How We Think Part 13

Certain men or cla.s.ses of men come to be the accepted guardians and transmitters--instructors--of established doctrines. To question the beliefs is to question their authority; to accept the beliefs is evidence of loyalty to the powers that be, a proof of good citizenship.

Pa.s.sivity, docility, acquiescence, come to be primal intellectual virtues. Facts and events presenting novelty and variety are slighted, or are sheared down till they fit into the Procrustean bed of habitual belief. Inquiry and doubt are silenced by citation of ancient laws or a mult.i.tude of miscellaneous and unsifted cases. This att.i.tude of mind generates dislike of change, and the resulting aversion to novelty is fatal to progress. What will not fit into the established canons is outlawed; men who make new discoveries are objects of suspicion and even of persecution. Beliefs that perhaps originally were the products of fairly extensive and careful observation are stereotyped into fixed traditions and semi-sacred dogmas accepted simply upon authority, and are mixed with fantastic conceptions that happen to have won the acceptance of authorities.

-- 2. _Scientific Method_

[Sidenote: Scientific thinking a.n.a.lyzes the present case]

In contrast with the empirical method stands the scientific. Scientific method replaces the repeated conjunction or coincidence of separate facts by discovery of a single comprehensive fact, effecting this replacement by _breaking up the coa.r.s.e or gross facts of observation into a number of minuter processes not directly accessible to perception_.

[Sidenote: Ill.u.s.tration from _suction_ of empirical method,]

If a layman were asked why water rises from the cistern when an ordinary pump is worked, he would doubtless answer, "By suction." Suction is regarded as a force like heat or pressure. If such a person is confronted by the fact that water rises with a suction pump only about thirty-three feet, he easily disposes of the difficulty on the ground that all forces vary in their intensities and finally reach a limit at which they cease to operate. The variation with elevation above the sea level of the height to which water can be pumped is either unnoticed, or, if noted, is dismissed as one of the curious anomalies in which nature abounds.

[Sidenote: of scientific method]

[Sidenote: Relies on differences,]

Now the scientist advances by a.s.suming that what seems to observation to be a single total fact is in truth complex. He attempts, therefore, to break up the single fact of water-rising-in-the-pipe into a number of lesser facts. His method of proceeding is by _varying conditions one by one_ so far as possible, and noting just what happens when a given condition is eliminated. There are two methods for varying conditions.[24] The first is an extension of the empirical method of observation. It consists in comparing very carefully the results of a great number of observations which have occurred under accidentally _different_ conditions. The difference in the rise of the water at different heights above the sea level, and its total cessation when the distance to be lifted is, even at sea level, more than thirty-three feet, are emphasized, instead of being slurred over. The purpose is to find out what _special conditions_ are present when the effect occurs and absent when it fails to occur. These special conditions are then subst.i.tuted for the gross fact, or regarded as its principle--the key to understanding it.

[24] The next two paragraphs repeat, for purposes of the present discussion, what we have already noted in a different context. See p. 88 and p. 99.

[Sidenote: and creates differences]

The method of a.n.a.lysis by comparing cases is, however, badly handicapped; it can do nothing until it is presented with a certain number of diversified cases. And even when different cases are at hand, it will be questionable whether they vary in just these respects in which it is important that they should vary in order to throw light upon the question at issue. The method is pa.s.sive and dependent upon external accidents. Hence the superiority of the active or experimental method.

Even a small number of observations may suggest an explanation--a hypothesis or theory. Working upon this suggestion, the scientist may then _intentionally_ vary conditions and note what happens. If the empirical observations have suggested to him the possibility of a connection between air pressure on the water and the rising of the water in the tube where air pressure is absent, he deliberately empties the air out of the vessel in which the water is contained and notes that suction no longer works; or he intentionally increases atmospheric pressure on the water and notes the result. He inst.i.tutes experiments to calculate the weight of air at the sea level and at various levels above, and compares the results of reasoning based upon the pressure of air of these various weights upon a certain volume of water with the results actually obtained by observation. _Observations formed by variation of conditions on the basis of some idea or theory const.i.tute experiment._ Experiment is the chief resource in scientific reasoning because it facilitates the picking out of significant elements in a gross, vague whole.

