schools--reading, writing, music, physics, grammar, arithmetic. Drawings
for example, has been taught on the theory that since all pictorial
representation is a matter of combining straight and curved lines, the
simplest procedure is to have the pupil acquire the ability first to
draw straight lines in various positions (horizontal, perpendicular,
diagonals at various angles), then typical curves; and finally, to
combine straight and curved lines in various permutations to construct
actual pictures. This seemed to give the ideal "logical" method,
beginning with analysis into elements, and then proceeding in regular
order to more and more complex syntheses, each element being defined
when used, and thereby clearly understood.
[Sidenote: Formal method]
Even when this method in its extreme form is not followed, few schools
(especially of the middle or upper elementary grades) are free from an
exaggerated attention to forms supposedly employed by the pupil if he
gets his result logically. It is thought that there are certain steps
arranged in a certain order, which express preeminently an understanding
of the subject, and the pupil is made to "analyze" his procedure into
these steps, _i.e._ to learn a certain routine formula of statement.
While this method is usually at its height in grammar and arithmetic, it
invades also history and even literature, which are then reduced, under
plea of intellectual training, to "outlines," diagrams, and schemes of
division and subdivision. In memorizing this simulated cut and dried
copy of the logic of an adult, the child generally is induced to
stultify his own subtle and vital logical movement. The adoption by
teachers of this misconception of logical method has probably done more
than anything else to bring pedagogy into disrepute; for to many persons
"pedagogy" means precisely a set of mechanical, self-conscious devices
for replacing by some cast-iron external scheme the personal mental
movement of the individual.
[Sidenote: Reaction toward lack of form and method]
A reaction inevitably occurs from the poor results that accrue from
these professedly "logical" methods. Lack of interest in study, habits
of inattention and procrastination, positive aversion to intellectual
application, dependence upon sheer memorizing and mechanical routine
with only a modicum of understanding by the pupil of what he is about,
show that the theory of logical definition, division, gradation, and
system does not work out practically as it is theoretically supposed to
work. The consequent disposition--as in every reaction--is to go to the
opposite extreme. The "logical" is thought to be wholly artificial and
extraneous; teacher and pupil alike are to turn their backs upon it, and
to work toward the expression of existing aptitudes and tastes. Emphasis
upon natural tendencies and powers as the only possible starting-point
of development is indeed wholesome. But the reaction is false, and hence
misleading, in what it ignores and denies: the presence of genuinely
intellectual factors in existing powers and interests.
[Sidenote: Logic of subject-matter is logic of adult or trained mind]
What is conventionally termed logical (namely, the logical from the
standpoint of subject-matter) represents in truth the logic of the
trained adult mind. Ability to divide a subject, to define its elements,
and to group them into classes according to general principles
represents logical capacity at its best point reached _after_ thorough
training. The mind that habitually exhibits skill in divisions,
definitions, generalizations, and systematic recapitulations no longer
needs training in logical methods. But it is absurd to suppose that a
mind which needs training because it cannot perform these operations
can begin where the expert mind stops. _The logical from the standpoint
of subject-matter represents the goal, the last term of training, not
the point of departure._
[Sidenote: The immature mind has its own logic]
[Sidenote: Hence, the _psychological_ and the _logical_ represent the
two ends of the same movement]
In truth, the mind at every stage of development has its own logic. The
error of the notion that by appeal to spontaneous tendencies and by
multiplication of materials we may completely dismiss logical
considerations, lies in overlooking how large a part curiosity,
inference, experimenting, and testing already play in the pupil's life.
Therefore it underestimates the _intellectual_ factor in the more
spontaneous play and work of individuals--the factor that alone is truly
educative. Any teacher who is alive to the modes of thought naturally
operative in the experience of the normal child will have no difficulty
in avoiding the identification of the logical with a ready-made
organization of subject-matter, as well as the notion that the only way
to escape this error is to pay no attention to logical considerations.
Such a teacher will have no difficulty in seeing that the real problem
of intellectual education is the transformation of natural powers into
expert, tested powers: the transformation of more or less casual
curiosity and sporadic suggestion into attitudes of alert, cautious, and
thorough inquiry. He will see that the _psychological_ and the
_logical_, instead of being opposed to each other (or even independent
of each other), are connected _as the earlier and the later stages in
one continuous process of normal growth_. The natural or psychological
activities, even when not consciously controlled by logical
considerations, have their own intellectual function and integrity;
conscious and deliberate skill in thinking, when it is achieved, makes
habitual or second nature. The first is already logical in spirit; the
last, in presenting an ingrained disposition and attitude, is then as
_psychological_ (as personal) as any caprice or chance impulse could be.
Sec. 2. _Discipline and Freedom_
[Sidenote: True and false notions of discipline]
Discipline of mind is thus, in truth, a result rather than a cause. Any
mind is disciplined in a subject in which independent intellectual
initiative and control have been achieved. Discipline represents
original native endowment turned, through gradual exercise, into
effective power. So far as a mind is disciplined, control of method in a
given subject has been attained so that the mind is able to manage
itself independently without external tutelage. The aim of education is
precisely to develop intelligence of this independent and effective
type--a _disciplined mind_. Discipline is positive and constructive.
[Sidenote: Discipline as drill]
Discipline, however, is frequently regarded as something negative--as a
painfully disagreeable forcing of mind away from channels congenial to
it into channels of constraint, a process grievous at the time but
necessary as preparation for a more or less remote future. Discipline is
then generally identified with drill; and drill is conceived after the
mechanical analogy of driving, by unremitting blows, a foreign substance
into a resistant material; or is imaged after the analogy of the
mechanical routine by which raw recruits are trained to a soldierly
bearing and habits that are naturally wholly foreign to their
possessors. Training of this latter sort, whether it be called
discipline or not, is not mental discipline. Its aim and result are not
_habits of thinking_, but uniform _external modes of action_. By failing
to ask what he means by discipline, many a teacher is misled into
supposing that he is developing mental force and efficiency by methods
which in fact restrict and deaden intellectual activity, and which tend
to create mechanical routine, or mental passivity and servility.
[Sidenote: As independent power or freedom]
[Sidenote: Freedom and external spontaneity]
When discipline is conceived in intellectual terms (as the habitual
power of effective mental attack), it is identified with freedom in its
true sense. For freedom of mind means mental power capable of
independent exercise, emancipated from the leading strings of others,
not mere unhindered external operation. When spontaneity or naturalness
is identified with more or less casual discharge of transitory impulses,
the tendency of the educator is to supply a multitude of stimuli in
order that spontaneous activity may be kept up. All sorts of interesting
materials, equipments, tools, modes of activity, are provided in order
that there may be no flagging of free self-expression. This method
overlooks some of the essential conditions of the attainment of genuine
freedom.
[Sidenote: Some obstacle necessary for thought]
(_a_) Direct immediate discharge or expression of an impulsive tendency
is fatal to thinking. Only when the impulse is to some extent checked
and thrown back upon itself does reflection ensue. It is, indeed, a
stupid error to suppose that arbitrary tasks must be imposed from
without in order to furnish the factor of perplexity and difficulty
which is the necessary cue to thought. Every vital activity of any depth
and range inevitably meets obstacles in the course of its effort to
realize itself--a fact that renders the search for artificial or
external problems quite superfluous. The difficulties that present
themselves within the development of an experience are, however, to be
cherished by the educator, not minimized, for they are the natural
stimuli to reflective inquiry. Freedom does not consist in keeping up
uninterrupted and unimpeded external activity, but is something achieved
through conquering, by personal reflection, a way out of the
difficulties that prevent an immediate overflow and a spontaneous
success.
[Sidenote: Intellectual factors are _natural_]
(_b_) The method that emphasizes the psychological and natural, but yet
fails to see what an important part of the natural tendencies is
constituted at every period of growth by curiosity, inference, and the
desire to test, cannot secure a _natural development_. In natural growth
each successive stage of activity prepares unconsciously, but
thoroughly, the conditions for the manifestation of the next stage--as
in the cycle of a plant's growth. There is no ground for assuming that
"thinking" is a special, isolated natural tendency that will bloom
inevitably in due season simply because various sense and motor
activities have been freely manifested before; or because observation,
memory, imagination, and manual skill have been previously exercised
without thought. Only when thinking is constantly employed in using the
senses and muscles for the guidance and application of observations and
movements, is the way prepared for subsequent higher types of thinking.
[Sidenote: Genesis of thought contemporaneous with genesis of any human
mental activity]
At present, the notion is current that childhood is almost entirely
unreflective--a period of mere sensory, motor, and memory development,
while adolescence suddenly brings the manifestation of thought and
reason.
Adolescence is not, however, a synonym for magic. Doubtless youth should
bring with it an enlargement of the horizon of childhood, a
susceptibility to larger concerns and issues, a more generous and a more
general standpoint toward nature and social life. This development
affords an opportunity for thinking of a more comprehensive and
abstract type than has previously obtained. But thinking itself remains
just what it has been all the time: a matter of following up and testing
the conclusions suggested by the facts and events of life. Thinking
begins as soon as the baby who has lost the ball that he is playing with
begins to foresee the possibility of something not yet existing--its
recovery; and begins to forecast steps toward the realization of this
possibility, and, by experimentation, to guide his acts by his ideas and
thereby also test the ideas. Only by making the most of the
thought-factor, already active in the experiences of childhood, is there
any promise or warrant for the emergence of superior reflective power at
adolescence, or at any later period.
[Sidenote: Fixation of bad mental habits]
(_c_) In any case _positive habits are being formed_: if not habits of
careful looking into things, then habits of hasty, heedless, impatient
glancing over the surface; if not habits of consecutively following up
the suggestions that occur, then habits of haphazard, grasshopper-like
guessing; if not habits of suspending judgment till inferences have been
tested by the examination of evidence, then habits of credulity
alternating with flippant incredulity, belief or unbelief being based,
in either case, upon whim, emotion, or accidental circumstances. The
only way to achieve traits of carefulness, thoroughness, and continuity
(traits that are, as we have seen, the elements of the "logical") is by
exercising these traits from the beginning, and by seeing to it that
conditions call for their exercise.
