Basically, the next step involves you and me and other readers supporting, perhaps even agitating for (Dare I say “campaigning for”?) establishing more university behaviorology programs and departments. We all require these to meet growing needs. (See the wanted poster at the end of this column, and show it to those people who are in positions to help.)
Behavior passivity refers to the nature of behavior, all behavior, including all human behavior, of any type or level of complexity. Like all real events in nature, on this planet, in this universe, behavior is natural, that is, it comprises natural events. It is an inevitable reaction.
We have now come just about full circle. People’s increased understanding of behaviorology makes them move to apply it to the widest range of humanity’s individual and group concerns, using the behaviorological technologies that we can derive from the principles and concepts of this natural science of behavior. How can we help this happen?
For problems at the individual level, solutions reinforce the behaviors that produced them. Then the behaviors that solve problems serve as models for the behaviors of others that share the problems. That is, the occurrences of reinforcing solutions for some individuals function as evocative stimuli for the imitative solution behaviors of other individuals. When contingencies on the group make these solution practices become widespread across a group, they begin to affect the group as a group, often becoming socially institutionalized (e.g., formal education of individual group members).
Beyond its immediate domain, behaviorology coordinates with other natural–science disciplines and even overlaps with some of these. Understanding these overlaps helps build our interconnected perspective.
The behaviorology discipline also makes contributions to the capabilities of other natural scientists. As mentioned previously, after becoming basically familiar with behaviorology, scientists in many disciplines are more able to remain naturalistic in dealing with subject matters at the edge of, and beyond, their particular specializations. Perhaps you are such a scientist.
Several commentators (such as Lee McIntyre in his MIT–published 2006 book, Dark Ages—The Case for a Science of Human Behavior) have put forth calls for the development of a natural science of human behavior (like behaviorology). The difference between natural science and social science is relevant to understanding the place of those calls.
In discussing the boundaryless biological continuum for life forms that involves non–life and life, the last column pointed to the relevance of the Law of Cumulative Complexity. This column digresses to consider this law more closely.
Behaviorologists separated their natural–science discipline from psychology after psychologists in general repeatedly refused numerous attempts over 50 years to nudge the non–natural discipline of psychology toward natural–science.
We approach the story of behavior and its causes as natural scientists. Traditional natural sciences cover the basic subject matters of energy, matter, and life forms as well as their related extensions. These thus include physics, chemistry, and biology, along with astronomy, geology, physiology, and so on.