[Sidenote: a.n.a.lysis and synthesis again]

Experimental thinking, or scientific reasoning, is thus a conjoint process of _a.n.a.lysis and synthesis_, or, in less technical language, of discrimination and a.s.similation or identification. The gross fact of water rising when the suction valve is worked is resolved or discriminated into a number of independent variables, some of which had never before been observed or even thought of in connection with the fact. One of these facts, the weight of the atmosphere, is then selectively seized upon as the key to the entire phenomenon. This disentangling const.i.tutes _a.n.a.lysis_. But atmosphere and its pressure or weight is a fact not confined to this single instance. It is a fact familiar or at least discoverable as operative in a great number of other events. In fixing upon this imperceptible and minute fact as the essence or key to the elevation of water by the pump, the pump-fact has thus been a.s.similated to a whole group of ordinary facts from which it was previously isolated. This a.s.similation const.i.tutes _synthesis_.

Moreover, the fact of atmospheric pressure is itself a case of one of the commonest of all facts--weight or gravitational force. Conclusions that apply to the common fact of weight are thus transferable to the consideration and interpretation of the _relatively_ rare and exceptional case of the suction of water. The suction pump is seen to be a case of the same kind or sort as the siphon, the barometer, the rising of the balloon, and a mult.i.tude of other things with which at first sight it has no connection at all. This is another instance of the synthetic or a.s.similative phase of scientific thinking.

If we revert to the advantages of scientific over empirical thinking, we find that we now have the clue to them.

[Sidenote: Lessened liability to error]

(_a_) The increased security, the added factor of certainty or proof, is due to the subst.i.tution of the _detailed and specific fact_ of atmospheric pressure for the gross and total and relatively miscellaneous fact of suction. The latter is complex, and its complexity is due to many unknown and unspecified factors; hence, any statement about it is more or less random, and likely to be defeated by any unforeseen variation of circ.u.mstances. _Comparatively_, at least, the minute and detailed fact of air pressure is a measurable and definite fact--one that can be picked out and managed with a.s.surance.

[Sidenote: Ability to manage the new]

(_b_) As a.n.a.lysis accounts for the added certainty, so synthesis accounts for ability to cope with the novel and variable. Weight is a much commoner fact than atmospheric weight, and this in turn is a much commoner fact than the workings of the suction pump. To be able to subst.i.tute the common and frequent fact for that which is relatively rare and peculiar is to reduce the seemingly novel and exceptional to cases of a general and familiar principle, and thus to bring them under control for interpretation and prediction.

As Professor James says: "Think of heat as motion and whatever is true of motion will be true of heat; but we have a hundred experiences of motion for every one of heat. Think of rays pa.s.sing through this lens as cases of bending toward the perpendicular, and you subst.i.tute for the comparatively unfamiliar lens the very familiar notion of a particular change in direction of a line, of which notion every day brings us countless examples."[25]

[25] _Psychology_, vol. II. p. 342.

[Sidenote: Interest in the future or in progress]

(_c_) The change of att.i.tude from conservative reliance upon the past, upon routine and custom, to faith in progress through the intelligent regulation of existing conditions, is, of course, the reflex of the scientific method of experimentation. The empirical method inevitably magnifies the influences of the past; the experimental method throws into relief the possibilities of the future. The empirical method says, "_Wait_ till there is a sufficient number of cases;" the experimental method says, "_Produce_ the cases." The former depends upon nature's accidentally happening to present us with certain conjunctions of circ.u.mstances; the latter deliberately and intentionally endeavors to bring about the conjunction. By this method the notion of progress secures scientific warrant.

[Sidenote: Physical _versus_ logical force]

Ordinary experience is controlled largely by the direct strength and intensity of various occurrences. What is bright, sudden, loud, secures notice and is given a conspicuous rating. What is dim, feeble, and continuous gets ignored, or is regarded as of slight importance.

Customary experience tends to the control of thinking by considerations of _direct and immediate strength_ rather than by those of importance in the long run. Animals without the power of forecast and planning must, upon the whole, respond to the stimuli that are most urgent at the moment, or cease to exist. These stimuli lose nothing of their direct urgency and clamorous insistency when the thinking power develops; and yet thinking demands the subordination of the immediate stimulus to the remote and distant. The feeble and the minute may be of much greater importance than the glaring and the big. The latter may be signs of a force that is already exhausting itself; the former may indicate the beginnings of a process in which the whole fortune of the individual is involved. The prime necessity for scientific thought is that the thinker be freed from the tyranny of sense stimuli and habit, and this emanc.i.p.ation is also the necessary condition of progress.

