Editing Walden Two (section)

==Thoreau's ''Walden''==
''Walden Two'''s title is a direct reference to [[Henry David Thoreau]]'s book ''[[Walden]]''. In the novel, the Walden Two Community is mentioned as having the benefits of living in a place like Thoreau's Walden, but "with company". It is, as the book says, 'Walden for two'—meaning a place for achieving personal [[self-actualization]], but within a vibrant community, rather than in a place of solitude. Originally, Skinner indicated that he wanted to title it ''The Sun is but a Morning Star'', a quote of the last sentence of Thoreau's ''Walden'',{{Citation needed|date=April 2024}} but the publishers suggested the current title as an alternative.{{Citation needed|date=April 2024}}

In theory and in practice, Thoreau's Walden Pond experiment and the fictive Walden Two experiment were very different from one another. For instance, Thoreau's book ''Walden'' espouses the virtues of self-reliance at the individual level, while ''Walden Two'' espouses
# the virtues of self-reliance at the community level, and
# Skinner's underlying premise that free will of the individual is weak compared to how environmental conditions [[Shaping (psychology)|shape]] behavior.

The cover of some editions of ''Walden Two'' shows the 'O' filled with yellow ink, with yellow lines radiating from the center of the 'O'. That Sun-like 'O' is an [[allusion]] to the proposition that ''The sun is but a morning star''.<ref name="morningstar">{{cite book |author=Thoreau, Henry David |url=https://archive.org/details/waldenorlifeinwo1854thor |title=Walden; or, Life in the woods |publisher=[[Ticknor and Fields]] |year=1854 |location=Boston, Massachusetts |page=[https://archive.org/details/waldenorlifeinwo1854thor/page/357 357] |quote=The sun is but a morning star.}}</ref>