ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews historical progress towards a scientific account of human behavior and a possible technology for changing human behavior. In the seventeenth century AD, René Descartes provided a new dualistic framework which facilitated scientific accounts of animal behavior and even human physiology, but still impeded a scientific account of human behavior. The chapter examines an experiment by one of Pavlov's students, as an example of the Pavlovian method and results. Ivan Pavlov realized that he was investigating how interaction with the environment modifies subsequent behavior in individual organisms, and he suggested that his conditioning paradigm could account for much learning and adaptation in animal behavior. He discovered that controlled environmental conditions were essential for successful behavioral experimentation. A successful functional analysis reveals the functions that a class of behavior currently has for an individual, and thus provides a sound basis for an intervention intended to change the frequency of that class of behavior.
