "ideology," but his earlierdiscussions about behaviorism's covertaims, agendas, and exigencies wereclearly in that vein. As for the ideolo-gies that controlled behavior modifi-cation, Mills lists four: progressivism,an instrumental theory of value, anti-humanism, and a robust populism.The chapter also covers (a) the ori-

gins of behavior modification in the at-tempts of "American psychologists,mental hygienists, and educators to ap-ply the principles of conditioning tosocial and psychological problems" (p.154) and (b) the application of "oper-ant principles ... in token economies"(p. 165). In Mills' analysis, the originsof behavior modification are "franklyideological" social and scientificprogressivism. Although he views thisas a problem, others see it as a prom-ise, albeit unmet because of counter-vailing ideologies, not science. As fortoken economies, Mills subjects themto a withering critique. In particular, heasserts that "all [italics added] Skin-nerians are guilty of the inductive fal-lacy" (p. 171) of assuming that be-cause psychiatric symptoms can beproduced by operant conditioning (e.g.,holding or carrying a broom; see Ayl-lon, Haughton, & Hughes, 1965;Haughton & Ayllon, 1964), then everysymptom is operant in origin. Al-though "all Skinnerians" is, itself, aninductive leap, the chapter does offersome palliatives to the excesses of en-thusiasm.

Mills concludes this way: "Regret-tably for behaviorists, the collapse oftoken economies and the restrictionsone must place on the use and inter-pretation of behaviorist therapies pro-vide empirical disproof [italics added]of their theories" (p. 178). But this toois a logical fallacy. The so-called col-lapse was due to several factors, one ofthem being the evolution of the fielditself. Had Mills reviewed more recentwork-especially that in the functionalassessment and analysis of chronic ab-errant behavior (see, e.g., Iwata, Dor-sey, Slifer, Bauman, & Richman,1982)-he might have tempered his

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conclusion. As for the restrictionsplaced on behaviorist therapies, thesewere determined by what Mills calls"ideology," for instance, by quite ap-propriate concerns over civil rights andthe right to the least restrictive treat-ment, not by empirical disproof.

Faithful unto the Last

In his final chapter, Mills describesthe hegemony of neobehaviorism inpsychology between the 1940s and the1970s and astutely notes that the cog-nitive psychology that followed wasbut another form of methodological be-haviorism and, thus, not revolutionary(see Leahey, 1992; Moore, 1995).Some of his analyses, however, areoverdrawn, for instance, "The threegreat themes of modernism [whichneobehaviorism embraced] were thesubstitution of form for substance, theuniversalization of cultural, aesthetic,and metaphysical themes, and the ex-altation of technology" (pp. 192-193).Others of his analyses address the"crippling limitations" of methodolog-ical behaviorism (pp. 10, 192) and the"crippling constraints" of radical be-haviorism (p. 128), for instance, thelimitations and constraints of opera-tionism, positivism, and utilitarianism.In neither case, however, are thesethemes and limitations wholly appli-cable to Skinner.

Mills ends the chapter this way:"But now the sun of modernism,which nourished behaviorism and itsseed, operationism, has sunk beneaththe horizon. Bereft of its [modern-ism's] support, the psychological tech-nologies of yesteryear are pale, limp,and etiolated" (p. 193). This is fair po-etry but not great science reporting.

A CAVEATBefore concluding, I comment on

one point, lest my review seem disin-genuous: I make no claim of being"disinterested"-disinterested in thesubject matter of Mills' book. Likemost behavior analysts, I am deeply in-terested in the possibilities and pros-

pects of a natural science of psychol-ogy, a psychology that is not mental-istic or reductionistic but one whoseexperimental methods give way natu-rally to application because behavior isboth what it studies and its subjectmatter.As for who is more "blocked" by

their interests-Mills or I-I leave it toothers to triangulate (a) Skinner'swork, (b) Mills' rendering of it, and (c)this review. One means of doing so isto compare and contrast this review ofControl with the others. Here, exceptfor Danziger (1999), we find that theyare mixed, especially about Mills'treatment of Skinner.

Krasner (1999), for instance, writesthat Mills' "chapter on Fred Skinner,my favorite psychologist, aroused astrong feeling of disagreement with[his] interpretation of Skinner's publi-cations" (p. 496). Winston (2001b)notes that Mills did not understandSkinnerian "causality" as Machianfunctional relations (Mach, 1883/1960;see Chiesa, 1992; Marr, 1985; Winston,2001a), leading to his "harsh" judg-ment about Skinnerian theory, a judg-ment Casas (2000) applied to Mills'treatment of behaviorism in general(see also Brady & Heaton, 2000).Boakes (1999) and Casas fault Millsfor having done no archival researchon Skinner, as he had for the other be-haviorists, arguing that this likely ac-counted for some misattributions. Onthis point, Casas comments that Mills'assertion that behaviorists "despise"humanism fails to characterize the con-structive relations between Skinner andhumanism (cf. his Humanist of theYear award; Skinner, 1972) and thewarm personal relation between Skin-ner and Rogers (see Skinner, 1983). Ingeneral, then, the reviews are agreedabout Skinner (although this does notnecessarily make them correct).

CONCLUSION

Although informed and scholarly inmany respects and the product of con-siderable archival research, Mills' ex-

242 EDWARD K. MORRIS

egesis seems, in part, a social construc-tion-underdetermined at least bySkinner's behaviorism. Or, conversely,his analysis is overdetermined by hisown ideology, and thus based less ondisinterested and objective analysisthan is implied. To put a social con-structionist take on this, we might saythat Mills "constructed the subject"(cf. Danziger, 1990). Still, he remindsus that behaviorism has many origins,some of them still with us, and thatthey are worth examining if we wantto understand the role and nature of be-haviorism in American psychology(see, e.g., Bakan, 1966; O'Donnell,1985).

Control not only falters as disinter-ested, objectivist history, but its indict-ment of the very idea of a naturalizedpsychology is not constructive. Wheremethodological behaviorism fails asthis psychology-which Mills adeptlyargues-and where social construc-tionism cannot countenance such a sci-ence, then psychology is left with avoid. To fill it, psychology may needto encompass both a natural scienceand natural history of behavior, that is,a natural science of basic behavioralprocesses (e.g., reinforcement, stimu-lus control, establishing operations)and a natural history of behavioralproducts (e.g., knowing how, remem-bering, motivation), the former basedin evolutionary biology and the latterin individual development. One ofMills' points is that our understandingof the former (e.g., the modernist viewthat reinforcement is a basic behavioralprocess) cannot yield a full account ofthe latter (e.g., the postmodernist viewthat reinforcers are local and idiosyn-cratic), and he is right. But, he discardsnatural science, retaining only naturalhistory. A natural science of psychol-ogy, however, is likely to requireboth-both a natural science and a nat-ural history of behavior-not just oneor the other (Guerin, 1992; Hake,1982; see Morris, in press). We needall the naturalism we can get, not less.

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