Behaviorism, Neobehaviorism, and Cognitivism in Learning Theory: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

The history of science, with its manifold skirmishes, revolts, rebellions, and revolutions, is Nature's way of reinstating periodically a law of increasing returns. The new generation comes forward with a new method which, under optimal conditions, will be in harmony with a hitherto inaccessible stratum of reality. But there is no pre-established harmony, and a generation, like a god, may fail. Each revolutionary generation moreover is destined to find that its revolution was an illusion, that its standpoint was only partial and remained circumscribed by a reality that is perhaps transgenerational.... No scientific standpoint proves to be valid for more than a chapter of existence, which never yields its plot's entirety. The way of wisdom is to understand how "scientific revolution," in its illusory character, is Nature's method for liberating human energies for scientific progress. Thereby we may secure from the gods their girl of serenity. (p. 361)

-- L. S. Feuer, Einstein and the Generation of Science

This quotation from Feuer ( 1974) opened the final chapter of a commentary in a book on Hull's theoretical papers ( Amsel & Rashotte,

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