The Black Scorpion Society: What's in a Name?

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B.F. Skinner, in his 1957 book, Verbal Behavior, tells of a challenge to behavior analysis to address language made by professor at Harvard during a dinner:  "In 1934, while dining at the Harvard Society of Fellows, I found myself seated next to Professor Alfred North Whitehead. We dropped into a discussion of behaviorism, which was then still very much an “ism,” and of which I was a zealous devotee. Here was an opportunity which I could not overlook to strike a blow for the cause, and I began to set forth the principal arguments of behaviorism with enthusiasm. Professor Whitehead was equally in earnest. … He agreed that science might be successful in accounting for human behavior provided one made an exception of verbal behavior. Here, he insisted, something else must be at work. He brought the discussion to a close with a friendly challenge: “Let me see you,” he said, “account for my behavior as I sit here saying ‘No black scorpion is falling upon this table.’ ” (pp. 456–457).  Check out Verbal Behavior to see how Skinner took up the challenge and addresses Whitehead's conundrum.

 

In this vein, Dr. Phil N. Hineline, along with past students began the Black Scorpion Society. Dr. Hineline is a Professor Emeritus at Temple University, past editor of the Journal of Experimental Analysis of Behavior, and past President of ABAI.

 

According to Dr. Phil N. Hineline, The Philadelphia Black Scorpion Society began

with Willard Day and his students ( Willard founded the journal, BEHAVIORISM, which is now Behavior and Philosophy, published by the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies).  One of those students was Mike Dougher (Current president of ABAI), who subsequently held Black Scorpion meetings at the University of New Mexico;  one of Mike’s undergraduates was Jeff Mason, who enrolled in the Ph.D. program at Temple, with me as his advisor.

 

Jeff’s beginning in our program was pretty rocky, for the faculty was on strike for the first several weeks of his first semester, and thus our “official” communication was constrained.  Mitigating this was the arrangement of Black Scorpion meetings – Jeff, Bill Ahearn, Paul Neuman and I constituted the core group in the early 90's, which varied from we four (three, when Jeff left after a year) to a dozen or so soon after.

 

I always followed the principle that the group’s existence should be maintained by the direct consequences of participating, and I have always thought it should be a student initiative -- although it also depends upon a person to organize it, and that could be a previous student still in the neighborhood, but preferably not a professor.  (Partly because students also are better acquainted with likely venues, although Mike Dougher is a connoisseur of drinking establishments).

 

Thus, Black Scorpion meetings at Temple have occurred on an irregular schedule, which is consistent with its form-free agenda -- a reading for discussion is identified, but actually reading it is not a requirement for attending – the reinforcer should be that of being able to discuss the article intelligently.

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PNH