Skinner Sees Need to Develop Ideal Community by Experiment

Advocating the establishment of a practical utopia, Burrhus F. Skinner, Edgar pierce Professor of Psychology, stated yesterday, "This mid-twentieth century calls for experiments to determine whether people can live together peacefully and if so under what conditions."

"Human behavior is the product of genetic endowment and historical environment," he told the Social Relations Colloquium. These factors--and therefore human behavior--" can be changed--and changed by man."

Skinner enumerated some of the "fascinating problems" he has encountered in devising his own version of a perfect community. Two preliminary questions which must be solved are the selection of its design and location, and the selection of the people for the experiment.

The "most thrilling portion" of this project is creating the actual pattern of life for the inhabitants, he felt. Observing that the "average American child at the age of five is a complete wreck," Skinner said the child must be supervised 24 hours a day from birth.

Leisure a Problem

Another challenge faced by the Utopian thinker is leisure time activities. Even today people "talk about leisure, but they don't do anything," he pointed out. And, if the perfect community can't devise anything which will draw people away from their TV sets, "it isn't worth it."

In establishing his utopia, man is hindered by "the human body itself, which is in a certain sense 25 to 50 thousand years out of date," he said. Man's instincts concerning eating, sex, and aggression were necessary thousands of years ago, but today these drives are harmful.