The “organism” in B. F. Skinner’s writings: a contextual and quantitative analysis of its meaning

Abstract

Despite appearing in the title of Skinner’s e behavior of organisms, the term “organism” does not have an explicit de nition in his work, making an analysis of the term in his writings necessary to shed light on contextual regularities of its occurrence. Using the Conceptual Interpretation of Texts Procedure (PICT), we analyzed the context of occurrence of the term in a sample of 8 books covering 60 years of Skinner’s writings. We noted the term appears in at least 15 di erent contexts, being a point of contact for di erent discussions in behavior analysis. We highlight some ambiguities regarding the demarcation criteria between organism-environment, the role of the phylogenetic history in the organism’s development, and the metaphorical extension regarding the use of the term to discuss the group or social dimension.