Abstract

An enthusiastic and not completely implausible attempt to interpret Aristotle as a "thoroughgoing behaviorist. He is, of course, a functional and contextual behaviorist, not a mechanistic behaviorist. For him, life is the power of living and knowing, the power of selective response to the world." Randall sees in Aristotle a disturbing and philosophically inexplicable tendency to "platonize" in the Organon, the De Caelo, Bk. X of the Ethics, and so on. The physical treatises, the Politics and Ethics, the Poetics and Rhetoric, however, expose the "Aristotelian" side of Aristotle, since they deal with the powers of selective response and the variety of natural processes, as well as offering a method for achieving practical aims.--J. B.