悠长假期

去渡口买书聊天，无意中发现这种特大号的金色回形针。重新组合后看着有点像老马的作品了。呵呵，得意中。

正在看《奖励的惩罚》（Punished by rewards), 搜索关于斯金纳的文章。分析他自己，他的恬淡文字和诚恳态度很是动人。

It is often said that behaviorists do not view themselves as they view their subjects -- for example, that they regard what they say as true in some sense which does not apply to the statements of the people they study. On the contrary, I believe that my behavior in writing Verbal Bebavior, for example, was precisely the sort of behavior the book discusses. Whether from narcissism or scientific curiosity, I have been as much interested in myself as in rats and pigeons. I have applied the same formulations, I have looked for the same kinds of causal relations, and I have manipulated behavior in the same way and sometimes with comparable success. I would not publish personal facts of this sort if I did not believe that they throw some light on my life as a scientist.

I was taught to fear God, the police, and what people will think. As a result I usually do what I have to do with no great struggle. I try not to let any day "slip useless away." I have studied when I did not feel like studying, taught when I did not want to teach. I have taken care of animals and run experiments as the animals dictated. (Some of my first cumulative records are stamped December 25th and January lst.) I have met deadlines for papers and reports. In both my writing and my research I have fought hard against deceiving myself. I avoid metaphors which are effective at the cost of obscuring issues. I avoid rhetorical devices which give unwarranted plausibility to an argument (and I sometimes reassure myself by making lists of the devices so used by others). I avoid the unwarranted prestige conferred by mathematics, even, I am afraid, when mathematics would be helpful. I do not spin impressive physiological theories from my data, as I could easily do. I never convert an exploratory experiment into an experimentum crucis by inventing a hypothesis after the fact. I write and rewrite a paper until, so far as possible, it says exactly what I have to say. (A constant search for causes seems to be another product of that early environment. When my wife or one of my daughters tells me that she has a headache, I am likely to say "Perhaps you have not been eating wisely" or "You may have been out in the sun too much." It is an almost intolerable trait in a husband, father, or friend, but it is an invaluable scientific practice.)

I must admit that all these characteristics have been helpful. Max Weber could be right about the Protestant Ethic. But its effect is only cautionary or restrictive. Much more important in explaining my scientific behavior are certain positive reinforcements which support Feuer’s (23) answer to Weber in which he shows that almost all noted scientists follow a "hedonistic ethic." I have been powerfully reinforced by many things: food, sex, music, art, and literature -- and my scientific results. I have built apparatuses as I have painted pictures or modeled figures in clay. I have conducted experiments as I have played the piano. I have written scientific papers and books as I have written stories and poems. I have never designed and conducted an experiment because I felt I ought to do so, or to meet a deadline, or to pass a course, or to "publish rather than perish." I dislike experimental designs which call for the compulsive collection of data and, particularly, data which will not be reinforcing until they have been exhaustively analyzed. I freely

change my plans when richer reinforcements beckon. My thesis was written before I knew it was a thesis. Walden Two was not planned at all. I may practice self-management for Protestant reasons, but I do so in such a way as to maximize non-Protestant reinforcements. I emphasize positive contingencies. For example, I induce myself to write by making production as conspicuous as possible (actually in a cumulative record). In short, I arrange an environment in which what would otherwise be hard work is actually effortless.

I could not have predicted that among the reinforcers which explain my scientific behavior the opinions of others would not rank high, but that seems to be the case. Exceptions are easily traced to my history. I take a silly pride in the fact that "Freedom and the Control of Men" (1955-56) appears as an example of good contemporary prose in textbooks written for college freshmen; Miss Graves would have been pleased. But in general my effects on other people have been far less important than my effects on rats and pigeons -- or on people as experimental subjects. That is why I was able to work for almost 20 years with practically no professional recognition. People supported me, but not my line of work; only my rats and pigeons supported that. I was never in any doubt as to its importance, however, and when it began to attract attention, I was wary of the effect rather than pleased.

Many notes in my files comment on the fact that I have been depressed or frightened by so-called honors. I forego honors which would take time away from my work or unduly reinforce specific aspects of it.

That I have never been interested in critical reactions, either positive or negative, is probably part of the same pattern. I have never actually read more than a dozen pages of Chomsky’s famous review of Verbal Behavior. (A quotation from it which I have used I got from I. A. Richards. When Rochelle Johnson sent me a reprint of her reply to Scrivin’s criticism of my position, it only reminded me that I had never read Scrivin. Clark Hull used to say that I did not make hypotheses because I was afraid of being wrong. Verbal statements are, indeed, right or wrong, and in some sense I want my statements to be right. But I am much more interested in measures for the control of a subject matter. Some relevant measures are verbal, but even so they are not so much right or wrong as effective or ineffective, and arguments are of no avail. For the same reason I am not interested in psychological theories, in rational equations, in factor analyses, in mathematical models, in hypothetico-deductive systems, or in other verbal systems which must be proved right.