[Sidenote: Genuine freedom is intellectual, not external]
Genuine freedom, in short, is intellectual; it rests in the trained
_power of thought_, in ability to "turn things over," to look at matters
deliberately, to judge whether the amount and kind of evidence requisite
for decision is at hand, and if not, to tell where and how to seek such
evidence. If a man's actions are not guided by thoughtful conclusions,
then they are guided by inconsiderate impulse, unbalanced appetite,
caprice, or the circumstances of the moment. To cultivate unhindered,
unreflective external activity is to foster enslavement, for it leaves
the person at the mercy of appetite, sense, and circumstance.
PART TWO: LOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS
CHAPTER SIX
THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT
[Sidenote: Object of Part Two]
After a brief consideration in the first chapter of the nature of
reflective thinking, we turned, in the second, to the need for its
training. Then we took up the resources, the difficulties, and the aim
of its training. The purpose of this discussion was to set before the
student the general problem of the training of mind. The purport of the
second part, upon which we are now entering, is giving a fuller
statement of the nature and normal growth of thinking, preparatory to
considering in the concluding part the special problems that arise in
connection with its education.
In this chapter we shall make an analysis of the process of thinking
into its steps or elementary constituents, basing the analysis upon
descriptions of a number of extremely simple, but genuine, cases of
reflective experience.[13]
[13] These are taken, almost verbatim, from the class papers of
students.
[Sidenote: A simple case of practical deliberation]
1. "The other day when I was down town on 16th Street a clock caught my
eye. I saw that the hands pointed to 12.20. This suggested that I had an
engagement at 124th Street, at one o'clock. I reasoned that as it had
taken me an hour to come down on a surface car, I should probably be
twenty minutes late if I returned the same way. I might save twenty
minutes by a subway express. But was there a station near? If not, I
might lose more than twenty minutes in looking for one. Then I thought
of the elevated, and I saw there was such a line within two blocks. But
where was the station? If it were several blocks above or below the
street I was on, I should lose time instead of gaining it. My mind went
back to the subway express as quicker than the elevated; furthermore, I
remembered that it went nearer than the elevated to the part of 124th
Street I wished to reach, so that time would be saved at the end of the
journey. I concluded in favor of the subway, and reached my destination
by one o'clock."
[Sidenote: A simple case of reflection upon an observation]
2. "Projecting nearly horizontally from the upper deck of the ferryboat
on which I daily cross the river, is a long white pole, bearing a gilded
ball at its tip. It suggested a flagpole when I first saw it; its color,
shape, and gilded ball agreed with this idea, and these reasons seemed
to justify me in this belief. But soon difficulties presented
themselves. The pole was nearly horizontal, an unusual position for a
flagpole; in the next place, there was no pulley, ring, or cord by which
to attach a flag; finally, there were elsewhere two vertical staffs from
which flags were occasionally flown. It seemed probable that the pole
was not there for flag-flying.
"I then tried to imagine all possible purposes of such a pole, and to
consider for which of these it was best suited: (_a_) Possibly it was an
ornament. But as all the ferryboats and even the tugboats carried like
poles, this hypothesis was rejected. (_b_) Possibly it was the terminal
of a wireless telegraph. But the same considerations made this
improbable. Besides, the more natural place for such a terminal would be
the highest part of the boat, on top of the pilot house. (_c_) Its
purpose might be to point out the direction in which the boat is moving.
"In support of this conclusion, I discovered that the pole was lower
than the pilot house, so that the steersman could easily see it.
Moreover, the tip was enough higher than the base, so that, from the
pilot's position, it must appear to project far out in front of the
boat. Moreover, the pilot being near the front of the boat, he would
need some such guide as to its direction. Tugboats would also need poles
for such a purpose. This hypothesis was so much more probable than the
others that I accepted it. I formed the conclusion that the pole was set
up for the purpose of showing the pilot the direction in which the boat
pointed, to enable him to steer correctly."
[Sidenote: A simple case of reflection involving experiment]
3. "In washing tumblers in hot soapsuds and placing them mouth downward
on a plate, bubbles appeared on the outside of the mouth of the tumblers
and then went inside. Why? The presence of bubbles suggests air, which I
note must come from inside the tumbler. I see that the soapy water on
the plate prevents escape of the air save as it may be caught in
bubbles. But why should air leave the tumbler? There was no substance
entering to force it out. It must have expanded. It expands by increase
of heat or by decrease of pressure, or by both. Could the air have
become heated after the tumbler was taken from the hot suds? Clearly not
the air that was already entangled in the water. If heated air was the
cause, cold air must have entered in transferring the tumblers from the
suds to the plate. I test to see if this supposition is true by taking
several more tumblers out. Some I shake so as to make sure of entrapping
cold air in them. Some I take out holding mouth downward in order to
prevent cold air from entering. Bubbles appear on the outside of every
one of the former and on none of the latter. I must be right in my
inference. Air from the outside must have been expanded by the heat of
the tumbler, which explains the appearance of the bubbles on the
outside.
"But why do they then go inside? Cold contracts. The tumbler cooled and
also the air inside it. Tension was removed, and hence bubbles appeared
inside. To be sure of this, I test by placing a cup of ice on the
tumbler while the bubbles are still forming outside. They soon reverse."
[Sidenote: The three cases form a series]
These three cases have been purposely selected so as to form a series
from the more rudimentary to more complicated cases of reflection. The
first illustrates the kind of thinking done by every one during the
day's business, in which neither the data, nor the ways of dealing with
them, take one outside the limits of everyday experience. The last
furnishes a case in which neither problem nor mode of solution would
have been likely to occur except to one with some prior scientific
training. The second case forms a natural transition; its materials lie
well within the bounds of everyday, unspecialized experience; but the
problem, instead of being directly involved in the person's business,
arises indirectly out of his activity, and accordingly appeals to a
somewhat theoretic and impartial interest. We shall deal, in a later
chapter, with the evolution of abstract thinking out of that which is
relatively practical and direct; here we are concerned only with the
common elements found in all the types.
[Sidenote: Five distinct steps in reflection]
Upon examination, each instance reveals, more or less clearly, five
logically distinct steps: (_i_) a felt difficulty; (_ii_) its location
and definition; (_iii_) suggestion of possible solution; (_iv_)
development by reasoning of the bearings of the suggestion; (_v_)
further observation and experiment leading to its acceptance or
rejection; that is, the conclusion of belief or disbelief.
[Sidenote: 1. The occurrence of a difficulty]
[Sidenote: (_a_) in the lack of adaptation of means to end]
1. The first and second steps frequently fuse into one. The difficulty
may be felt with sufficient definiteness as to set the mind at once
speculating upon its probable solution, or an undefined uneasiness and
shock may come first, leading only later to definite attempt to find out
what is the matter. Whether the two steps are distinct or blended, there
is the factor emphasized in our original account of reflection--_viz._
the perplexity or problem. In the first of the three cases cited, the
difficulty resides in the conflict between conditions at hand and a
desired and intended result, between an end and the means for reaching
it. The purpose of keeping an engagement at a certain time, and the
existing hour taken in connection with the location, are not congruous.
The object of thinking is to introduce congruity between the two. The
given conditions cannot themselves be altered; time will not go backward
nor will the distance between 16th Street and 124th Street shorten
itself. The problem is _the discovery of intervening terms which when
inserted between the remoter end and the given means will harmonize them
with each other_.
[Sidenote: (_b_) in identifying the character of an object]
In the second case, the difficulty experienced is the incompatibility of
a suggested and (temporarily) accepted belief that the pole is a
flagpole, with certain other facts. Suppose we symbolize the qualities
that suggest _flagpole_ by the letters _a_, _b_, _c_; those that oppose
this suggestion by the letters _p_, _q_, _r_. There is, of course,
nothing inconsistent in the qualities themselves; but in pulling the
mind to different and incongruous conclusions they conflict--hence the
problem. Here the object is the discovery of some object (_O_), of which
_a_, _b_, _c_, and _p_, _q_, _r_, may all be appropriate traits--just
as, in our first case, it is to discover a course of action which will
combine existing conditions and a remoter result in a single whole. The
method of solution is also the same: discovery of intermediate qualities
(the position of the pilot house, of the pole, the need of an index to
the boat's direction) symbolized by _d_, _g_, _l_, _o_, which bind
together otherwise incompatible traits.
[Sidenote: (_c_) in explaining an unexpected event]
In the third case, an observer trained to the idea of natural laws or
uniformities finds something odd or exceptional in the behavior of the
bubbles. The problem is to reduce the apparent anomalies to instances of
well-established laws. Here the method of solution is also to seek for
intermediary terms which will connect, by regular linkage, the seemingly
extraordinary movements of the bubbles with the conditions known to
follow from processes supposed to be operative.
[Sidenote: 2. Definition of the difficulty]
2. As already noted, the first two steps, the feeling of a discrepancy,
or difficulty, and the acts of observation that serve to define the
character of the difficulty may, in a given instance, telescope
together. In cases of striking novelty or unusual perplexity, the
difficulty, however, is likely to present itself at first as a shock,
as emotional disturbance, as a more or less vague feeling of the
unexpected, of something queer, strange, funny, or disconcerting. In
such instances, there are necessary observations deliberately calculated
to bring to light just what is the trouble, or to make clear the
specific character of the problem. In large measure, the existence or
non-existence of this step makes the difference between reflection
proper, or safeguarded _critical_ inference and uncontrolled thinking.
Where sufficient pains to locate the difficulty are not taken,
suggestions for its resolution must be more or less random. Imagine a
doctor called in to prescribe for a patient. The patient tells him some
things that are wrong; his experienced eye, at a glance, takes in other
signs of a certain disease. But if he permits the suggestion of this
special disease to take possession prematurely of his mind, to become an
accepted conclusion, his scientific thinking is by that much cut short.
A large part of his technique, as a skilled practitioner, is to prevent
the acceptance of the first suggestions that arise; even, indeed, to
postpone the occurrence of any very definite suggestion till the
trouble--the nature of the problem--has been thoroughly explored. In the
case of a physician this proceeding is known as diagnosis, but a similar
inspection is required in every novel and complicated situation to
prevent rushing to a conclusion. The essence of critical thinking is
suspended judgment; and the essence of this suspense is inquiry to
determine the nature of the problem before proceeding to attempts at its
solution. This, more than any other thing, transforms mere inference
into tested inference, suggested conclusions into proof.
