The Science of Human Nature Part 14

In the various school studies, a ma.s.s 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 a.s.sist 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 a.s.sociation.

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 repet.i.tion 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 subst.i.tute 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 a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sociations to run their course. If one act too soon, before his organized experience has had time to pa.s.s 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 pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.sing of sensory images that arise in accordance with the laws of a.s.sociation.

But man can name things and the attributes of things, and these names become a.s.sociated, 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.n.a.lyze 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 Caesar 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 mult.i.tude of experiences. Then these words become a.s.sociated and organized in accordance with the principles of a.s.sociation 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 attributes and laws that have come out of the organization of our experience.

It is evident that the accuracy of our thinking depends upon these words standing for the _truth_, depends upon whether we have organized our experience in accordance with facts. If our word "Caesar" does not stand for the real Caesar, then all our thinking in which Caesar enters will be incorrect. If our word "justice" does not stand for the real justice, then all our thinking in which justice enters will be incorrect.

This discussion points to the tremendous importance of the organization of experience. Truth is the agreement of our thought with the thing, with reality. We must therefore help the young to see the world clearly and to organize what they see in accordance with the facts and with a view to future use. Then the units of this organized experience are to be tagged, labeled, by means of words, and these words or labels become the vehicles of thought, and the outcome of the thinking depends on the validity of the organization of our experience.

SUMMARY. Thinking is the pa.s.sing of ideas in the mind; its basis is in the a.s.sociation of memory ideas. The basis of a.s.sociation is in original experience, ideas becoming bound together in memory as originally experienced. The factors of a.s.sociation are primacy, recency, frequency, intensity, and mental set or att.i.tude. Reasoning is thinking to a purpose. We can be trained in reasoning by being taught to get vivid experience in the first place and in organizing this experience in helpful ways, having in mind future use.

CLa.s.s EXERCISES

1. A series of experiments should be performed to make clear to the students that the basis of the a.s.sociation of ideas is in _experience_ and not in the nature of the ideas themselves.

(a) Let the students, starting with the same word, write down all the ideas that come to mind in one minute. The teacher should give the initial idea, as sky, hate, music, clock, table, or wind. The first ten ideas coming to each student might be written on the blackboard for study and comparison. Are any series alike? Is the tenth idea in one series the same as that in any other?

(b) For a study of the various factors of a.s.sociation, perform the following experiment: Let the teacher prepare a list of fifty words--nouns and adjectives, such as wood, murder, goodness, bad, death, water, love, angel. Read the words to the cla.s.s and let each student write down the first idea that comes to mind in each case. After the list is finished, let each student try to find out what the determining factor was in each case, whether primacy, frequency, recency, vividness, or mental set. When the study is completed, the student's paper should contain three columns, the first column showing the stimulus words, the second showing the response words, the third showing the determining factors. The first column should be dictated and copied after the response words have been written.

(c) Study the data in (a) and (b), noting the variety of ideas that come to different students for the same stimulus word. It will be seen that they come from a great variety of experiences and from all parts of one's life from childhood to the present, showing that all our experiences are bound together and that we can go from one point to any other, directly or indirectly.

2. Perform an experiment to determine how each member of the cla.s.s thinks, _i.e._ in what kind of imagery. Let each plan a picnic in detail. How do they do it? Do they see it or hear it or seem to act it?

Or does it happen in words merely?

3. Think of the events of yesterday. How do they come to you? Do your images seem to be visual, auditory, motor, or verbal? Do you seem to have all kinds of imagery? Is one kind predominant?

4. Test the cla.s.s for speed of free a.s.sociation as described on page 193. Repeat the experiment at least five times and rank the members of the cla.s.s from the results.

5. Similarly, test speed for controlled a.s.sociation as described on page 195 and rank the members of the cla.s.s.

6. Compare the rankings in Nos. 4 and 5.

7. The teacher can extend the controlled a.s.sociation tests by preparing lists that show different kinds of logical relations with one another, from genus to species, from species to genus, from verb to object, from subject to verb, etc. Do the students maintain the same rank in the various types of experiments? Do the ranks in these tests correspond to the students' ranks in thinking in the school subjects?

8. At least two series of experiments in reasoning should be performed, one to show the nature of reasoning and the other to show the ability of the members of the cla.s.s.

(a) Put several problems to the cla.s.s, similar to the following: What happens to a wet board laid out in the sunshine? Explain. Suppose corn is placed in three vessels, 1, 2, and 3. Number 1 is sealed up air tight and kept warm? Number 2 is kept open and warm? Number 3 is kept open and warm and moist. What happens in each case? Explain.

Condensed milk does not sour as long as the can remains unopened. After the can is opened, the milk sours if allowed to become warm; it does not sour if kept frozen. Why? Two bars of metal are riveted together. One bar is lead, the other iron. What happens when the bars are heated to 150 C? 500 C? 1000 C? 2000 C? Answer the following questions: Is it ever right to steal? To kill a person? To lie? Which are unwise and mistaken, Republicans or Democrats?

In the above, do all come to the same conclusion? Why? Were any unable to come to a conclusion at all on some questions? Why? Do the experiments make it clear that reasoning is dependent upon experience?

(b) Let the teacher prepare five problems in reasoning well within the experience of the cla.s.s, and find the speed and accuracy of the students in solving them. Compare the results with those in the controlled a.s.sociation tests. Test the cla.s.s with various kinds of mechanical puzzles.

9. The students should study several people to ascertain how well those people have their experience organized. Is their experience available?

Can they come to the point immediately, or, are they hazy, uncertain, and impractical?

10. It is claimed that we have two types of people, theoretical and practical. This is to some extent true. What is the explanation?

11. From the point of view of No. 10, compare teachers and engineers.

12. If anything will work in theory, will it work in practice?

13. From what you have learned in the chapter and from the experiments, write a paper on training in reasoning.

14. What are the main defects of the schools with reference to training children to think?

15. Make a complete outline of the chapter.

REFERENCES FOR CLa.s.s READING

COLVIN and BAGLEY: _Human Behavior_, Chapters XVI and XVIII.

DEWEY: _How We Think_, Parts I and III.

MuNSTERBERG: _Psychology, General and Applied_, Chapters VIII and XII; also pp. 192-195.