Much of this attitude is Baconian. Whether my early and quite accidental contact with Bacon is responsible or not, I have followed his principles closely. I reject verbal authority. I have "studied nature not books," asking questions of the organism rather than of those who have studied the organism. I think it can be said, as it was said of Bacon, that I get my books out of life, not out of other books. I have followed Bacon in organizing my data. I do not collect facts in random "botanizing," for there are principles which dictate what Poincaré called le choix des faits, and they are not, as Poincaré argued, hypotheses. I classify, not for the sake of classification but to reveal properties.

I also follow Bacon in distinguishing between observation and experimentation. Bacon no doubt underestimated the importance of extending the range of human sense organs with instruments, but he did so in emphasizing that knowledge is more than sensory contact. I would put it this way: Observation overemphasizes stimuli; experimentation includes the rest of the contingencies which generate effective repertoires. I have also satisfied myself that Bacon’s four Idols can be translated into an acceptable behavioral analysis of faulty thinking.

My position as a behaviorist came from other sources. Perhaps, like Jeremy Bentham and his theory of fictions, I have tried to resolve my early fear of theological ghosts. Perhaps I have answered my mother’s question, "What will people think

" by proving that they do not think at all (but the question might as well have been "What will people say

"). I used to toy with the notion that a behavioristic epistemology was a form of intellectual suicide, but there is no suicide because there is no corpse. What perishes is the homunculus -- the spontaneous, creative inner man to whom, ironically, we once attributed the very scientific activities which led to his demise.

To me behaviorism is a special case of philosophy of science which first took shape in the writings of Ernst Mach, Henri Poincaré, and Percy Bridgman. Bridgman himself could never make the extension to behavior. He is one man I did argue with. When he published The Way Things Are, (24) he sent me a copy with a note: "Here it is. Now do your damnedest!" I was busy with other things and did nothing. But I could never have convinced him, for it is not a matter of conviction. Behaviorism is a formulation which makes possible an effective experimental approach to human behavior. It is a working hypothesis about the nature of a subject matter. It may need to be clarified, but it does not need to be argued. I have no doubt of the eventual triumph of the position -- not that it will eventually be proved right, but that it will provide the most direct route to a successful science of Man.

I have acknowledged my indebtedness to Bertrand Russell, Watson, and Pavlov. I never met or even saw Watson, but his influence was, of course, important. Thorndike (not a behaviorist but still an important figure in a science of behavior) I met briefly. He knew of my interest in verbal behavior and sent me his Studies in the Psychology of Language. (25) When I wrote to thank him, I told him about my analysis of alliteration and added, "Hilgard’s review of my book [The Behavior of Organisms] in the Bulletin has reminded me of how much of your work in the same vein I failed to acknowledge .... I seem to have identified your point of view with the modem psychological view taken as a whole. It has always been obvious that I was merely carrying on your puzzle box experiments but it never occurred to me to remind my readers of the fact." Thorndike replied, "I am better satisfied to have been of service to workers like yourself than if I had founded a ’school.’ "

Walter Hunter I knew well. He gave me professional advice. I recall his wry smile as he told me, "It only takes one little idea to be a success in American psychology." (He measured the idea with thumb and forefinger.) Clark Hull visited my laboratory in Cambridge and made suggestions, which I never followed. I talked to his seminar at Yale and was invited to the unveiling of his portrait shortly before he died. I have a bound volume of my papers which was once on his shelves under the title Experimental studies in Learning.

Tolman taught summer school at Harvard in 1931, and we had many long discussions. I had been analyzing the concept of hunger as a drive. In my thesis I had called it a "third" variable -- that is, a variable in addition to stimulus and response occupying the intervening position of Sherrington’s synaptic states. I have always felt that Tolman’s later formulation was very similar. When The Behavior of Organisms appeared, he wrote:

I think the two words operant and respondent are swell.... I do think, as I have said so many times before, that what you ought to do next is to put in two levers and see what relationships the functions obtained from such a discrimination set up will bear to your purified functions where you have only one lever. No doubt you were right that the "behavior-ratio" is a clumsy thing for getting the fundamental laws, but it is a thing that has finally to be predicted and someone must show the relation between it and your fundamental analysis. I congratulate you on coming through Harvard so beautifully unscathed!...