[Sidenote: Ill.u.s.tration from moving water]

Consider the following quotation: "When it first occurred to a reflecting mind that moving water had a property identical with human or brute force, namely, the property of setting other ma.s.ses in motion, overcoming inertia and resistance,--when the sight of the stream suggested through this point of likeness the power of the animal,--a new addition was made to the cla.s.s of prime movers, and when circ.u.mstances permitted, this power could become a subst.i.tute for the others. It may seem to the modern understanding, familiar with water wheels and drifting rafts, that the similarity here was an extremely obvious one.

But if we put ourselves back into an early state of mind, when running water affected the mind _by its brilliancy, its roar and irregular devastation_, we may easily suppose that to identify this with animal muscular energy was by no means an obvious effort."[26]

[26] Bain, _The Senses and Intellect_, third American ed., 1879, p.

492 (italics not in original).

[Sidenote: Value of abstraction]

If we add to these obvious sensory features the various social customs and expectations which fix the att.i.tude of the individual, the evil of the subjection of free and fertile suggestion to empirical considerations becomes clear. A certain power of _abstraction_, of deliberate turning away from the habitual responses to a situation, was required before men could be emanc.i.p.ated to follow up suggestions that in the end are fruitful.

[Sidenote: Experience as inclusive of thought]

In short, the term _experience_ may be interpreted either with reference to the _empirical_ or the _experimental_ att.i.tude of mind. Experience is not a rigid and closed thing; it is vital, and hence growing. When dominated by the past, by custom and routine, it is often opposed to the reasonable, the thoughtful. But experience also includes the reflection that sets us free from the limiting influence of sense, appet.i.te, and tradition. Experience may welcome and a.s.similate all that the most exact and penetrating thought discovers. Indeed, the business of education might be defined as just such an emanc.i.p.ation and enlargement of experience. Education takes the individual while he is relatively plastic, before he has become so indurated by isolated experiences as to be rendered hopelessly empirical in his habit of mind. The att.i.tude of childhood is nave, wondering, experimental; the world of man and nature is new. Right methods of education preserve and perfect this att.i.tude, and thereby short-circuit for the individual the slow progress of the race, eliminating the waste that comes from inert routine.

PART THREE: THE TRAINING OF THOUGHT

CHAPTER TWELVE

ACTIVITY AND THE TRAINING OF THOUGHT

In this chapter we shall gather together and amplify considerations that have already been advanced, in various pa.s.sages of the preceding pages, concerning the relation of _action to thought_. We shall follow, though not with exactness, the order of development in the unfolding human being.

-- 1. _The Early Stage of Activity_

[Sidenote: 1. The baby's problem determines his thinking]

The sight of a baby often calls out the question: "What do you suppose he is thinking about?" By the nature of the case, the question is unanswerable in detail; but, also by the nature of the case, we may be sure about a baby's chief interest. His primary problem is mastery of his body as a tool of securing comfortable and effective adjustments to his surroundings, physical and social. The child has to learn to do almost everything: to see, to hear, to reach, to handle, to balance the body, to creep, to walk, and so on. Even if it be true that human beings have even more instinctive reactions than lower animals, it is also true that instinctive tendencies are much less perfect in men, and that most of them are of little use till they are intelligently combined and directed. A little chick just out of the sh.e.l.l will after a few trials peck at and grasp grains of food with its beak as well as at any later time. This involves a complicated coordination of the eye and the head.

An infant does not even begin to reach definitely for things that the eye sees till he is several months old, and even then several weeks'

practice is required before he learns the adjustment so as neither to overreach nor to underreach. It may not be literally true that the child will grasp for the moon, but it is true that he needs much practice before he can tell whether an object is within reach or not. The arm is thrust out instinctively in response to a stimulus from the eye, and this tendency is the origin of the ability to reach and grasp exactly and quickly; but nevertheless final mastery requires observing and selecting the successful movements, and arranging them in view of an end. _These operations of conscious selection and arrangement const.i.tute thinking_, though of a rudimentary type.

[Sidenote: Mastery of the body is an intellectual problem]

Since mastery of the bodily organs is necessary for all later developments, such problems are both interesting and important, and solving them supplies a very genuine training of thinking power. The joy the child shows in learning to use his limbs, to translate what he sees into what he handles, to connect sounds with sights, sights with taste and touch, and the rapidity with which intelligence grows in the first year and a half of life (the time during which the more fundamental problems of the use of the organism are mastered), are sufficient evidence that the development of physical control is not a physical but an intellectual achievement.