[Sidenote: 3. Occurrence of a suggested explanation or possible
solution]
3. The third factor is suggestion. The situation in which the
perplexity occurs calls up something not present to the senses: the
present location, the thought of subway or elevated train; the stick
before the eyes, the idea of a flagpole, an ornament, an apparatus for
wireless telegraphy; the soap bubbles, the law of expansion of bodies
through heat and of their contraction through cold. (_a_) Suggestion is
the very heart of inference; it involves going from what is present to
something absent. Hence, it is more or less speculative, adventurous.
Since inference goes beyond what is actually present, it involves a
leap, a jump, the propriety of which cannot be absolutely warranted in
advance, no matter what precautions be taken. Its control is indirect,
on the one hand, involving the formation of habits of mind which are at
once enterprising and cautious; and on the other hand, involving the
selection and arrangement of the particular facts upon perception of
which suggestion issues. (_b_) The suggested conclusion so far as it is
not accepted but only tentatively entertained constitutes an idea.
Synonyms for this are _supposition_, _conjecture_, _guess_,
_hypothesis_, and (in elaborate cases) _theory_. Since suspended belief,
or the postponement of a final conclusion pending further evidence,
depends partly upon the presence of rival conjectures as to the best
course to pursue or the probable explanation to favor, _cultivation of a
variety of alternative suggestions_ is an important factor in good
thinking.
[Sidenote: 4. The rational elaboration of an idea]
4. The process of developing the bearings--or, as they are more
technically termed, the _implications_--of any idea with respect to any
problem, is termed _reasoning_.[14] As an idea is inferred from given
facts, so reasoning sets out from an idea. The _idea_ of elevated road
is developed into the idea of difficulty of locating station, length of
time occupied on the journey, distance of station at the other end from
place to be reached. In the second case, the implication of a flagpole
is seen to be a vertical position; of a wireless apparatus, location on
a high part of the ship and, moreover, absence from every casual
tugboat; while the idea of index to direction in which the boat moves,
when developed, is found to cover all the details of the case.
[14] This term is sometimes extended to denote the entire reflective
process--just as _inference_ (which in the sense of _test_ is best
reserved for the third step) is sometimes used in the same broad
sense. But _reasoning_ (or _ratiocination_) seems to be peculiarly
adapted to express what the older writers called the "notional" or
"dialectic" process of developing the meaning of a given idea.
Reasoning has the same effect upon a suggested solution as more intimate
and extensive observation has upon the original problem. Acceptance of
the suggestion in its first form is prevented by looking into it more
thoroughly. Conjectures that seem plausible at first sight are often
found unfit or even absurd when their full consequences are traced out.
Even when reasoning out the bearings of a supposition does not lead to
rejection, it develops the idea into a form in which it is more apposite
to the problem. Only when, for example, the conjecture that a pole was
an index-pole had been thought out into its bearings could its
particular applicability to the case in hand be judged. Suggestions at
first seemingly remote and wild are frequently so transformed by being
elaborated into what follows from them as to become apt and fruitful.
The development of an idea through reasoning helps at least to supply
the intervening or intermediate terms that link together into a
consistent whole apparently discrepant extremes (_ante_, p. 72).
[Sidenote: 5. Corroboration of an idea and formation of a concluding
belief]
5. The concluding and conclusive step is some kind of _experimental
corroboration_, or verification, of the conjectural idea. Reasoning
shows that _if_ the idea be adopted, certain consequences follow. So far
the conclusion is hypothetical or conditional. If we look and find
present all the conditions demanded by the theory, and if we find the
characteristic traits called for by rival alternatives to be lacking,
the tendency to believe, to accept, is almost irresistible. Sometimes
direct observation furnishes corroboration, as in the case of the pole
on the boat. In other cases, as in that of the bubbles, experiment is
required; that is, _conditions are deliberately arranged in accord with
the requirements of an idea or hypothesis to see if the results
theoretically indicated by the idea actually occur_. If it is found that
the experimental results agree with the theoretical, or rationally
deduced, results, and if there is reason to believe that _only_ the
conditions in question would yield such results, the confirmation is so
strong as to induce a conclusion--at least until contrary facts shall
indicate the advisability of its revision.
[Sidenote: Thinking comes between observations at the beginning and at
the end]
Observation exists at the beginning and again at the end of the process:
at the beginning, to determine more definitely and precisely the nature
of the difficulty to be dealt with; at the end, to test the value of
some hypothetically entertained conclusion. Between those two termini of
observation, we find the more distinctively _mental_ aspects of the
entire thought-cycle: (_i_) inference, the suggestion of an explanation
or solution; and (_ii_) reasoning, the development of the bearings and
implications of the suggestion. Reasoning requires some experimental
observation to confirm it, while experiment can be economically and
fruitfully conducted only on the basis of an idea that has been
tentatively developed by reasoning.
[Sidenote: The trained mind one that judges the extent of each step
advisable in a given situation]
The disciplined, or logically trained, mind--the aim of the educative
process--is the mind able to judge how far each of these steps needs to
be carried in any particular situation. No cast-iron rules can be laid
down. Each case has to be dealt with as it arises, on the basis of its
importance and of the context in which it occurs. To take too much pains
in one case is as foolish--as illogical--as to take too little in
another. At one extreme, almost any conclusion that insures prompt and
unified action may be better than any long delayed conclusion; while at
the other, decision may have to be postponed for a long period--perhaps
for a lifetime. The trained mind is the one that best grasps the degree
of observation, forming of ideas, reasoning, and experimental testing
required in any special case, and that profits the most, in future
thinking, by mistakes made in the past. What is important is that the
mind should be sensitive to problems and skilled in methods of attack
and solution.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION
Sec. 1. _The Double Movement of Reflection_
[Sidenote: Back and forth between facts and meanings]
The characteristic outcome of thinking we saw to be the organization of
facts and conditions which, just as they stand, are isolated,
fragmentary, and discrepant, the organization being effected through the
introduction of connecting links, or middle terms. The facts as they
stand are the data, the raw material of reflection; their lack of
coherence perplexes and stimulates to reflection. There follows the
suggestion of some meaning which, _if_ it can be substantiated, will
give a whole in which various fragmentary and seemingly incompatible
data find their proper place. The meaning suggested supplies a mental
platform, an intellectual point of view, from which to note and define
the data more carefully, to seek for additional observations, and to
institute, experimentally, changed conditions.
[Sidenote: Inductive and deductive]
There is thus a double movement in all reflection: a movement from the
given partial and confused data to a suggested comprehensive (or
inclusive) entire situation; and back from this suggested whole--which
as suggested is a _meaning_, an idea--to the particular facts, so as to
connect these with one another and with additional facts to which the
suggestion has directed attention. Roughly speaking, the first of these
movements is inductive; the second deductive. A complete act of thought
involves both--it involves, that is, a fruitful interaction of observed
(or recollected) particular considerations and of inclusive and
far-reaching (general) meanings.
[Sidenote: Hurry _versus_ caution]
This double movement _to_ and _from_ a meaning may occur, however, in a
casual, uncritical way, or in a cautious and regulated manner. To think
means, in any case, to bridge a gap in experience, to bind together
facts or deeds otherwise isolated. But we may make only a hurried jump
from one consideration to another, allowing our aversion to mental
disquietude to override the gaps; or, we may insist upon noting the road
traveled in making connections. We may, in short, accept readily any
suggestion that seems plausible; or we may hunt out additional factors,
new difficulties, to see whether the suggested conclusion really ends
the matter. The latter method involves definite formulation of the
connecting links; the statement of a principle, or, in logical phrase,
the use of a universal. If we thus formulate the whole situation, the
original data are transformed into premises of reasoning; the final
belief is a logical or _rational_ conclusion, not a mere _de facto_
termination.
[Sidenote: Continuity of relationship the mark of the latter]
The importance of _connections binding isolated items into a coherent
single whole_ is embodied in all the phrases that denote the relation of
premises and conclusions to each other. (1) The premises are called
grounds, foundations, bases, and are said to underlie, uphold, support
the conclusion. (2) We "descend" from the premises to the conclusion,
and "ascend" or "mount" in the opposite direction--as a river may be
continuously traced from source to sea or vice versa. So the conclusion
springs, flows, or is drawn from its premises. (3) The conclusion--as
the word itself implies--closes, shuts in, locks up together the various
factors stated in the premises. We say that the premises "contain" the
conclusion, and that the conclusion "contains" the premises, thereby
marking our sense of the inclusive and comprehensive unity in which the
elements of reasoning are bound tightly together.[15] Systematic
inference, in short, means the _recognition of definite relations of
interdependence between considerations previously unorganized and
disconnected, this recognition being brought about by the discovery and
insertion of new facts and properties_.
[15] See Vailati, _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific
Methods_, Vol. V, No. 12.
[Sidenote: Scientific induction and deduction]
This more systematic thinking is, however, like the cruder forms in its
double movement, the movement _toward_ the suggestion or hypothesis and
the movement _back_ to facts. The difference is in the greater conscious
care with which each phase of the process is performed. _The conditions
under which suggestions are allowed to spring up and develop are
regulated._ Hasty acceptance of any idea that is plausible, that seems
to solve the difficulty, is changed into a conditional acceptance
pending further inquiry. The idea is accepted as a _working hypothesis_,
as something to guide investigation and bring to light new facts, not as
a final conclusion. When pains are taken to make each aspect of the
movement as accurate as possible, the movement toward building up the
idea is known as _inductive discovery_ (_induction_, for short); the
movement toward developing, applying, and testing, as _deductive proof_
(_deduction_, for short).
[Sidenote: Particular and universal]
While induction moves from fragmentary details (or particulars) to a
connected view of a situation (universal), deduction begins with the
latter and works back again to particulars, connecting them and binding
them together. The inductive movement is toward _discovery_ of a binding
principle; the deductive toward its _testing_--confirming, refuting,
modifying it on the basis of its capacity to interpret isolated details
into a unified experience. So far as we conduct each of these processes
in the light of the other, we get valid discovery or verified critical
thinking.
[Sidenote: Illustration from everyday experience]
A commonplace illustration may enforce the points of this formula. A man
who has left his rooms in order finds them upon his return in a state of
confusion, articles being scattered at random. Automatically, the notion
comes to his mind that burglary would account for the disorder. He has
not seen the burglars; their presence is not a fact of observation, but
is a thought, an idea. Moreover, the man has no special burglars in
mind; it is the _relation_, the meaning of burglary--something
general--that comes to mind. The state of his room is perceived and is
particular, definite,--exactly as it is; burglars are inferred, and have
a general status. The state of the room is a _fact_, certain and
speaking for itself; the presence of burglars is a possible _meaning_
which may explain the facts.