P.S. And, of course, I was pleased as Hell to be mentioned in the Preface.

Another behaviorist whose friendship I have valued is J.R. Kantor. In many discussions with him at Indiana I profited from his extraordinary scholarship. He convinced me that I had not wholly exorcised all the "spooks" in my thinking.

THE CONTROL OF BEHAVIOR

I learned another Baconian principle very slowly: "Nature to be commanded must be obeyed." Frazier in Walden Two speaks for me here:

I remember the rage I used to feel when a prediction went awry. I could have shouted at the subjects of my experiments, "Behave, damn you! Behave as you ought!" Eventually I realized that the subjects were always right. They always behaved as they should have behaved. It was I who was wrong. I had made a bad prediction.

But that coin has another face: once obeyed, nature can be commanded. The point of Solomon’s House in the New Atlantis, as of The Royal Society founded on Bacon’s model, was that knowledge should be useful. A hundred years later -- in an epoch in which I feel especially at home -- Diderot developed the theme in his Encyclopedie. A hundred years after that, the notion of progress took on new significance in the theory of evolution. Walden Two is my New Atlantis; I suppose it could also be said that in applying an experimental analysis to education I returned to a motto which Bacon as a child saw in his father’s house: Moniti Meliora (instruction brings progress). I believe in progress, and I have always been alert to practical significances in my research.

I began to talk explicitly about the control of human behavior after I had written Walden Two. Control was definitely in the air during my brief stay at Indiana. In Science and Human Behavior and the course for which it was written, I elaborated on the theme. In the summer of 1955, on the island of Monhegan, Maine, where we had a cottage, I wrote "Freedom and the Control of Men" for a special issue of the American Scholar In it I took a much stronger stand on freedom and determinism. My position has been rather bitterly attacked, especially by people in the humanities, who feel that it is in conflict with Western democratic ideas and that it plays down the role of the individual. I have been called Machiavellian, a Communist, a Fascist, and many other names. The fact is, I accept the ends of a democratic philosophy, but I disagree with the means which are at the moment most commonly employed. I see no virtue in accident or in the chaos from which somehow we have reached our present position. I believe that we must now plan our own future and that we must take every advantage of a science of behavior in solving the problems which will necessarily arise. The great danger is not that science will be misused by despots for selfish purposes but that so-called democratic principles will prevent people of goodwill from using it in their advance toward humane goals. I continue to be an optimist, but there are moments of sadness. I find the following in my notebook, dated August 5, 1963.

End of an Era

Last night Deborah and I went to the Gardner Cox’s for some music in their garden. A group of young people, mostly current or former Harvard and Radcliffe students, sang a Mass by William Byrd. It was a cappella and, for most of the singers, sight reading. Very well done. The night was pleasant. Ragged clouds moved across the sky, one of them dropping briefly a fine mist. The garden has a circular lawn surrounded by shrubs and a few old trees. Half a dozen lights burned among green branches. Several kittens played on the grass. We sat in small groups, in folding chairs. Except for a few jet planes the night was quiet and the music delightful. Kyrie eleison... I thought of Walden Two and the B-minor Mass scene. And of the fact that this kind of harmless, beautiful, sensitive pleasure was probably nearing the end of its run. This was Watermusic, floating down the Thames and out to sea. And why

Phyillis Cox may have answered the question. As I said good night, she motioned toward the young man who had conducted the music and said, "You know, he thinks you are a terrible person. Teaching machines ... a fascist....."

Possibly our only hope of maintaining any given way of life now lies with science, particularly a science of human behavior and the technology to be derived from it. We need not worry about the scientific way of life; it will take care of itself. It would be tragic, however, if other ways of life, not concerned with the practice of science as such, were to forego the same kind of support through a misunderstanding of the role of science in human affairs.

The garden we sat in that evening once belonged to Asa Gray. In high school I studied Botany from a text by Gray, called, as I remember it, How Plants Grow. One passage impressed me so much that I made a copy which I have kept among my notes for nearly 50 years. It is the story of a radish. I would reject its purposivism today but not its poetry, for it suggests to me a reasonable place for the individual in a natural scheme of things.

So the biennial root becomes large and heavy, being a storehouse of nourishing matter, which man and animals are glad to use for food. In it, in the form of starch, sugar, mucilage, and in other nourishing and savory products, the plant (expending nothing in flowers or in show) has laid up the avails of its whole summer’s work. For what purpose

This plainly appears when the next season’s growth begins. Then, fed by, this great stock of nourishment, a stem shoots forth rapidly and strongly, divides into branches, bears flowers abundantly., and ripens seeds, almost wholly, at the expense of the nourishment accumulated in the root, which is now light, empty, and dead; and so is the whole plant by the time the seeds are ripe.

