INTRODUCTION
Edwin Ray Guthrie was a behavioral scientist. He first worked as a mathematics teacher, and philosopher, but switched to psychology later on in life. He spent most of his career in becoming a professor in psychology.
Guthrie is best known for his theory that all learning was based on a stimulus–response association. This was variously described as one trial theory, non-reinforcement, and contiguity learning. The theory was: "A combination of stimuli which has accompanied a movement will on its recurrence tend to be followed by that movement".
BRIEF HISTORY
Guthrie was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, to a father who owned a store selling pianos and bicycles, and a mother who was a school teacher. He remarked that his theories got an early start when he and a friend read Darwin’s Origin of Species and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals while they were both in eighth grade. Guthrie graduated at the age of 17 after writing a rather inflammatory senior thesis that argued "that both science and religion, being dependent on words, and words being symbols dependent for their meanings on the experience of their users and auditors, would have no chance at expressing Absolute Truth". Guthrie received the title of lay reader in his local Episcopal Church while pursuing a philosophy degree from the University of Nebraska. This university he credited with helping him pursue his varied interests because "the university had none of the present apparatus of required courses and set curricula. This freedom made possible the inclusion of courses in both Latin and Greek which had been begun in high school; mathematics through calculus"
