GEN260 In recent years [published in 1983 – AJL] the behaviorist approach in psychology has grown in popularity, mainly as a result of the work of B.F. Skinner. In a recent work, he argues that the real problems of society can only be solved by what he calls “behavioral technology,” a sort of conditioning in which desirable behavior is made to pay off.  New York Review of Books December 30, 1971  Skinner maintains that behavior is not determined from within but rather from without, by changing the environment. Man’s behavior, he claims, is completely predictable, and the knowledge already exists for a science of control. His conclusion is that man can no longer afford the illusion of freedom and the anarchy and disasters that it has spawned.  It is perhaps not completely coincidental that the most devastating critique of Skinner’s book was written by Noam Chomsky, whose work in linguistics had led him to a rather unconventional conclusion. Reflections on Language (New York: Pantheon, 1975). Pp. 12, 40.  In the course of his work, Chomsky has been tremendously impressed by the complexity of human language. He finds it remarkable that a child can “learn” to speak a language; to understand the grammar on relatively slight exposure and without specific training.” Chomsky denies that there exists a “learning theory” that can account for the acquisition of language skills through experience. Instead, Chomsky prefers what he calls the “innateness hypothesis,” which holds that one of the faculties of the mind, common to the species, is a faculty of language that “provides a sensory system for the preliminary analysis of linguistic data and a schematism that determines a certain class of grammars.” If so, then it would seem that the language faculty is unique to human beings. “It is a reasonable surmise, I think, that there is no structure similar to the Universal Grammar in non-human organisms and that the capacity for free, appropriate, and creative use of language as an expression of thought with the means provided by the language faculty is also a distinctive feature of the human specifies having no significant analogue elsewhere.” [this verse]. This will come as no surprise to students of Judaism, who will recall that the words in Genesis, “And man became a living soul,” are translated by the Targum as “a speaking spirit.”  SPERO 273