行乐及时，上天给你什么，就享受什么。千万不要去听难堪的话，一定不去见难看的人。或者是做难做的事情，爱上不应爱的人。——《电光幻影》

　　能够说出的委屈，便不算委屈；能够抢走的爱人，便不算爱人。——《开到荼蘼》 　　


　　我要很多很多的爱。如果没有爱，那么就很多很多的钱，如果两件都没有，有健康也是好的。——《喜宝》



　　如此情深，却难以启齿。原来你若真爱一个人，内心酸涩，反而会说不出话来，甜言蜜语，多数说给不相干的人听。——《她的二三事》

　　两个人的适配是一种内心感觉，而不是一种视觉，千万不要因满足视觉而忽视感觉。——《花常好月常圆人长久》
　　
　　也许一个人在真正无可奈何的时候，除了微笑，也只好微笑了。——《家明与玫瑰》
　　
　　能够哭就好，哭是开始痊愈的象征。——《绝对是个梦》

　　做人要含蓄点，得过且过，不必斤斤计较，水清无鱼，人清无徒，谁又不跟谁一辈子，一些事放在心中算了。——《蔷薇泡沫》



　　一个人走不开，不过因为他不想走开；一个人失约，乃因他不想赴约，一切借口均属废话，都是用以掩饰不愿牺牲。——《一千零一妙方》

　　人的天性便是这般凉薄，只要拿更好的来换，一定舍得。——《要多美丽就多美丽》

　　人类对未知有天生恐惧，所以新不如旧，这种想法情有可原。——《忽而今夏》

　　女人是世上最奇怪的生物之一，年轻的时候，清纯柔和美丽如春日滟滟之湖水，然后就开始变，渐渐老练、沧桑、憔悴、狡猾、固执、霸道，相由心生，再标致的少女到了中年，也多数成为另外一个人。——《忽而今夏》

　　何必向不值得的人证明什么，生活得更好，乃是为你自己。——《忽而今夏》

　　不过女人到底是女人，日子久了就任由感情泛滥萌芽，至今日造成伤心的局面。女人都痴心妄想，总会坐大，无论开头是一夜之欢，或是同居，或是逢场作兴，到最后老是希望进一步成为白头偕老，很少有真正潇洒的女人，她们总是企图从男人身上刮下一些什么。——《胭脂》

