 I'm not really preparing this lecture immediately but, oh wait a minute, I mean, yeah, well, just so you know folks, it is a great book, I mean it's extremely well used. So we're going to start with, oh I don't know, we're going to start with Cooper here in the nerd. So today I think we just, let's open it up with the beginning. It's really simple. The purpose of science, right? So let's back up a little bit. Why are we even going to talk about the purpose of science with regard to a behavior analysis program, right? Well, it's simple. All of this is based off of hard science, right? And I say hard science and I mean it. I mean physics level hard science. I'm talking experimental analysis of behavior. I'm talking about the prediction and control, oh wait a minute, I got ahead of myself, prediction and control. Anyway, let me back up. So we're a very scientific field and I mean probably overly so for an applied field we based absolutely everything on scientific research, especially in the experimental analysis of behavior areas. So let's take a look at what it means to be scientific. Let's break that down into a few concepts and let's address those concepts in this short little video. So here we go. What's the purpose, right? That's kind of the first question. What is the purpose of science? It's not to get rich. Trust me, we know that really, really well. It's even professors don't usually get rich. I suppose they do by the time they're dead but that's a different issue. Anyway, I digress. Science is about the prediction, or let me try that again, science is about the description, the prediction and control of things in our world. If you study Don Baer, if you study the work that has happened since Don Baer and all those folks once you start to realize is that we have this large body of evidence about describing behavior. We have a large body of evidence about predicting behavior and then we have a large body of evidence about controlling behavior. In other words, we've got a pretty thorough science, a thorough going system within applied behavior analysis that links back to the experimental analysis of behavior, right? So which is your traditional sort of working with rats and pigeons is the way it started but ultimately you can do it with humans, too. It's about a way of doing your work and doing your research and treating behavior as a scientific subject topic in its own right. Explaining behavior to explain behavior, not to find something else to explain behavior about why did you do it? Well, you had this internal construct, blah, blah, blah. I'm getting way ahead of myself. So let me just back up a little bit, right? So the purpose of science, really simple, description. Let's just describe phenomena that we observe. There's not a lot we may know about this. We may not be setting up an experiment to control things or even experiment with things, but we're just describing events, right? So when something's new, this is the approach that we take just to describe a phenomenon. At one point, trees were new to people, right? So we had to understand, whoa, a tree, what is that? We need to describe it. It feels this way. It looks this way. It stands this way. It leans this way. And it does this in the wind. We had to describe what that is in order for us to make predictions, right? So quality description leads you to prediction, right? So once we get into prediction, now we can start to understand the variables that are present that allow us to know what's going to happen next, right? So you're probably going, well, wait a minute. There's too many variables to study for people, right? No, there's not. This entire field is based on the prediction and control of behavior. And it sounds a little ominous and evil, right? Prediction and control. And take it that way if you want, but that's not the way a scientist intends it when we talk about it. We talk about it, and we mean to say that we just want to be able to predict what's going to happen in certain scenarios, and if at all possible, to be able to control that. So again, the prediction, we're going to design experiments, and we're going to make hypotheses based on information we already know, and we're going to predict what's going to happen under certain conditions. When we get down to the next level, to the final level is control, right? That's your hard-nosed experimentation. That's the stuff that you really want to be able to get to for your science to be fully grown up, right? So to be able to control things and to understand exactly what's going to happen when you tweak this one thing. So for example, if Brad brings his camera just a wee bit closer to me, that's going to cause me to get a little more intense. I can start to see things in the camera lens. I can see my face, and I'm going crazy, and I'm getting excited. You can probably hear it, right? So over time, Brad has learned that about me. If he wants me to get more intense, he gets closer with the camera. He does something that makes that happen. He's established that by starting off with observations, then he wins. So the descriptions, then he made some predictions about it and ran some hypothesis testing. I mean, this is all unofficial, right? And now, he can control my responses by bringing that camera in just a little bit closer. And as you can see, it just, boom, it just pops right up, and I start to get more excited, and I get really into it, and I'm really having fun. So description, the lowest level, right? Prediction, that intermediate step, and then control. And you start with observations, then we start doing some relational research, and then we start doing genuine experimental design, and I mean true experiments. Some people get mad that I say that, so maybe randomized experiments, right? So all of that fun stuff goes into that, and that's our goal with the science of human behavior. Prediction and control of behavior. So understanding why we do what we do, understanding why that airplane up there flies the way it flies, and being able to fly it, and how do you teach somebody to fly it? Guess what? That's all related to the science of human behavior and to apply behavior analysis as a whole. I hope you enjoyed the first one. There's more.