I was generally aware of Epstein’s background as a behaviorist and his recent assumption of the helm at the Psychology Today magazine when I chose this book to review. However, I was taken aback by the degree to which he pays homage to B.F. Skinner, his friend and mentor at Harvard. This collection borders on hagiography. The subtitle should probably have been "Selected Essays in Honor of B.F. Skinner." Whether he is discussing the definition of psychology or predictability or pigeon experiments, Skinner is the basis for the discussion.

Some of the essays are original to the book and some have been previously published over the last thirty years so that the reader can see changes in Epstein’s thoughts first as a graduate student and later as a more mature scholar. The section on the "Columban" experiments–early studies of pigeons that have become classics–is too long and detailed for any but strictly behaviorists or, rather, "praxicists."

Epstein begins these discussions with some thoughts on what to call his profession and those who profess it. Part of the problem resided in the historical division of academic studies that put psychology under the philosophy rubric–William James’ interests is a perfect American example. But, Epstein doesn’t like thinking of the profession as the study of the mind or behaviorism–or any other kinds of "ism," for that matter. He further claims that neither cognitivists nor developmentalists have found useful answers in this field "because they have not asked the right questions." He thinks the experimental study of behavior and "related disciplines" should be called "praxics" for various reasons. It may be difficult to pronounce but is better than, e.g., tachistoscope and it’s only three letters away from physics so is readily recognizable as a science. He sees praxists as a school of philosophy separate from psychology because the appropriate subject of psychology is "mind, not behavior."

Epstein’s best thinking, however, is on the problem of creativity or, as he phrases it, "the stimulation of multiple repertoires" and "deviance that is valuable to other people," rather than merely novel behavior. "Resurgence" is one of several phenomena that make multiple repertoires available, and hence it may lead to the spontaneous interconnection of repertoires, an important source of novel behavior. He notes that Freud’s concept of regression is a special type of resurgence. Epstein has also formulated a theory called Generativity Theory that predicts "ongoing behavior in new situations, continuously in time" to aid in understanding novel behavior. Basically, even though we repeat behaviors that we have learned over and over, each time is a little different so that this repetition can "generate" behavior that is actually novel.

Subjects range from world peace to child punishment to the pecker-envy hypothesis, the latter explaining "why the cognitivists hate the behaviorists." Overall, it’s an interesting collection for those who are interested in the experimental study of behavior and the role Skinner has played in its development.

You can buy this book at Barnes & Noble.com: COGNITION, CREATIVITY, AND BEHAVIOR: SELECTED ESSAYS