Abstract
B.F. Skinner and E. G. Boring disagreed over the historical portions of a manuscript that the younger man wished to present as his doctoral dissertation in Harvard University in the fall of 1930. This article provides an interpretive account of their disagreement and the reasons for it, and sketches its disciplinary and institutional setting.
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Dr. Clark Elliott, Associate Curator of the Harvard University Archives, generously allowed me to examine and to quote from a variety of documents at the Archives. Permission given by Mollie Boring is gratefully acknowledged. I wish to acknowledge the thoughtful cooperation of B. F. Skinner in clarifying several details in this investigation. Robert Sollod made helpful comments on an earlier draft. The Department of Psychology and the College of Graduate Studies provided travel funds for this research.
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Coleman, S.R. When Historians Disagree: B. F. Skinner and E. G. Boring, 1930. Psychol Rec 35, 301–314 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03395852
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03395852