Bibliography

 

All works cited in Walden Two, except those on morals and ethics, appear here.  Also included

are related writings by B. F. Skinner.

 

Bacon, Francis.  New Atlantis.  Arlington Heights, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, 1980.

 

First published in London in 1627, Bacon's utopia is set on an island in the South Sea.  Fifty-one lost sailors encounter a mode of life beyond the Old and New Worlds.  Solomon's House is the most important institution; it houses a learned society which applies the scientific method to problems of daily life.  A happy civilization is the result, demonstrating Bacon's faith in the potentiality of science for improving the human condition. (9, 179)

 

Bellamy, Edward.  Looking Backward.  New York: New American Library, 1982.

 

The city of Boston in 2000 is the setting for this utopian fiction, published in 1888.  Bellamy believed that human beings are fundamentally good; our evil ways arise through inept and dis­criminatory social practices.  In this ideal society, the Industrial Army is a most important in­stitution, a way of organizing human activity, especially in the economic sphere, for greater justice and the greater benefit of all. (9, 19, 46, 179)

 

Butler, Samuel.  Erewhon.  New York: Penguin, 1970.

 

This title comes from "nowhere" spelled almost backwards.  The place is England, and the pre­sentation satirical, aimed at the hypocrisy, stupidity and malpractice’s in 1872.  The Religion of the Musical Banks ridicules churches and business; the College of Unreason belittles academ­ics; the Rights of Vegetables shows the author's interest in plant research.  Butler's wit is prom­inent and still relevant. (159, 179)

 

Hilton, James.  Lost Horizon.  New York: Pocket Books, 1984.

 

A new word, Shangri-La, meaning a place of eternal happiness, entered our language in 1933 when Hilton described this imaginary land beyond the Himalayas.  Four passengers, kidnapped in a special airplane, find the secret of long life and contentment in Shangri-La, but no visitor can leave.  The hero, forced by his three companions to escape, suffers from exhaustion and hal­lucinations and tries to return to Shangri-La. (9, 179)

 

More, Thomas.  Utopia.  New York: Norton, 1975.

 

Appearing originally in Latin in 1516, More's work was the first significant utopian literature since Plato and gave its name to the concept.  It describes the injustices and inequalities in con­temporary England, in sharp contrast with Utopia, where the key to the good life is modera­tion.  All citizens except the most erudite work a six-hour day, without hostility or excess, guided by a benevolent, unpretentious king.  This description became an important commentary on the social and economic problems in the industrialization of England. (9)

 

 

 

 

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Morris, William.  News from Nowhere.  New York: Penguin, 1984.

 

Inspired by Bellamy's work, Morris moves to the Middle Ages, rather than the year 2000.  The simple folk of this socialist community live a peaceful, rather leisurely existence, gratified by successful artisanship and brotherly love.  This outcome does not arise through careful social organization, with sophisticated political and economic planning, but rather through human­ity's natural inclination towards love and beauty, which becomes manifest when it goes unfet­tered. (147, 165, 179)

 

Plato.  The Republic.  Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1986.

 

In Athens in the fourth century B.C., Plato describes his ideal, the loftiest culture in classical philosophy.  As the author says, it belongs more in heaven than on earth, but it contains the basic themes of most subsequent utopian literature.  The chief figure is Socrates, the narrator, whose critical thought demonstrates the Socratic method at its best.  His dialogues with friends, before silent listeners, address such difficult questions as the ideal state and the nature of justice. (9)

 

Skinner, B. F. About Behaviorism.  New York: Knopf, 1974.

 

Written largely in lay language, the author clarifies his position.  Twenty misstatements about behaviorism appear at the beginning, and they are reconsidered at the conclusion.  Particularly concerned about global issues, Skinner asserts that humanity controls its own destiny.  Thus, he presents the philosophy of his science of behavior, offered as a promising approach in the solution of the major problems in today's world.

 

Skinner, B. F. The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis.  New York: Appleton-century-Crofts, 1966.

 

This volume, with a preface to the seventh edition, is a reprint of the author's first book.  It presents his early laboratory research and contains a major new emphasis at the time, a shift from respondent to operant behavior, evident in most of Skinner's later work.  In the year of publication, 1938, he refused to extrapolate beyond the laboratory.  Seven years later, he pub­lished Walden Two speculating on the application of his principles.

 

Skinner, B. F. "News from Nowhere, 1984.  " The Behavior Analyst, 8, 5-14, 1985.

 

A man claiming to be Eric Arthur Blair, better known as George Orwell, author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, joined Walden Two in 1950.  He had some lengthy discussions with Frazier on government, religion, depersonalization, the "hippie movements," labor-sating devices, gam­bling, the welfare system, advantages of small communities, conservation of the environment, and world survival.  These dialogues, reported by Burris, provide Skinner with an opportunity for updating and expanding on the ideas in Walden Two.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Veblen, Thorstein.  Theory of the Leisure Class.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973.

 

From the pen of a liberal, humorous economist in 1899, this book is not utopian fiction.  It is a statement about the leisure class in modern society.  Persons with even a small extra income, beyond survival, the author argues, use these funds to impress other people, not to better their own or others' lives.  "Conspicuous consumption" is the best known concept emerging from this work, for which the theoretical basis was laid in a series of articles in an early volume of the American Journal of Sociology. (15)

 

Wells, H. G. A Modem Utopia.  Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967.

 

No kidnapping or shipwreck brings on this utopian experience but rather a person sitting at his desk reading.  His own imagination takes him to a path high in the Alps where he meets a botanist consumed with thoughts of a lady he loves and the plight of dogs.  Their discussions of a utopian community are constantly interrupted by the scientist's excursions into his earthly problems, but Wells' 1905 message is clear.  Utopia must be a world society; anything less than a world-wide community, with complete centralization, will be inadequate. (19)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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