The Science of Human Nature by William Henry Pyle (best ereader under 100 TXT) 📕

The meaning of a thing comes from our experience with it, and the thing usually comes to have more and more meanings as our experience with it increases. When we meet something new, it may have practically no meaning. Suppose we find a new plant in the woods. It has little meaning. We may be able to say only that it is a plant, or it is a small plant. We touch it and it pricks us, and it at once has more meaning. It is a plant that pricks. We bite into it and find it bitter. It is then a plant that is bitter, etc. In such a way, objects come to have meaning. They acquire meaning according to the connections in which we experience them and they may take on different meanings for different persons because of the different experiences of these persons. The chief interest we have in objects is in what use we can make of them, how we can make them serve our purposes, how we can make them contribute to our pleasure.

The organization of experience is the connecting, through the process of association, of the ideas that arise out of our experience. Our ideas are organized not only in accordance with the way we experience them in the first place, but in accordance with the way we think them later in memory. Of course, ideas are recalled in accordance with the way we experience them, but since they are experienced in such a multitude of connections, they are recalled later in these various connections and it is possible in recall to repeat one connection to the exclusion of others.

Organization can therefore be a selective process. Although “horse” is experienced in a great variety of situations or connections, for our purposes we can select some one or more of these connections and by repetition in recalling it, strengthen these connections to the exclusion of others. Herein lies one of the greatest possibilities in thinking and reasoning, which enables us, to an extent, to be independent of original experience. We must have had experience, of course, but the strength of bonds between ideas need not depend upon original experience, but rather upon the way in which these ideas are recalled later, and especially upon the number of times they are recalled.

It is in the matter of the organization of experience that teachers and parents can be of great help to young people. Children do not know what connections of ideas will be most useful in the future. People who have had more experience know better and can, by direction and suggestion, lead the young to form, and strengthen by repetition, those connections of ideas that will be most useful later.

In the various school studies, a mass of ideas is presented. These ideas, isolated or with random connections, will be of little service to the pupils. They must be organized with reference to future use. This organization must come about through thinking over these ideas in helpful connections. The teacher knows best what these helpful connections are and must help the pupil to make them.

Suppose the topic studied in history is the Battle of Bunker Hill. The teacher should assist the child to think the battle over in many different connections. There are various geographical, historical, and literary aspects of the battle that are of importance. These aspects should be brought to mind and related by being thought of together. Thinking things together binds them together as ideas; and later when one idea comes, the others that have been joined with it in the past in thought, come also. Therefore, in studying the Battle of Bunker Hill, the pupil not only reads about it, but gets a map and studies the geography of it, works out the causes that led up to the battle, studies the consequences that followed, reads speeches and poems that have been made and written since concerning the battle, the monument, etc.

Similarly, all the topics studied in school should be thought over and organized with reference to meaning and with reference to future use. As a result of such procedure, all the topics become organized and crystallized, with all related ideas closely bound together in association.

One of the greatest differences in people is in the organization of their ideas. Of course, people differ in original experience, but they differ more in the way they organize this experience and prepare it for future needs. Just as in habit-formation we should by exercise and practice acquire those kinds of skill that will serve us best in the future, so in getting knowledge we should by repetition strengthen the connections between those ideas that we shall need to have connected in the future. All education looks forward and is preparatory. As a result of training in the organization of ideas, a pupil can learn how to organize his experience, in a measure, independent of the teacher. He learns to know, himself, what ideas are significant, and what connections of ideas will be most helpful. Such an outcome should be one of the ends of school training.

Training in Reasoning. We have already mentioned ways in which a child can be helped in gaining power and facility in reasoning. In this paragraph we shall discuss the matter more fully. There are three aspects of training in reasoning, one with reference to original experience, one with reference to the organization of this experience as just discussed, and one with reference to certain habits of procedure in the recall and use of experience.

(1) Original experience. Before reasoning in any field, one must have experience in that field. There is no substitute for experience. After having the experience, it can be organized in various ways, but experience there must be. Experience may be primary, with things themselves, or it may be secondary, received second hand through books or through spoken language. We cannot think without ideas, and ideas come only through perceptions of one kind or another.