[Sidenote: of induction,]
So far there is an inductive tendency, suggested by particular and
present facts. In the same inductive way, it occurs to him that his
children are mischievous, and that they may have thrown the things
about. This rival hypothesis (or conditional principle of explanation)
prevents him from dogmatically accepting the first suggestion. Judgment
is held in suspense and a positive conclusion postponed.
[Sidenote: of deduction]
Then deductive movement begins. Further observations, recollections,
reasonings are conducted on the basis of a development of the ideas
suggested: _if_ burglars were responsible, such and such things would
have happened; articles of value would be missing. Here the man is going
from a general principle or relation to special features that accompany
it, to particulars,--not back, however, merely to the original
particulars (which would be fruitless or take him in a circle), but to
new details, the actual discovery or nondiscovery of which will test the
principle. The man turns to a box of valuables; some things are gone;
some, however, are still there. Perhaps he has himself removed the
missing articles, but has forgotten it. His experiment is not a decisive
test. He thinks of the silver in the sideboard--the children would not
have taken that nor would he absent-mindedly have changed its place. He
looks; all the solid ware is gone. The conception of burglars is
confirmed; examination of windows and doors shows that they have been
tampered with. Belief culminates; the original isolated facts have been
woven into a coherent fabric. The idea first suggested (inductively) has
been employed to reason out hypothetically certain additional
particulars not yet experienced, that _ought_ to be there, if the
suggestion is correct. Then new acts of observation have shown that the
particulars theoretically called for are present, and by this process
the hypothesis is strengthened, corroborated. This moving back and forth
between the observed facts and the conditional idea is kept up till a
coherent experience of an object is substituted for the experience of
conflicting details--or else the whole matter is given up as a bad job.
[Sidenote: Science is the same operations carefully performed]
Sciences exemplify similar attitudes and operations, but with a higher
degree of elaboration of the instruments of caution, exactness and
thoroughness. This greater elaboration brings about specialization, an
accurate marking off of various types of problems from one another, and
a corresponding segregation and classification of the materials of
experience associated with each type of problem. We shall devote the
remainder of this chapter to a consideration of the devices by which the
discovery, the development, and the testing of meanings are
scientifically carried on.
Sec. 2. _Guidance of the Inductive Movement_
[Sidenote: Guidance is indirect]
Control of the formation of suggestion is necessarily _indirect_, not
direct; imperfect, not perfect. Just because all discovery, all
apprehension involving thought of the new, goes from the known, the
present, to the unknown and absent, no rules can be stated that will
guarantee correct inference. Just what is suggested to a person in a
given situation depends upon his native constitution (his originality,
his genius), temperament, the prevalent direction of his interests, his
early environment, the general tenor of his past experiences, his
special training, the things that have recently occupied him
continuously or vividly, and so on; to some extent even upon an
accidental conjunction of present circumstances. These matters, so far
as they lie in the past or in external conditions, clearly escape
regulation. A suggestion simply does or does not occur; this or that
suggestion just happens, occurs, springs up. If, however, prior
experience and training have developed an attitude of patience in a
condition of doubt, a capacity for suspended judgment, and a liking for
inquiry, _indirect_ control of the course of suggestions is possible.
The individual may return upon, revise, restate, enlarge, and analyze
_the facts out of which suggestion springs_. Inductive methods, in the
technical sense, all have to do with regulating the conditions under
which _observation, memory, and the acceptance of the testimony of
others_ (_the operations supplying the raw data_) proceed.
[Sidenote: Method of indirect regulation]
Given the facts _A B C D_ on one side and certain individual habits on
the other, suggestion occurs automatically. But if the facts _A B C D_
are carefully looked into and thereby resolved into the facts _A' B'' R
S_, a suggestion will automatically present itself different from that
called up by the facts in their first form. To inventory the facts, to
describe exactly and minutely their respective traits, to magnify
artificially those that are obscure and feeble, to reduce artificially
those that are so conspicuous and glaring as to be distracting,--these
are ways of modifying the facts that exercise suggestive force, and
thereby indirectly guiding the formation of suggested inferences.
[Sidenote: Illustration from diagnosis]
Consider, for example, how a physician makes his diagnosis--his
inductive interpretation. If he is scientifically trained, he
suspends--postpones--reaching a conclusion in order that he may not be
led by superficial occurrences into a snap judgment. Certain conspicuous
phenomena may forcibly suggest typhoid, but he avoids a conclusion, or
even any strong preference for this or that conclusion until he has
greatly (_i_) _enlarged_ the scope of his data, and (_ii_) rendered them
more _minute_. He not only questions the patient as to his feelings and
as to his acts prior to the disease, but by various manipulations with
his hands (and with instruments made for the purpose) brings to light a
large number of facts of which the patient is quite unaware. The state
of temperature, respiration, and heart-action is accurately noted, and
their fluctuations from time to time are exactly recorded. Until this
examination has worked _out_ toward a wider collection and _in_ toward a
minuter scrutiny of details, inference is deferred.
[Sidenote: Summary: definition of scientific induction]
Scientific induction means, in short, _all the processes by which the
observing and amassing of data are regulated with a view to facilitating
the formation of explanatory conceptions and theories_. These devices
are all directed toward selecting the precise facts to which weight and
significance shall attach in forming suggestions or ideas. Specifically,
this selective determination involves devices of (1) elimination by
analysis of what is likely to be misleading and irrelevant, (2) emphasis
of the important by collection and comparison of cases, (3) deliberate
construction of data by experimental variation.
[Sidenote: Elimination of irrelevant meanings]
(1) It is a common saying that one must learn to discriminate between
observed facts and judgments based upon them. Taken literally, such
advice cannot be carried out; in every observed thing there is--if the
thing have any meaning at all--some consolidation of meaning with what
is sensibly and physically present, such that, if this were entirely
excluded, what is left would have no sense. A says: "I saw my brother."
The term _brother_, however, involves a relation that cannot be sensibly
or physically observed; it is inferential in status. If A contents
himself with saying, "I saw a man," the factor of classification, of
intellectual reference, is less complex, but still exists. If, as a last
resort, A were to say, "Anyway, I saw a colored object," some
relationship, though more rudimentary and undefined, still subsists.
Theoretically, it is possible that no object was there, only an unusual
mode of nerve stimulation. None the less, the advice to discriminate
what is observed from what is inferred is sound practical advice. Its
working import is that one should eliminate or exclude _those_
inferences as to which experience has shown that there is greatest
liability to error. This, of course, is a relative matter. Under
ordinary circumstances no reasonable doubt would attach to the
observation, "I see my brother"; it would be pedantic and silly to
resolve this recognition back into a more elementary form. Under other
circumstances it might be a perfectly genuine question as to whether A
saw even a colored _thing_, or whether the color was due to a
stimulation of the sensory optical apparatus (like "seeing stars" upon a
blow) or to a disordered circulation. In general, the scientific man is
one who knows that he is likely to be hurried to a conclusion, and that
part of this precipitancy is due to certain habits which tend to make
him "read" certain meanings into the situation that confronts him, so
that he must be on the lookout against errors arising from his
interests, habits, and current preconceptions.
[Sidenote: The technique of conclusion]
The technique of scientific inquiry thus consists in various processes
that tend to exclude over-hasty "reading in" of meanings; devices that
aim to give a purely "objective" unbiased rendering of the data to be
interpreted. Flushed cheeks usually mean heightened temperature;
paleness means lowered temperature. The clinical thermometer records
automatically the actual temperature and hence checks up the habitual
associations that might lead to error in a given case. All the
instrumentalities of observation--the various -meters and -graphs
and -scopes--fill a part of their scientific role in helping to eliminate
meanings supplied because of habit, prejudice, the strong momentary
preoccupation of excitement and anticipation, and by the vogue of
existing theories. Photographs, phonographs, kymographs, actinographs,
seismographs, plethysmographs, and the like, moreover, give records that
are permanent, so that they can be employed by different persons, and by
the same person in different states of mind, _i.e._ under the influence
of varying expectations and dominant beliefs. Thus purely personal
prepossessions (due to habit, to desire, to after-effects of recent
experience) may be largely eliminated. In ordinary language, the facts
are _objectively_, rather than _subjectively_, determined. In this way
tendencies to premature interpretation are held in check.
[Sidenote: Collection of instances]
(2) Another important method of control consists in the multiplication
of cases or instances. If I doubt whether a certain handful gives a fair
sample, or representative, for purposes of judging value, of a whole
carload of grain, I take a number of handfuls from various parts of the
car and compare them. If they agree in quality, well and good; if they
disagree, we try to get enough samples so that when they are thoroughly
mixed the result will be a fair basis for an evaluation. This
illustration represents roughly the value of that aspect of scientific
control in induction which insists upon multiplying observations instead
of basing the conclusion upon one or a few cases.
[Sidenote: This method not the whole of induction]
So prominent, indeed, is this aspect of inductive method that it is
frequently treated as the whole of induction. It is supposed that all
inductive inference is based upon collecting and comparing a number of
like cases. But in fact such comparison and collection is a secondary
development within the process of securing a correct conclusion in some
single case. If a man infers from a single sample of grain as to the
grade of wheat of the car as a whole, it is induction and, under certain
circumstances, a _sound_ induction; other cases are resorted to simply
for the sake of rendering that induction more guarded, and more probably
correct. In like fashion, the reasoning that led up to the burglary idea
in the instance already cited (p. 83) was inductive, though there was
but one single case examined. The particulars upon which the general
meaning (or relation) of burglary was grounded were simply the sum total
of the unlike items and qualities that made up the one case examined.
Had this case presented very great obscurities and difficulties,
recourse might _then_ have been had to examination of a number of
similar cases. But this comparison would not make inductive a process
which was not previously of that character; it would only render
induction more wary and adequate. _The object of bringing into
consideration a multitude of cases is to facilitate the selection of the
evidential or significant features upon which to base inference in some
single case._
[Sidenote: Contrast as important as likeness]
Accordingly, points of _unlikeness_ are as important as points of
_likeness_ among the cases examined. _Comparison_, without _contrast_,
does not amount to anything logically. In the degree in which other
cases observed or remembered merely duplicate the case in question, we
are no better off for purposes of inference than if we had permitted our
single original fact to dictate a conclusion. In the case of the various
samples of grain, it is the fact that the samples are unlike, at least
in the part of the carload from which they are taken, that is important.
