ABSTRACT
Skinner’s position with respect to biology has been the source of major misunderstandings, in spite of perfectly clear statements on his part. The most widespread misinterpretations can be summarised as follows:
Skinner has neglected, or, worse, denied, that important things take place inside the organism, and especially in the brain.
His extreme environmentalism has blinded him to the role of heredity in determining behaviour, and led him to leave out of his theory the contributions of modern genetics and psychogenetics to our understanding of the living organisms; viewed from a biological point of view, therefore, his theory is obsolete.
His claim that laws of learning are universals has led him to overlook species-specific characteristics, which cannot escape a biologically minded observer aware of interspecies differences, no less visible at the behavioural than at the morphological level.
His late resorting to the evolutionary model to explain acquired behaviour is at best superficial metaphorising, and is not enough to put him in the dignified company of modern biologists.
