The Scientific Monthly. LXXIX, 1954: Notes on the Discussion between Frenkel-Brunswik and Skinner. Michael Scriven.

Scriven, also a philosopher of science, confines himself to 'the fundamental issue' between Frenkel-Brunswik and Skinner: 'Does the theoretical aspect of psychoanalytic discussion contribute anything useful over and above the admittedly important observed correlations (for example, between specified types of trauma and neuroses)? Dr. Skinner disagrees in a fundamental way with the method involved rather than with the actual results of the method. He does not believe that the process of hypothesizing in a new theoretical language is ever fruitful.' Scriven disagrees with this position, first 'on historical grounds. I believe that the suggestive power of conceptual terms is indispensable to scientific activity; and I do not think that this can be dismissed as a property of an immature science—it seems to me to be what distinguishes a science from a summary.'

The second point of disagreement is a logical one. 'I do not think that there is a fundamental difference between the observation terms and theoretical terms of science, even at a given moment. There are important differences, indeed, between terms such as "length" or "response frequency", on the one hand, and others such as "entropy" or "intelligence". But it is a mistake to think that these differences correspond to the difference between theory-neutral and theory-contaminated terms. For observation terms are also embedded in a theory, albeit a very well-established one, and every now and again we are awakened by the discovery that this theory is not inviolable and that we have to change our concept of, let us say, length in a fundamental way, perhaps by introducing a reference to the velocity of the measured object. Conversely, although we may observe entropy changes or intelligence levels in a different way from length and response frequency—a way that makes people want to say that we really infer them from other observations—this is only half the truth, for we do observe that a man is intelligent or