Originally, all experience arises out of sensations. Language makes it possible for us to profit through the perceptual experience of others. But even when we receive our experience second hand, our own primary experience must enable us to understand the meaning of what we read and hear about, else it is valueless to us. Therefore, if we wish to be able to reason in the field of physics, of botany, of chemistry, of medicine, of law, or of agriculture, we must get experience in those fields. The raw material of thought comes only through experience. In such a subject as physical geography, for example, the words of the book have little meaning unless the child has had original experience in the matter discussed. He must have seen hills and valleys and rivers and lakes and rocks and weathering, and all the various processes discussed in physical geography; otherwise, the reading of the text is almost valueless. The same thing is true of all subjects. To reason in any subject we must have had original experience in it.

(2) The organization of experience. After experience comes its organization. This point has already been fully explained. It was pointed out that organization consists in thinking our experience over again in helpful relations. Here parents and teachers can be of very great service to children.

(3) Habits of thought. There are certain habits of procedure in reasoning, apart from the association of the ideas. One can form the habit of putting certain questions to oneself when a problem is presented, so that certain types of relations are called up. If one is a scientist, one looks for causes. If one is a lawyer, one looks up the court decisions. If one is a physician, one looks for symptoms, etc.

One of the most important habits in connection with reasoning is the habit of caution. Reasoning is waiting, waiting for ideas to come that will be adequate for the situation. One must form the habit of waiting a reasonable length of time for associations to run their course. If one act too soon, before his organized experience has had time to pass in review, he may act improperly. Therefore one must be trained to a proper degree of caution. Of course, caution may be overdone. One must act sometime, one cannot wait always.

Another habit is that of testing out a conclusion before it is finally put into practice. It is often possible to put a conclusion to some sort of test before it is put to the real test, just as one makes a model and tries out an invention on a small scale. One should not have full confidence in a conclusion that is the result of reasoning, till the conclusion has been put to the final test of experiment, of trial.

This last statement leads us to the real function of reasoning. Reason points the way to action in a new situation. After the situation is repeated for a sufficient number of times, action passes into the realm of habit.

Language and Thinking. The fact that man has spoken and written language is of the greatest significance. It has already been pointed out that language is a means through which we can get experience secondhand. This proves to be a great advantage to man. But language gives us still another advantage. Without language, thinking is limited to the passing of sensory images that arise in accordance with the laws of association. But man can name things and the attributes of things, and these names become associated, so that thinking comes to be, in part at least, a matter of words. Thinking is talking to oneself. One cannot talk without language.

The importance that attaches to language can hardly be overestimated. When the child acquires the use of language, he has acquired the use of a tool, the importance of which to thinking is greater than that of any other tool. Now, one can think without language, in the sense that memory images come and go,—we have defined thinking as the flow of imagery, the passing or succession of ideas. But after we have named things, thinking, particularly reasoning, becomes largely verbal, or as we said above, talking to oneself.

Not only do we give names to concrete things but we give names to specific attributes and to relations. As we organize and analyze our experiences, there appear uniformities, principles, laws. To these we give names, such as white, black, red, weight, length, thickness, justice, truth, sin, crime, heat, cold, mortal, immortal, evolution, disintegration, love, hate, envy, jealousy, possible, impossible, probable, etc. We spoke above of meanings. To meanings we give names, so that a single word comes to stand for meanings broad and significant, the result of much experience. Such words as “evolution” and “gravitation,” single words though they are, represent a wide range of experiences and bring these experiences together and crystallize them into a single expression, which we use as a unit in our thought.

Language, therefore, makes thought easier and its accomplishment greater. After we have studied Cæsar for some years, the name comes to represent the epitome, the bird’s-eye view of a great man. A similar thing is true of our study of other men and movements and things. Single words come to represent a multitude of experiences. Then these words become associated and organized in accordance with the principles of association discussed above, so that it comes about that the older we are, the more we come to think in words, and the more these words represent. The older we are, the more abstract our thinking becomes, the more do our words come to stand for meanings and