Everything important in psychology can be investigated in essence through the continued experimental and theoretical analysis of the determiners of rat behavior at a choice point in a maze.
Psychologists
Edward C. Tolman
American psychologist and the leading neo-behaviorist of his generation (1886-1959). His 1932 Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men placed intervening variables between stimulus and response, and his 1948 paper Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men prepared the ground for the cognitive revolution by introducing latent learning and the cognitive map. He led the resistance to the University of California Loyalty Oath in 1949-1950 and won the landmark academic freedom case Tolman v. Underhill in 1955. Across three decades at Berkeley he insisted, against Hull and Skinner, that animals learn facts and pursue goals — a position eventually vindicated by the cognitive revolution.
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Edward C. Tolman's Other Quotes
I shall venture to present in skeletonized form a theory of learning in which I shall make central use of the notion of cognitive maps. Behavior is purposive and cognitive.
Behavior as we shall observe it always seems to have the character of getting-to or getting-from a specific goal-object, or goal-situation.
Rats, like men, can be expected to develop expectancies about goals and means.
A loyalty oath is in essence an attempt by the state to invade the realm of conscience. The University must defend the freedom of conscience or it ceases to be a University.