SOURCE: "Kinsey's View of Human Behavior," in Sexual Behavior in American Society: An Appraisal of the First Two Kinsey Reports, edited by Jerome Himelhoch and Sylvia Fleis Fava, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1955, pp. 29-38.

In the following essay, originally published in 1954, Kuhn challenges Kinsey' s conclusions as succumbing to reductionist fallacies.

One would expect a zoologist, when he addresses himself to the study of some aspect of human behavior, to elect from the current assortment of theoretical orientations toward human behavior—such as psychoanalytic theory, field theory, symbolic interaction theory and learning theory—that one which has the most in common with the zoological orientation toward organisms in general. It is therefore not surprising to find that Kinsey takes what is essentially the learning theorist's point of view, with its heavy reliance on physiological explanations for human (social) behavior. This much was evident in the first Kinsey...