To some, the origin of behavior analysis could well be represented allegorically, as a Botticellian Venus emerging fully developed from an opened volume of B. F. Skinner’s The Behavior of Organisms (1938). Indeed, most features that distinguish behavior analysis from other approaches in psychology can be identified in Skinner's first book. Skinner's later works continued to support this sole-source impression, for his expository style was to develop an argument as coherent and sufficient unto itself, without digressing to examine its origins and without appealing to prior authorities for legitimacy. Other advocates of behavior analysis have also tended to emphasize its uniqueness, and thus an approach that appeals mainly to historical variables as accounting for behavior might seem to have neglected its own historical origins.

This is doubly ironic, for Skinner was notable for declining to take credit as autonomous originator of the conceptual contributions that he expressed. He viewed himself as he viewed all other organisms, as a locus where variables come together in the production of behavior (e.g. Skinner, 1971, 1972). In his autobiographies (1976, 1979, 1983) he identified some sources of intellectual influence, but for the most part these references do not detail the relations between his concepts and specific earlier approaches. This part presents some historical threads that connect behavior analysis to earlier traditions, mainly outside psychology. Later parts address additional linkages, such as the strong one with Darwinian biology and those revealed through affinities to contemporary developments in other fields.

Thompson’s essay celebrates Claude Bernard's arguments in his An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine,which more than a century ago advocated experimental science as a basis for medical practice. Similar arguments have echoed through the present century, advocating experimental science for addressing a broader range of human concerns. More than this, however, Bernard’s descriptions of his own scientific technique resemble the methods of behavior analysis, as do his observations on statistical averaging of data and on interpretive issues such as level of analysis, the place of reductionism in science, and inductive versus deductive reasoning.

Marr’s appreciation of Ernst Mach links the conceptual origins of behavior analysis with another giant of the nineteenth century, but this time in physics. Marr addresses some ways in which Mach's views in his The Science of Mechanicshave been mischaracterized or misunderstood. For example, he clarifies the nature of Mach's skepticism regarding hypothetical entities in explanation and notes other similarities with the behavior analytic approach, such as emphasis upon functional relations and upon systematic replication as a basic experimental strategy.

In surveying two of J. R. Kantor’s works, Schoenfeld acquaints the reader with a subtle and sophisticated behaviorism that anticipated many features of contemporary behavior analysis but never gained broad recognition. Kantor's Objective Psychology of Grammarintroduced the notion of language as behavior in interaction with the environment, arguing the case in specific relation to prior traditions of philosophy and linguistics. In the course of this, Kantor attacked not only the subjectivism rampant in those fields; he also challenged the conventional assumption that grammar was to be understood in terms of logic and other static categories. Later, Kantor’s Psychology and Logic reframed the domain of logic itself by characterizing it as human activity, or a product thereof, rather than as a transcendent system dealing with ultimate universals, which was the way it was viewed by its standard practitioners. Schoenfeld provides us with a guided tour through this historically obscure intellectual terrain, clarifying its relevance to unconventional features of behavior analysis that have sometimes provoked arguments untempered by appropriate attention to historical background.

The linkages with these historical sources clarify and support the appositional role of behavior analysis within psychology, for the characteristics shared by these sources stand in contrast to interpretive and experimental conventions that have permeated mainstream psychology.