　　爱一个人决不潇洒，为自己留了后步的，也就不是爱——《星之碎片》

　　无论怎么样，一个人借故堕落总是不值得原谅的，越是没有人爱，越要爱自己。——《星之碎片》

　　做一个女人要做得像一副画，不要做一件衣裳，被男人试完了又试，却没人买，试残了旧了，五折抛售还有困难。——《喜宝》

　　我喜欢向没有知识但是聪明的人学习，他们那一套不讲理、原始，令人难堪，但往往行得通。受过教育的女人事事讲风度，连唯一的武器都失掉，任由社会宰割。——《玉梨魂》

　　过了许多许多年，才晓得自己原来那么早就有智慧，可是，做人是讲运气的，在我感情生活中，并没有遇见对我好与能保护我的丈夫，许多女人都没有遇到。——《圆舞》

　　通常吸引男人的是这种冷漠，但是男人终于娶的是仰慕他的女人，没才干的女人靠嫁人过活，有本事的女人靠自己过活——《城市故事》

　　人为感情烦恼永远是不值得原谅的，感情是奢侈品，有些人一辈子也没有恋爱过。恋爱与瓶花一样，不能保持永久生命。——《城市故事》

　　社会只爱健康的聪明的，肯拼命的人，谁耐心跟谁婆婆妈妈，生活中一切都变成公事，互相利用，至于世态炎凉，人情淡薄，统统是正常的。——《小学同学》

　　人是那样复杂的一种动物，想了解对方根本是不可能的一件事，没有了解，又不能相处，倒不如独身。——《美娇袅》

　　生活中无论有什么闪失，统统是自己的错，与人无尤，从错处学习改过，精益求精，直至不犯同一错误，从不把过失推诿到他人肩膀上去，免得失去学乖的机会。——《阿修罗》

　　做不到是你自己的事，午夜梦回，你爱怎么回味就怎么回味，但人前人后，我要你装出什么都没有发生过的样子。你可以的，我们都可以，人都是这般活下来的。——《叹息桥》

　　受束缚已久，女子一直希望白头偕老，儿孙满堂，从未想过，这不是一场功德，而是一个人的际遇，有就有，没有就没有，绝非忍耐或是修炼可以达成正果。——《小人儿》

　　一生不知要捱多少批斗：力争上游是不自量力，精打细算变为太工心计，保护自身即是自私自利，简直做什么错什么，被欺压得退往墙角，不外是因为无人撑腰。——《黑羊》

　　现今还有谁会照顾谁一辈子，那是多沉重的一个包袱。所以非自立不可。——《不易居》

　　你要改是因为你自己愿意改，不要为任何人，怕只怕那人会令你失望，你又得打回原形。——《不易居》

　　骗一个人，要费好大的劲，不在乎她又如何肯骗她，所以将来有人苦苦蒙骗你，千万不要拆穿他。——《忽尔今夏》

　　一个成熟的人往往发觉可以责怪的人越来越少，人人都有他的难处。——《我们不是天使》
　　
　　最佳的报复不是仇恨，而是打心底发出的冷淡，干嘛花力气去恨一个不相干的人——《我的前半生》

　　当一个男人不再爱一个女人，她哭闹是错，静默也是错，活着呼吸是错，死了还是错。——《愛情之死》

忙乱中，觉得自己是个坐堂医生，病人一个一个地进来，有的是让你解决问题，有的只是来倾诉，有的来开药方，有的基本就是无病呻吟，还有的认为自己也是医生，要给你点颜色看看，别混乱地乱说乱动。

我的部分职责是运用自己的专业知识解决病患的痛苦。医生也有痛苦的时候，那就是要为自己的错误判断和药方负责，尽可能地挽救，死马当成活马医，恰当的时候自嘲自己就是一蒙古大夫。间或还真会对自己的行医能力质疑。

医生也有生病的时候，忙着救人的同时，自救为先。药方如下：

忙碌意味着你很能办事，这是生活中最大的乐事之一。有句话非常正确，“如果你想完成某件事，就把它交给一个忙碌的人吧”。

■忙得发疯会让你觉得自己非常重要，而这种感觉总是很棒。

■忙得发疯令人兴奋。四处奔忙，可适当加快心跳次数。而如果像哈洛韦尔医生所警告的那样，这是一种药物，那又怎么样呢？它可没有高纯度可卡因那样的副作用。

■忙碌会激发正确的思维方式。我几乎所有的灵感（如果说还称得上灵感的话），都是在干其它事情——洗澡、与别人聊天、骑脚踏车、将衣服放进滚筒甩干机里——时产生的。

■非常忙碌有助于避免错误的想法。它会挤掉一些无聊想法，例如：我的生活过得怎么样，我做人的意义是什么，以及我快要死掉了。这是忙碌的最大优点。正是因为这一点，当我想到今天要完成的所有事情时，我就会提醒自己：它们是我心灵的保护伞。

http://podcast.hjbbs.com/podcast/20070209/20070209112932944_714.mp3

有人说Keren Ann的东西适合作为全世界任何一家咖啡馆的背景音乐，显然这也很合理，但窃以为如此华美却又极简矜持的作品更适合于私人聆听。它让生活可以变得轻巧和美丽，“我尽量不记起，胜过再去忘记”；也可以暂别执迷和浮躁，面对潮起潮落人来人往却“Not Going Any Where”。生活不在此处的庸俗和别处的虚妄，那么生活在内心，感觉就像当年听见Sparklehorse唱着“我想作一匹马，充满永不蔓延的火焰。”

It is not a pipe. But it is a Martini. And it is a glass that

looks like a pipe.

去黑暗餐厅体验，结果是没有上楼，在一个正常环境里体验了想象中的黑暗，单恋，疯癫，包括鬼故事。小插曲-收到一位美女送的珍珠戒指，蹭到一些据说是很好喝的红葡萄酒喝，其实个中滋味有点搞不清楚，入口感觉还算顺滑。聊天中，不断听到何艳，CK，于是的名字。好奇，来，不来，最终何艳和CK还是到了黑暗餐厅。聊得开心-设计，人，事，发布会，集市。兴致起来，我们关了店门慢慢步行到进贤路上的一间陈旧民居，门口有洗拖把的水池和火烧过的龙头。推开超尺度的高木门，狭长的空间里悬挂着何艳这一季以及未发表的服装。相信每个走进去的人都有自己的感受。

何艳官方网站：www.heyan.org
“黑”餐厅 www.dianping.com/shop/2061490

最近，我读到了一段19世纪的英国散文，很有感触。它摘自汤玛斯·卡莱尔(Thomas Carlyle，1795一1881）的《过去与现在》(Past and Present，1843)。