Were it not for this unlikeness, their likeness in quality would be of
no avail in assisting inference.[16] If we are endeavoring to get a
child to regulate his conclusions about the germination of a seed by
taking into account a number of instances, very little is gained if the
conditions in all these instances closely approximate one another. But
if one seed is placed in pure sand, another in loam, and another on
blotting-paper, and if in each case there are two conditions, one with
and another without moisture, the unlike factors tend to throw into
relief the factors that are significant (or "essential") for reaching a
conclusion. Unless, in short, the observer takes care to have the
differences in the observed cases as extreme as conditions allow, and
unless he notes unlikenesses as carefully as likenesses, he has no way
of determining the evidential force of the data that confront him.
[16] In terms of the phrases used in logical treatises, the
so-called "methods of agreement" (comparison) and "difference"
(contrast) must accompany each other or constitute a "joint method"
in order to be of logical use.
[Sidenote: Importance of exceptions and contrary cases]
Another way of bringing out this importance of unlikeness is the
emphasis put by the scientist upon _negative_ cases--upon instances
which it would seem ought to fall into line but which as matter of fact
do not. Anomalies, exceptions, things which agree in most respects but
disagree in some crucial point, are so important that many of the
devices of scientific technique are designed purely to detect, record,
and impress upon memory contrasting cases. Darwin remarked that so easy
is it to pass over cases that oppose a favorite generalization, that he
had made it a habit not merely to hunt for contrary instances, but also
to write down any exception he noted or thought of--as otherwise it was
almost sure to be forgotten.
Sec. 3. _Experimental Variation of Conditions_
[Sidenote: Experiment the typical method of introducing contrast
factors]
We have already trenched upon this factor of inductive method, the one
that is the most important of all wherever it is feasible.
Theoretically, one sample case _of the right kind_ will be as good a
basis for an inference as a thousand cases; but cases of the "right
kind" rarely turn up spontaneously. We have to search for them, and we
may have to _make_ them. If we take cases just as we find them--whether
one case or many cases--they contain much that is irrelevant to the
problem in hand, while much that is relevant is obscure, hidden. The
object of experimentation is the _construction, by regular steps taken
on the basis of a plan thought out in advance, of a typical, crucial
case_, a case formed with express reference to throwing light on the
difficulty in question. All inductive methods rest (as already stated,
p. 85) upon regulation of the conditions of observation and memory;
experiment is simply the most adequate regulation possible of these
conditions. We try to make the observation such that every factor
entering into it, together with the mode and the amount of its
operation, may be open to recognition. Such making of observations
constitutes experiment.
[Sidenote: Three advantages of experiment]
Such observations have many and obvious advantages over observations--no
matter how extensive--with respect to which we simply wait for an event
to happen or an object to present itself. Experiment overcomes the
defects due to (_a_) the _rarity_, (_b_) the _subtlety_ and minuteness
(or the violence), and (_c_) the rigid _fixity_ of facts as we
ordinarily experience them. The following quotations from Jevons's
_Elementary Lessons in Logic_ bring out all these points:
(_i_) "We might have to wait years or centuries to meet accidentally
with facts which we can readily produce at any moment in a laboratory;
and it is probable that most of the chemical substances now known, and
many excessively useful products would never have been discovered at all
by waiting till nature presented them spontaneously to our observation."
This quotation refers to the infrequency or rarity of certain facts of
nature, even very important ones. The passage then goes on to speak of
the minuteness of many phenomena which makes them escape ordinary
experience:
(_ii_) "Electricity doubtless operates in every particle of matter,
perhaps at every moment of time; and even the ancients could not but
notice its action in the loadstone, in lightning, in the Aurora
Borealis, or in a piece of rubbed amber. But in lightning electricity
was too intense and dangerous; in the other cases it was too feeble to
be properly understood. The science of electricity and magnetism could
only advance by getting regular supplies of electricity from the common
electric machine or the galvanic battery and by making powerful
electromagnets. Most, if not all, the effects which electricity produces
must go on in nature, but altogether too obscurely for observation."
Jevons then deals with the fact that, under ordinary conditions of
experience, phenomena which can be understood only by seeing them under
varying conditions are presented in a fixed and uniform way.
(_iii_) "Thus carbonic acid is only met in the form of a gas, proceeding
from the combustion of carbon; but when exposed to extreme pressure and
cold, it is condensed into a liquid, and may even be converted into a
snowlike solid substance. Many other gases have in like manner been
liquefied or solidified, and there is reason to believe that every
substance is capable of taking all three forms of solid, liquid, and
gas, if only the conditions of temperature and pressure can be
sufficiently varied. Mere observation of nature would have led us, on
the contrary, to suppose that nearly all substances were fixed in one
condition only, and could not be converted from solid into liquid and
from liquid into gas."
Many volumes would be required to describe in detail all the methods
that investigators have developed in various subjects for analyzing and
restating the facts of ordinary experience so that we may escape from
capricious and routine suggestions, and may get the facts in such a form
and in such a light (or context) that exact and far-reaching
explanations may be suggested in place of vague and limited ones. But
these various devices of inductive inquiry all have one goal in view:
the indirect regulation of the function of suggestion, or formation of
ideas; and, in the main, they will be found to reduce to some
combination of the three types of selecting and arranging subject-matter
just described.
Sec. 4. _Guidance of the Deductive Movement_
[Sidenote: Value of deduction for guiding induction]
Before dealing directly with this topic, we must note that systematic
regulation of induction depends upon the possession of a body of general
principles that may be applied deductively to the examination or
construction of particular cases as they come up. If the physician does
not know the general laws of the physiology of the human body, he has
little way of telling what is either peculiarly significant or
peculiarly exceptional in any particular case that he is called upon to
treat. If he knows the laws of circulation, digestion, and respiration,
he can deduce the conditions that should normally be found in a given
case. These considerations give a base line from which the deviations
and abnormalities of a particular case may be measured. In this way,
_the nature of the problem at hand is located and defined_. Attention is
not wasted upon features which though conspicuous have nothing to do
with the case; it is concentrated upon just those traits which are out
of the way and hence require explanation. A question well put is half
answered; _i.e._ a difficulty clearly apprehended is likely to suggest
its own solution,--while a vague and miscellaneous perception of the
problem leads to groping and fumbling. Deductive systems are necessary
in order to put the question in a fruitful form.
[Sidenote: "Reasoning a thing out"]
The control of the origin and development of hypotheses by deduction
does not cease, however, with locating the problem. Ideas as they first
present themselves are inchoate and incomplete. _Deduction is their
elaboration into fullness and completeness of meaning_ (see p. 76). The
phenomena which the physician isolates from the total mass of facts that
exist in front of him suggest, we will say, typhoid fever. Now this
conception of typhoid fever is one that is capable of development. _If_
there is typhoid, _wherever_ there is typhoid, there are certain
results, certain characteristic symptoms. By going over mentally the
full bearing of the concept of typhoid, the scientist is instructed as
to further phenomena to be found. Its development gives him an
instrument of inquiry, of observation and experimentation. He can go to
work deliberately to see whether the case presents those features that
it should have if the supposition is valid. The deduced results form a
basis for comparison with observed results. Except where there is a
system of principles capable of being elaborated by theoretical
reasoning, the process of testing (or proof) of a hypothesis is
incomplete and haphazard.
[Sidenote: Such reasoning implies systematized knowledge,]
These considerations indicate the method by which the deductive movement
is guided. Deduction requires a system of allied ideas which may be
translated into one another by regular or graded steps. The question is
whether the facts that confront us can be identified as typhoid fever.
To all appearances, there is a great gap between them and typhoid. But
if we can, by some method of substitutions, go through a series of
intermediary terms (see p. 72), the gap may, after all, be easily
bridged. Typhoid may mean _p_ which in turn means _o_, which means _n_
which means _m_, which is very similar to the data selected as the key
to the problem.
[Sidenote: or definition and classification]
One of the chief objects of science is to provide for every typical
branch of subject-matter a set of meanings and principles so closely
interknit that any one implies some other according to definite
conditions, which under certain other conditions implies another, and so
on. In this way, various substitutions of equivalents are possible, and
reasoning can trace out, without having recourse to specific
observations, very remote consequences of any suggested principle.
Definition, general formulae, and classification are the devices by which
the fixation and elaboration of a meaning into its detailed
ramifications are carried on. They are not ends in themselves--as they
are frequently regarded even in elementary education--but
instrumentalities for facilitating the development of a conception into
the form where its applicability to given facts may best be tested.[17]
[17] These processes are further discussed in Chapter IX.
[Sidenote: The final control of deduction]
The final test of deduction lies in experimental observation.
Elaboration by reasoning may make a suggested idea very rich and very
plausible, but it will not settle the validity of that idea. Only if
facts can be observed (by methods either of collection or of
experimentation), that agree in detail and without exception with the
deduced results, are we justified in accepting the deduction as giving a
valid conclusion. Thinking, in short, must end as well as begin in the
domain of concrete observations, if it is to be complete thinking. And
the ultimate educative value of all deductive processes is measured by
the degree to which they become working tools in the creation and
development of new experiences.
Sec. 5. _Some Educational Bearings of the Discussion_
[Sidenote: Educational counterparts of false logical theories]
[Sidenote: Isolation of "facts"]
Some of the points of the foregoing logical analysis may be clinched by
a consideration of their educational implications, especially with
reference to certain practices that grow out of a false separation by
which each is thought to be independent of the other and complete in
itself. (_i_) In some school subjects, or at all events in some topics
or in some lessons, the pupils are immersed in details; their minds are
loaded with disconnected items (whether gleaned by observation and
memory, or accepted on hearsay and authority). Induction is treated as
beginning and ending with the amassing of facts, of particular isolated
pieces of information. That these items are educative only as suggesting
a view of some larger situation in which the particulars are included
and thereby accounted for, is ignored. In object lessons in elementary
education and in laboratory instruction in higher education, the subject
is often so treated that the student fails to "see the forest on account
of the trees." Things and their qualities are retailed and detailed,
without reference to a more general character which they stand for and
mean. Or, in the laboratory, the student becomes engrossed in the
processes of manipulation,--irrespective of the reason for their
performance, without recognizing a typical problem for the solution of
which they afford the appropriate method. Only deduction brings out and
emphasizes consecutive relationships, and only when _relationships_ are
held in view does learning become more than a miscellaneous scrap-bag.
