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moving.
5.
Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any
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other part of his world. Today he is the thing he understands least. Physics and biology have come a long
way, but there has been no comparable development of anything like a science of human behavior. Modern
physics and biology successfully treat subjects that are certainly no simpler than many aspects of human
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behavior. The difference is that the instruments and methods they use are of commensurate complexity.
The fact that equally powerful instruments and methods are not available in the field of human behavior is 
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not an explanation, it is only part of the puzzle. Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than
improving education in our public schools? Or than constructing better kinds of living space for everyone?
Or making it possible for everyone to be gainfully employed and, as a result, to enjoy a higher standard of
living? The choice was not a matter of priorities, for no one could have said that it was more important to
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get to the moon. The exciting thing about getting to the moon was its feasibility. Science and technology
had reached the point at which, with one great push, the thing could be done. There is no comparable 
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excitement about the problems posed by human behavior. We are not close to solutions.
6. It is easy to conclude that there must be something about human behavior which makes a scientific
analysis, and hence an effective technology, impossible, but we have not by any means exhausted the 
100 possibilities. There is a sense in which it can be said that the methods of science have scarcely yet been
applied to human behavior. We have used the instruments of science, we have counted and measured and
compared; but something essential to scientific practice is missing in almost all current discussions of
105 human behavior. It has to do with our treatment of the causes of behavior. (The term «cause» is no longer
common in sophisticated scientific writing, but it will serve well enough here.)
7. Man's first experience with causes probably came from his own behavior: things moved because he
110 moved them. If  other things moved, it was because someone else was moving them, and if the mover
could not be seen, it was because he was invisible. The Greek gods served in this wy as the cause of
physical phenomena. They were usually outside the things they moved but they might enter into and
115 «possess» them. Physics and biology soon abandoned explanations of this sort and turned to more useful
kinds of causes, but the step has not been decisively taken in the field of human behavior. Intelligent
people no longer believe that men are possessed by demons (although the exorcism of devils is 
120 occasionally practiced, and the daimonic has reappeared in the writings of psychotherapists), but human
behavior is still commonly attributed to indwelling agents.
8. Physics and biology moved farther away from personified causes when they began to attribute the
125 behavior of things to essences, qualities, or natures. To the medieval alchemist, for example, some of the
properties of a substance might be due to the mercurial essence, and substances were compared in what
might have been called a «chemistry of individual differences». Newton complained of the practice in his
130 contemporaries: «To tell us that every species of thing is endowed with an occult specific quality by which
it acts and produces manifest effects is to tell us nothing.» Biology continued for a long time to appeal to
the nature of living things, and it did not wholly abandon vital forces until the twentieth century. Behavior,
135 however, is still attributed to human nature, and there is an extensive «psychology of individual
differences» in which people are compared and described in terms of traits of character, capacities, and
abilities.
      9. Almost everyone who is concerned with human affairs — as political scientist, philosopher, man of
letters, economist, psychologist, linguist, sociologist, theologian, anthropologist, educator, or
psychotherapist — continues to talk about human behavior in this prescientific way. Every issue of a 
145 daily paper, every magazine, every professional journal, every book with any bearing whatsoever on
human behavior will supply examples. We are told that to control the number of people in the world we
need to change attitudes toward children, overcome pride in size of family or in sexual potency, build some 
150 sense of responsibility toward offspring, and reduce the role played by a large family in allaying concern
for old age. To work for peace we must deal with the will to power or the paranoid delusions of leaders; we
must remember that wars begin in the minds of men, that there is something suicidal in man — a death 
155 instinct perhaps— which leads to war, and that man is aggressive by nature. To solve the problems of the
poor we must inspire self-respect, encourage initiative, and reduce frustration. To allay the dissaffection of
the young we must provide a sense of purpose and reduce feelings of alienation or hopelessness. Realizing 
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