Almost all our major problems involve human behavior, and they cannot be solved by physical and biological technology alone. What is needed is a technology of behavior, but we have been slow to develop the science from which such a technology might be drawn. (1) One difficulty is that almost all of what is called behavioral science continues to trace behavior to states of mind, feelings, traits of character, human nature, and so on. Physics and biology once followed similar practices and advanced only when they discarded them. (2) The behavioral sciences have been slow to change partly because the explanatory items often seem to be directly observed and partly because other kinds of explanations have been hard to find. The environment is obviously important, but its role has remained obscure. It does not push or pull, it selects, and this function is difficult to discover and analyze. (3) The role of natural selection in evolution was formulated only a little more than a hundred years ago, and the selective role of the environment in shaping and maintaining the behavior of the individual is only beginning to be recognized and studied. As the interaction between organism and environment has come to be understood, however, effects once assigned to states of mind, feelings, and traits are beginning to be traced to accessible conditions, and a technology of behavior may therefore become available. It will not solve our problems, however, until it replaces traditional prescientific views, and these are strongly entrenched. Freedom and dignity illustrate the difficulty. (4) They are the possessions of the autonomous (self － governing) man of traditional theory, and they are essential to practices in which a person is held responsible for his conduct and given credit for his achievements. A scientific analysis shifts both the responsibility and the achievement to the environment. It also raises questions concerning "values." Who will use a technology and to what ends? (5) Until these issues are resolved, a technology of behavior will continue to be rejected, and with it possibly the only way to solve our problems.
参考答案
1．难题之一在于所谓的行为科学几乎全都依然从心态、情感、性格特征、人性等方面去寻找行为的根源。
2．行为科学之所以发展缓慢，部分原因是用来解释行为的依据似乎往往是直接观察到的，部分原因是其他的解释方式一直难以找到。
3．自然选择在进化中的作用仅在一百多年前才得以阐明，而环境在塑造和保持个体行为时的选择作用则刚刚开始被认识和研究。
4自由和尊严（它们）是传统理论定义的自主人所拥有的，是要求一个人对自己的行为负责并因其业绩而给予肯定的必不可少的前提。
5．（如果）这些问题得不到解决，研究行为的技术手段就会继续受到排斥，解释问题的唯一方式可能也随之继续受到排斥。
iwms 4.6