[Sidenote: Failure to follow up by reasoning]
(_ii_) Again, the mind is allowed to hurry on to a vague notion of the
whole of which the fragmentary facts are portions, without any attempt
to become conscious of _how_ they are bound together as parts of this
whole. The student feels that "in a general way," as we say, the facts
of the history or geography lesson are related thus and so; but "in a
general way" here stands only for "in a vague way," somehow or other,
with no clear recognition of just how.
The pupil is encouraged to form, on the basis of the particular facts, a
general notion, a conception of how they stand related; but no pains are
taken to make the student follow up the notion, to elaborate it and see
just what its bearings are upon the case in hand and upon similar cases.
The inductive inference, the guess, is formed by the student; if it
happens to be correct, it is at once accepted by the teacher; or if it
is false, it is rejected. If any amplification of the idea occurs, it
is quite likely carried through by the teacher, who thereby assumes the
responsibility for its intellectual development. But a complete, an
integral, act of thought requires that the person making the suggestion
(the guess) be responsible also for reasoning out its bearings upon the
problem in hand; that he develop the suggestion at least enough to
indicate the ways in which it applies to and accounts for the specific
data of the case. Too often when a recitation does not consist in simply
testing the ability of the student to display some form of technical
skill, or to repeat facts and principles accepted on the authority of
text-book or lecturer, the teacher goes to the opposite extreme; and
after calling out the spontaneous reflections of the pupils, their
guesses or ideas about the matter, merely accepts or rejects them,
assuming himself the responsibility for their elaboration. In this way,
the function of suggestion and of interpretation is excited, but it is
not directed and trained. Induction is stimulated but is not carried
over into the _reasoning_ phase necessary to complete it.
In other subjects and topics, the deductive phase is isolated, and is
treated as if it were complete in itself. This false isolation may show
itself in either (and both) of two points; namely, at the beginning or
at the end of the resort to general intellectual procedure.
[Sidenote: Isolation of deduction by commencing with it]
(_iii_) Beginning with definitions, rules, general principles,
classifications, and the like, is a common form of the first error. This
method has been such a uniform object of attack on the part of all
educational reformers that it is not necessary to dwell upon it further
than to note that the mistake is, logically, due to the attempt to
introduce deductive considerations without first making acquaintance
with the particular facts that create a need for the generalizing
rational devices. Unfortunately, the reformer sometimes carries his
objection too far, or rather locates it in the wrong place. He is led
into a tirade against _all_ definition, all systematization, all use of
general principles, instead of confining himself to pointing out their
futility and their deadness when not properly motivated by familiarity
with concrete experiences.
[Sidenote: Isolation of deduction from direction of new observations]
(_iv_) The isolation of deduction is seen, at the other end, wherever
there is failure to clinch and test the results of the general reasoning
processes by application to new concrete cases. The final point of the
deductive devices lies in their use in assimilating and comprehending
individual cases. No one understands a general principle fully--no
matter how adequately he can demonstrate it, to say nothing of repeating
it--till he can employ it in the mastery of new situations, which, if
they _are_ new, differ in manifestation from the cases used in reaching
the generalization. Too often the text-book or teacher is contented with
a series of somewhat perfunctory examples and illustrations, and the
student is not forced to carry the principle that he has formulated over
into further cases of his own experience. In so far, the principle is
inert and dead.
[Sidenote: Lack of provision for experimentation]
(_v_) It is only a variation upon this same theme to say that
every complete act of reflective inquiry makes provision for
experimentation--for testing suggested and accepted principles by
employing them for the active construction of new cases, in which new
qualities emerge. Only slowly do our schools accommodate themselves to
the general advance of scientific method. From the scientific side, it
is demonstrated that effective and integral thinking is possible only
where the experimental method in some form is used. Some recognition of
this principle is evinced in higher institutions of learning, colleges
and high schools. But in elementary education, it is still assumed, for
the most part, that the pupil's natural range of observations,
supplemented by what he accepts on hearsay, is adequate for intellectual
growth. Of course it is not necessary that laboratories shall be
introduced under that name, much less that elaborate apparatus be
secured; but the entire scientific history of humanity demonstrates that
the conditions for complete mental activity will not be obtained till
adequate provision is made for the carrying on of activities that
actually modify physical conditions, and that books, pictures, and even
objects that are passively observed but not manipulated do not furnish
the provision required.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JUDGMENT: THE INTERPRETATION OF FACTS
Sec. 1. _The Three Factors of Judging_
[Sidenote: Good judgment]
A man of good judgment in a given set of affairs is a man in so far
educated, trained, whatever may be his literacy. And if our schools turn
out their pupils in that attitude of mind which is conducive to good
judgment in any department of affairs in which the pupils are placed,
they have done more than if they sent out their pupils merely possessed
of vast stores of information, or high degrees of skill in specialized
branches. To know what is _good_ judgment we need first to know what
judgment is.
[Sidenote: Judgment and inference]
That there is an intimate connection between judgment and inference is
obvious enough. The aim of inference is to terminate itself in an
adequate judgment of a situation, and the course of inference goes on
through a series of partial and tentative judgments. What are these
units, these terms of inference when we examine them on their own
account? Their significant traits may be readily gathered from a
consideration of the operations to which the word _judgment_ was
originally applied: namely, the authoritative decision of matters in
legal controversy--the procedure of the _judge on the bench_. There are
three such features: (1) a controversy, consisting of opposite claims
regarding the same objective situation; (2) a process of defining and
elaborating these claims and of sifting the facts adduced to support
them; (3) a final decision, or sentence, closing the particular matter
in dispute and also serving as a rule or principle for deciding future
cases.
[Sidenote: Uncertainty the antecedent of judgment]
1. Unless there is something doubtful, the situation is read off at a
glance; it is taken in on sight, _i.e._ there is merely apprehension,
perception, recognition, not judgment. If the matter is wholly doubtful,
if it is dark and obscure throughout, there is a blind mystery and again
no judgment occurs. But if it suggests, however vaguely, different
meanings, rival possible interpretations, there is some _point at
issue_, some _matter at stake_. Doubt takes the form of dispute,
controversy; different sides compete for a conclusion in their favor.
Cases brought to trial before a judge illustrate neatly and
unambiguously this strife of alternative interpretations; but any case
of trying to clear up intellectually a doubtful situation exemplifies
the same traits. A moving blur catches our eye in the distance; we ask
ourselves: "What is it? Is it a cloud of whirling dust? a tree waving
its branches? a man signaling to us?" Something in the total situation
suggests each of these possible meanings. Only one of them can possibly
be sound; perhaps none of them is appropriate; yet _some_ meaning the
thing in question surely has. Which of the alternative suggested
meanings has the rightful claim? What does the perception really mean?
How is it to be interpreted, estimated, appraised, placed? Every
judgment proceeds from some such situation.
[Sidenote: Judgment defines the issue,]
2. The hearing of the controversy, the trial, _i.e._ the weighing of
alternative claims, divides into two branches, either of which, in a
given case, may be more conspicuous than the other. In the consideration
of a legal dispute, these two branches are sifting the evidence and
selecting the rules that are applicable; they are "the facts" and "the
law" of the case. In judgment they are (_a_) the determination of the
data that are important in the given case (compare the inductive
movement); and (_b_) the elaboration of the conceptions or meanings
suggested by the crude data (compare the deductive movement). (_a_) What
portions or aspects of the situation are significant in controlling the
formation of the interpretation? (_b_) Just what is the full meaning and
bearing of the conception that is used as a method of interpretation?
These questions are strictly correlative; the answer to each depends
upon the answer to the other. We may, however, for convenience, consider
them separately.
[Sidenote: (_a_) by selecting what facts are evidence]
(_a_) In every actual occurrence, there are many details which are part
of the total occurrence, but which nevertheless are not significant in
relation to the point at issue. All parts of an experience are equally
present, but they are very far from being of equal value as signs or as
evidences. Nor is there any tag or label on any trait saying: "This is
important," or "This is trivial." Nor is intensity, or vividness or
conspicuousness, a safe measure of indicative and proving value. The
glaring thing may be totally insignificant in this particular situation,
and the key to the understanding of the whole matter may be modest or
hidden (compare p. 74). Features that are not significant are
distracting; they proffer their claims to be regarded as clues and cues
to interpretation, while traits that are significant do not appear on
the surface at all. Hence, judgment is required _even in reference_ to
the situation or event that is present to the senses; elimination or
rejection, selection, discovery, or bringing to light must take place.
Till we have reached a final conclusion, rejection and selection must be
tentative or conditional. We select the things that we hope or trust are
cues to meaning. But if they do not suggest a situation that accepts and
includes them (see p. 81), we reconstitute our data, the facts of the
case; for we mean, intellectually, by the facts of the case _those
traits that are used as evidence in reaching a conclusion or forming a
decision_.
[Sidenote: Expertness in selecting evidence]
No hard and fast rules for this operation of selecting and rejecting, or
fixing upon the facts, can be given. It all comes back, as we say, to
the good judgment, the good sense, of the one judging. To be a good
judge is to have a sense of the relative indicative or signifying values
of the various features of the perplexing situation; to know what to let
go as of no account; what to eliminate as irrelevant; what to retain as
conducive to outcome; what to emphasize as a clue to the difficulty.[18]
This power in ordinary matters we call _knack_, _tact_, _cleverness_; in
more important affairs, _insight_, _discernment_. In part it is
instinctive or inborn; but it also represents the funded outcome of long
familiarity with like operations in the past. Possession of this ability
to seize what is evidential or significant and to let the rest go is the
mark of the expert, the connoisseur, the _judge_, in any matter.
[18] Compare what was said about _analysis_.
