The term functional contextualism has been polemic within the behavioral analytic tradition from its inception. It’s been argued that it adds nothing to that tradition, since it is no more than a way to refer to radical behaviorism, and therefore it is old wine in new bottle. Conversely, what was new and “radical” from radical behaviorism was the reflection of behavioral thinking onto the actions of scientists, but other aspects of that tradition had been there for a long time, such as attention to the organism as a whole, an emphasis on function rather than topography, and the critical role given to history and current environment. Those components were part of previous traditions (e.g., Darwin, Pierce, Dewey and James) and were not necessarily advanced by Skinner. We argue in this paper, that (1) the term functional contextualism is a better term than radical behaviorism to describe our tradition and (2), that the philosophical assumptions ingrained in functional contextualism allow greater methodological diversity and consequently increased chances to strengthen our body of knowledge in the field. Overall, we believe that the term functional contextualism links back our field to its original roots, and orients our work towards the building of a more progressive science.