QuoteProject
The human species took a crucial step forward when its vocal musculature came under operant control in the production of speech sounds. Indeed, it is possible that all the distinctive achievements of the species can be traced to that one genetic change.
B. F. Skinner
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The development of controlled speech was a pivotal moment in human evolution.

B. F. Skinner highlights the importance of the ability to control vocalization in the evolution of humankind. This capacity for structured communication via speech is suggested to be the foundation for various complex achievements, indicating that the advancement of human civilization is deeply rooted in this singular genetic advancement.

Themes

SpeechCommunicationEvolutionLanguageHuman Development

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about communication's role in society, one might reflect on Skinner's insights.

More from B. F. Skinner

We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
B. F. SkinnerRead
Each of us has interests which conflict the interests of everybody else... 'everybody else' we call 'society'. It's a powerful opponent and it always wins. Oh, here and there an individual prevails for a while and gets what he wants. Sometimes he storms the culture of a society and changes it to his own advantage. But society wins in the long run, for it has the advantage of numbers and of age.
B. F. SkinnerRead
No theory changes what it is a theory about; man remains what he has always been.
B. F. SkinnerRead
I am opposed to the military use of animals. I am also opposed to the military use of men.
B. F. SkinnerRead
The ideal of behaviorism is to eliminate coercion: to apply controls by changing the environment in such a way as to reinforce the kind of behavior that benefits everyone.
B. F. SkinnerRead
Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to ask questions.
B. F. SkinnerRead

Similar quotes

The image of the scientist who puts the pursuit of truth before anything else has been shattered and replaced by a man on the make or a quasi-religious enthusiast who wants to prove his case at any cost. Science is becoming the tool of campaigning warfare, in which truth is the first casualty.
Paul JohnsonRead
It is a right, yes a duty, to search in cautious manner for the numbers, sizes, and weights, the norms for everything [God] has created. For He himself has let man take part in the knowledge of these things ... For these secrets are not of the kind whose research should be forbidden; rather they are set before our eyes like a mirror so that by examining them we observe to some extent the goodness and wisdom of the Creator.
Johannes KeplerRead
You almost can't avoid having some version of the multiverse in your studies if you push deeply enough in the mathematical descriptions of the physical universe.
Brian GreeneRead
One day the world will look upon research upon animals as it now looks upon research on human beings.
Leonardo Da VinciRead
[Concerning] the usual contempt with which an orthodox analytic group treats all outsiders and strangers ... I urge you to think of the young psychoanalysts as your colleagues, collaborators and partners and not as spies, traitors and wayward children. You can never develop a science that way, only an orthodox church.
Abraham MaslowRead
It's the poorer people in tropical zones who will get really hit by climate change - as well as some ecosystems, which nobody wants to see disappear.
Bill GatesRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.