[Sidenote: Intuitive judgments]
Mill cites the following case, which is worth noting as an instance of
the extreme delicacy and accuracy to which may be developed this power
of sizing up the significant factors of a situation. "A Scotch
manufacturer procured from England, at a high rate of wages, a working
dyer, famous for producing very fine colors, with the view of teaching
to his other workmen the same skill. The workman came; but his method
of proportioning the ingredients, in which lay the secret of the effects
he produced, was by taking them up in handfuls, while the common method
was to weigh them. The manufacturer sought to make him turn his handling
system into an equivalent weighing system, that the general principles
of his peculiar mode of proceeding might be ascertained. This, however,
the man found himself quite unable to do, and could therefore impart his
own skill to nobody. He had, from individual cases of his own
experience, established a connection in his mind between fine effects of
color and tactual perceptions in handling his dyeing materials; and from
these perceptions he could, in any particular case, _infer the means to
be employed_ and the effects which would be produced." Long brooding
over conditions, intimate contact associated with keen interest,
thorough absorption in a multiplicity of allied experiences, tend to
bring about those judgments which we then call intuitive; but they are
true judgments because they are based on intelligent selection and
estimation, with the solution of a problem as the controlling standard.
Possession of this capacity makes the difference between the artist and
the intellectual bungler.
Such is judging ability, in its completest form, as to the data of the
decision to be reached. But in any case there is a certain feeling along
for the way to be followed; a constant tentative picking out of certain
qualities to see what emphasis upon them would lead to; a willingness to
hold final selection in suspense; and to reject the factors entirely or
relegate them to a different position in the evidential scheme if other
features yield more solvent suggestions. Alertness, flexibility,
curiosity are the essentials; dogmatism, rigidity, prejudice, caprice,
arising from routine, passion, and flippancy are fatal.
[Sidenote: (_b_) To decide an issue, the appropriate principles must
also be selected]
(_b_) This selection of data is, of course, for the sake of controlling
the _development and elaboration of the suggested meaning in the light
of which they are to be interpreted_ (compare p. 76). An evolution of
conceptions thus goes on simultaneously with the determination of the
facts; one possible meaning after another is held before the mind,
considered in relation to the data to which it is applied, is developed
into its more detailed bearings upon the data, is dropped or tentatively
accepted and used. We do not approach any problem with a wholly naive or
virgin mind; we approach it with certain acquired habitual modes of
understanding, with a certain store of previously evolved meanings, or
at least of experiences from which meanings may be educed. If the
circumstances are such that a habitual response is called directly into
play, there is an immediate grasp of meaning. If the habit is checked,
and inhibited from easy application, a possible meaning for the facts in
question presents itself. No hard and fast rules decide whether a
meaning suggested is the right and proper meaning to follow up. The
individual's own good (or bad) judgment is the guide. There is no label
on any given idea or principle which says automatically, "Use me in this
situation"--as the magic cakes of Alice in Wonderland were inscribed
"Eat me." The thinker has to decide, to choose; and there is always a
risk, so that the prudent thinker selects warily, subject, that is, to
confirmation or frustration by later events. If one is not able to
estimate wisely what is relevant to the interpretation of a given
perplexing or doubtful issue, it avails little that arduous learning
has built up a large stock of concepts. For learning is not wisdom;
information does not guarantee good judgment. Memory may provide an
antiseptic refrigerator in which to store a stock of meanings for future
use, but judgment selects and adopts the one used in a given
emergency--and without an emergency (some crisis, slight or great) there
is no call for judgment. No conception, even if it is carefully and
firmly established in the abstract, can at first safely be more than a
_candidate_ for the office of interpreter. Only greater success than
that of its rivals in clarifying dark spots, untying hard knots,
reconciling discrepancies, can elect it or prove it a valid idea for the
given situation.
[Sidenote: Judging terminates in a _decision_ or statement]
3. The judgment when formed is a _decision_; it closes (or concludes)
the question at issue. This determination not only settles that
particular case, but it helps fix a rule or method for deciding similar
matters in the future; as the sentence of the judge on the bench both
terminates that dispute and also forms a precedent for future decisions.
If the interpretation settled upon is not controverted by subsequent
events, a presumption is built up in favor of similar interpretation in
other cases where the features are not so obviously unlike as to make it
inappropriate. In this way, principles of judging are gradually built
up; a certain manner of interpretation gets weight, authority. In short,
meanings get _standardized_, they become logical concepts (see below, p.
118).
Sec. 2. _The Origin and Nature of Ideas_
[Sidenote: Ideas are conjectures employed in judging]
This brings us to the question of _ideas in relation to judgments_.[19]
Something in an obscure situation suggests something else as its
meaning. If this meaning is at once accepted, there is no reflective
thinking, no genuine judging. Thought is cut short uncritically;
dogmatic belief, with all its attending risks, takes place. But if the
meaning suggested is held _in suspense_, pending examination and
inquiry, there is true judgment. We stop and think, we _de-fer_
conclusion in order to _in-fer_ more thoroughly. In this process of
being only conditionally accepted, accepted only for examination,
_meanings become ideas_. _That is to say, an idea is a meaning that is
tentatively entertained, formed, and used with reference to its fitness
to decide a perplexing situation,--a meaning used as a tool of
judgment._
[19] The term _idea_ is also used popularly to denote (_a_) a mere
fancy, (_b_) an accepted belief, and also (_c_) judgment itself. But
_logically_ it denotes a certain _factor_ in judgment, as explained
in the text.
[Sidenote: Or tools of interpretation]
Let us recur to our instance of a blur in motion appearing at a
distance. We wonder what _the thing is_, _i.e._ what the _blur means_. A
man waving his arms, a friend beckoning to us, are suggested as
possibilities. To accept at once either alternative is to arrest
judgment. But if we treat what is suggested as only a suggestion, a
supposition, a possibility, it becomes an idea, having the following
traits: (_a_) As merely a suggestion, it is a conjecture, a guess, which
in cases of greater dignity we call a hypothesis or a theory. That is to
say, it is _a possible but as yet doubtful mode of interpretation_.
(_b_) Even though doubtful, it has an office to perform; namely, that of
directing inquiry and examination. If this blur means a friend
beckoning, then careful observation should show certain other traits. If
it is a man driving unruly cattle, certain other traits should be found.
Let us look and see if these traits are found. Taken merely as a doubt,
an idea would paralyze inquiry. Taken merely as a certainty, it would
arrest inquiry. Taken as a doubtful possibility, it affords a
standpoint, a platform, a method of inquiry.
[Sidenote: Pseudo-ideas]
Ideas are not then genuine ideas unless they are tools in a reflective
examination which tends to solve a problem. Suppose it is a question of
having the pupil grasp _the idea_ of the sphericity of the earth. This
is different from teaching him its sphericity _as a fact_. He may be
shown (or reminded of) a ball or a globe, and be told that the earth is
round like those things; he may then be made to repeat that statement
day after day till the shape of the earth and the shape of the ball are
welded together in his mind. But he has not thereby acquired any idea of
the earth's sphericity; at most, he has had a certain image of a sphere
and has finally managed to image the earth after the analogy of his ball
image. To grasp sphericity as an idea, the pupil must first have
realized certain perplexities or confusing features in observed facts
and have had the idea of spherical shape suggested to him as a possible
way of accounting for the phenomena in question. Only by use as a method
of interpreting data so as to give them fuller meaning does sphericity
become a genuine idea. There may be a vivid image and no idea; or there
may be a fleeting, obscure image and yet an idea, if that image performs
the function of instigating and directing the observation and relation
of facts.
[Sidenote: Ideas furnish the only alternative to "hit or miss" methods]
Logical ideas are like keys which are shaping with reference to opening
a lock. Pike, separated by a glass partition from the fish upon which
they ordinarily prey, will--so it is said--butt their heads against the
glass until it is literally beaten into them that they cannot get at
their food. Animals learn (when they learn at all) by a "cut and try"
method; by doing at random first one thing and another thing and then
preserving the things that happen to succeed. Action directed
consciously by ideas--by suggested meanings accepted for the sake of
experimenting with them--is the sole alternative both to bull-headed
stupidity and to learning bought from that dear teacher--chance
experience.
[Sidenote: They are methods of indirect attack]
It is significant that many words for intelligence suggest the idea of
circuitous, evasive activity--often with a sort of intimation of even
moral obliquity. The bluff, hearty man goes straight (and stupidly, it
is implied) at some work. The intelligent man is cunning, shrewd
(crooked), wily, subtle, crafty, artful, designing--the idea of
indirection is involved.[20] An idea is a method of evading,
circumventing, or surmounting through reflection obstacles that
otherwise would have to be attacked by brute force. But ideas may lose
their intellectual quality as they are habitually used. When a child was
first learning to recognize, in some hesitating suspense, cats, dogs,
houses, marbles, trees, shoes, and other objects, ideas--conscious and
tentative meanings--intervened as methods of identification. Now, as a
rule, the thing and the meaning are so completely fused that there is no
judgment and no idea proper, but only automatic recognition. On the
other hand, things that are, as a rule, directly apprehended and
familiar become subjects of judgment when they present themselves in
unusual contexts: as forms, distances, sizes, positions when we attempt
to draw them; triangles, squares, and circles when they turn up, not in
connection with familiar toys, implements, and utensils, but as problems
in geometry.
[20] See Ward, _Psychic Factors of Civilization_, p. 153.
Sec. 3. _Analysis and Synthesis_
[Sidenote: Judging clears up things: analysis]
Through judging confused data are cleared up, and seemingly incoherent
and disconnected facts brought together. Things may have a peculiar
feeling for us, they may make a certain indescribable impression upon
us; the thing may _feel_ round (that is, present a quality which we
afterwards define as round), an act may seem rude (or what we afterwards
classify as rude), and yet this quality may be lost, absorbed, blended
in the total value of the situation. Only as we need to use just that
aspect of the original situation as a tool of grasping something
perplexing or obscure in another situation, do we abstract or detach the
quality so that it becomes individualized. Only because we need to
characterize the shape of some new object or the moral quality of some
new act, does the element of roundness or rudeness in the old experience
detach itself, and stand out as a distinctive feature. If the element
thus selected clears up what is otherwise obscure in the new experience,
if it settles what is uncertain, it thereby itself gains in positiveness
and definiteness of meaning. This point will meet us again in the
following chapter; here we shall speak of the matter only as it bears
upon the questions of analysis and synthesis.
