"Twelve Infants" Quotation
Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years.
The quotation often appears without context and with the last sentence omitted, making Watson's position appear more radical than it actually was. In Watson's book Behaviorism, the sentence is provided in the context of an extended argument against eugenics. That Watson did not hold a radical environmentalist position may be seen in his earlier writing in which his "starting point" for a science of behavior was "...the observable fact that organisms, man and animal alike, do adjust themselves to their environment by means of hereditary and habit equipments." Nevertheless, Watson recognized the importance of nurture in the nature versus nurture discussion which was often neglected by his eugenic contemporaries.
Read more about this topic: John B. Watson
Famous quotes containing the words twelve, infants and/or quotation:
“Life with a daughter of nine through twelve is a special experience for parents, particularly mothers. In a daughter’s looks, actions, attitudes, passions, loves, and hates, in her fears and her foibles, a mother will see herself at the same age. You are far enough away to have some perspective on what your daughter is going through. Still, you are close enough, if reminded, to feel it all again.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)
“But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“In the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. It used to be the classics, now it’s lyric verse.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)