Walden Two

Introduction

Walden Two is a utopian novel written by behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner, first published in 1948. At that time, it was considered as science fiction since science-based methods for altering people's behavior did not exist then.[1][2] Such methods are now known as applied behavior analysis.

The book is controversial because its characters speak of a rejection of free will,[3] including a rejection of the proposition that human behavior is controlled by a non-corporeal entity, such as a spirit or a soul.[4] It embraces the proposition that the behavior of organisms, including humans, is determined by environmental variables,[5] and that systematically altering environmental variables can generate a sociocultural system that very closely approximates utopia.[6]


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