[Sidenote: Mental analysis is not like physical division]
[Sidenote: Misapprehension of analysis in education]
Even when it is definitely stated that intellectual and physical
analyses are different sorts of operations, intellectual analysis is
often treated after the analogy of physical; as if it were the breaking
up of a whole into all its constituent parts in the mind instead of in
space. As nobody can possibly tell what breaking a whole into its parts
in the mind means, this conception leads to the further notion that
logical analysis is a mere enumeration and listing of all conceivable
qualities and relations. The influence upon education of this
conception has been very great.[21] Every subject in the curriculum has
passed through--or still remains in--what may be called the phase of
anatomical or morphological method: the stage in which understanding the
subject is thought to consist of multiplying distinctions of quality,
form, relation, and so on, and attaching some name to each distinguished
element. In normal growth, specific properties are emphasized and so
individualized only when they serve to clear up a present difficulty.
Only as they are involved in judging some specific situation is there
any motive or use for analyses, _i.e._ for emphasis upon some element or
relation as peculiarly significant.
[21] Thus arise all those falsely analytic methods in geography,
reading, writing, drawing, botany, arithmetic, which we have already
considered in another connection. (See p. 59.)
[Sidenote: Effects of premature formulation]
The same putting the cart before the horse, the product before the
process, is found in that overconscious formulation of methods of
procedure so current in elementary instruction. (See p. 60.) The method
that is employed in discovery, in reflective inquiry, cannot possibly be
identified with the method that emerges _after_ the discovery is made.
In the genuine operation of inference, the mind is in the attitude of
_search_, of _hunting_, of _projection_, of _trying this and that_; when
the conclusion is reached, the search is at an end. The Greeks used to
discuss: "How is learning (or inquiry) possible? For either we know
already what we are after, and then we do not learn or inquire; or we do
not know, and then we cannot inquire, for we do not know what to look
for." The dilemma is at least suggestive, for it points to the true
alternative: the use in inquiry of doubt, of tentative suggestion, of
experimentation. After we have reached the conclusion, a
reconsideration of the steps of the process to see what is helpful, what
is harmful, what is merely useless, will assist in dealing more promptly
and efficaciously with analogous problems in the future. In this way,
more or less explicit method is gradually built up. (Compare the earlier
discussion on p. 62 of the psychological and the logical.)
[Sidenote: Method comes before its formulation]
It is, however, a common assumption that unless the pupil from the
outset _consciously recognizes and explicitly states_ the method
logically implied in the result he is to reach, he will have _no_
method, and his mind will work confusedly or anarchically; while if he
accompanies his performance with conscious statement of some form of
procedure (outline, topical analysis, list of headings and subheadings,
uniform formula) his mind is safeguarded and strengthened. As a matter
of fact, the development of _an unconscious logical attitude and habit_
must come first. A conscious setting forth of the method logically
adapted for reaching an end is possible only after the result has first
been reached by more unconscious and tentative methods, while it is
valuable only when a review of the method that achieved success in a
given case will throw light upon a new, similar case. The ability to
fasten upon and single out (abstract, analyze) those features of one
experience which are logically best is hindered by premature insistence
upon their explicit formulation. It is repeated use that gives a
_method_ definiteness; and given this definiteness, precipitation into
formulated statement should follow naturally. But because teachers find
that the things which they themselves best understand are marked off and
defined in clear-cut ways, our schoolrooms are pervaded with the
superstition that children are to begin with already crystallized
formulae of method.
[Sidenote: Judgment reveals the bearing or significance of facts:
synthesis]
As analysis is conceived to be a sort of picking to pieces, so synthesis
is thought to be a sort of physical piecing together; and so imagined,
it also becomes a mystery. In fact, synthesis takes place wherever we
grasp the bearing of facts on a conclusion, or of a principle on facts.
As analysis is _emphasis_, so synthesis is _placing_; the one causes the
emphasized fact or property to stand out as significant; the other gives
what is selected its _context_, or its connection with what is
signified. Every judgment is analytic in so far as it involves
discernment, discrimination, marking off the trivial from the important,
the irrelevant from what points to a conclusion; and it is synthetic in
so far as it leaves the mind with an inclusive situation within which
the selected facts are placed.
[Sidenote: Analysis and synthesis are correlative]
Educational methods that pride themselves on being exclusively analytic
or exclusively synthetic are therefore (so far as they carry out their
boasts) incompatible with normal operations of judgment. Discussions
have taken place, for example, as to whether the teaching of geography
should be analytic or synthetic. The synthetic method is supposed to
begin with the partial, limited portion of the earth's surface already
familiar to the pupil, and then gradually piece on adjacent regions (the
county, the country, the continent, and so on) till an idea of the
entire globe is reached, or of the solar system that includes the globe.
The analytic method is supposed to begin with the physical whole, the
solar system or globe, and to work down through its constituent portions
till the immediate environment is reached. The underlying conceptions
are of physical wholes and physical parts. As matter of fact, we cannot
assume that the portion of the earth already familiar to the child is
such a definite object, mentally, that he can at once begin with it; his
knowledge of it is misty and vague as well as incomplete. Accordingly,
mental progress will involve analysis of it--emphasis of the features
that are significant, so that they will stand out clearly. Moreover, his
own locality is not sharply marked off, neatly bounded, and measured.
His experience of it is already an experience that involves sun, moon,
and stars as parts of the scene he surveys; it involves a changing
horizon line as he moves about; that is, even his more limited and local
experience involves far-reaching factors that take his imagination clear
beyond his own street and village. Connection, relationship with a
larger whole, is already involved. But his recognition of these
relations is inadequate, vague, incorrect. He needs to utilize the
features of the local environment which are understood to help clarify
and enlarge his conceptions of the larger geographical scene to which
they belong. At the same time, not till he has grasped the larger scene
will many of even the commonest features of his environment become
intelligible. Analysis leads to synthesis; while synthesis perfects
analysis. As the pupil grows in comprehension of the vast complicated
earth in its setting in space, he also sees more definitely the meaning
of the familiar local details. This intimate interaction between
selective emphasis and interpretation of what is selected is found
wherever reflection proceeds normally. Hence the folly of trying to set
analysis and synthesis over against each other.
CHAPTER NINE
MEANING: OR CONCEPTIONS AND UNDERSTANDING
Sec. 1. _The Place of Meanings in Mental Life_
[Sidenote: Meaning is central]
As in our discussion of judgment we were making more explicit what is
involved in inference, so in the discussion of meaning we are only
recurring to the central function of all reflection. For one thing to
_mean_, _signify_, _betoken_, _indicate_, or _point to_, another we saw
at the outset to be the essential mark of thinking (see p. 8). To find
out what facts, just as they stand, mean, is the object of all
discovery; to find out what facts will carry out, substantiate, support
a given meaning, is the object of all testing. When an inference reaches
a satisfactory conclusion, we attain a goal of meaning. The act of
judging involves both the growth and the application of meanings. In
short, in this chapter we are not introducing a new topic; we are only
coming to closer quarters with what hitherto has been constantly
assumed. In the first section, we shall consider the equivalence of
meaning and understanding, and the two types of understanding, direct
and indirect.
I. MEANING AND UNDERSTANDING
[Sidenote: To understand is to grasp meaning]
If a person comes suddenly into your room and calls out "Paper," various
alternatives are possible. If you do not understand the English
language, there is simply a noise which may or may not act as a physical
stimulus and irritant. But the noise is not an intellectual object; it
does not have intellectual value. (Compare above, p. 15.) To say that
you do not understand it and that it has no meaning are equivalents. If
the cry is the usual accompaniment of the delivery of the morning paper,
the sound will have meaning, intellectual content; you will understand
it. Or if you are eagerly awaiting the receipt of some important
document, you may assume that the cry means an announcement of its
arrival. If (in the third place) you understand the English language,
but no context suggests itself from your habits and expectations, the
_word_ has meaning, but not the whole event. You are then perplexed and
incited to think out, to hunt for, some explanation of the apparently
meaningless occurrence. If you find something that accounts for the
performance, it gets meaning; you come to understand it. As intelligent
beings, we presume the existence of meaning, and its absence is an
anomaly. Hence, if it should turn out that the person merely meant to
inform you that there was a scrap of paper on the sidewalk, or that
paper existed somewhere in the universe, you would think him crazy or
yourself the victim of a poor joke. To grasp a meaning, to understand,
to identify a thing in a situation in which it is important, are thus
equivalent terms; they express the nerves of our intellectual life.
Without them there is (_a_) lack of intellectual content, or (_b_)
intellectual confusion and perplexity, or else (_c_) intellectual
perversion--nonsense, insanity.
[Sidenote: Knowledge and meaning]
All knowledge, all science, thus aims to grasp the meaning of objects
and events, and this process always consists in taking them out of their
apparent brute isolation as events, and finding them to be parts of
some larger whole _suggested by them_, which, in turn, _accounts for_,
_explains_, _interprets them_; _i.e._ renders them significant. (Compare
above, p. 75.) Suppose that a stone with peculiar markings has been
found. What do these scratches mean? So far as the object forces the
raising of this question, it is not understood; while so far as the
color and form that we see mean to us a stone, the object is understood.
It is such peculiar combinations of the understood and the nonunderstood
that provoke thought. If at the end of the inquiry, the markings are
decided to mean glacial scratches, obscure and perplexing traits have
been translated into meanings already understood: namely, the moving and
grinding power of large bodies of ice and the friction thus induced of
one rock upon another. Something already understood in one situation has
been transferred and applied to what is strange and perplexing in
another, and thereby the latter has become plain and familiar, _i.e._
understood. This summary illustration discloses that our power to think
effectively depends upon possession of a capital fund of meanings which
may be applied when desired. (Compare what was said about deduction, p.
94.)
II. DIRECT AND INDIRECT UNDERSTANDING
[Sidenote: Direct and circuitous understanding]
In the above illustrations two types of grasping of meaning are
exemplified. When the English language is understood, the person grasps
at once the meaning of "paper." He may not, however, see any meaning or
sense in the performance as a whole. Similarly, the person identifies
the object on sight as a stone; there is no secret, no mystery, no
perplexity about that. But he does not understand the markings on it.
They have some meaning, but what is it? In one case, owing to familiar
acquaintance, the thing and its meaning, up to a certain point, are one.
In the other, the thing and its meaning are, temporarily at least,
sundered, and meaning has to be sought in order to understand the thing.
In one case understanding is direct, prompt, immediate; in the other, it
is roundabout and delayed.
[Sidenote: Interaction of the two types]