The acquisition of definiteness and of coherency (or constancy)
of meanings is derived primarily from practical activities. By
rolling an object, the child makes its roundness appreciable; by
bouncing it, he singles out its elasticity; by throwing it, he
makes weight its conspicuous distinctive factor. Not through the
senses, but by means of the reaction, the responsive adjustment,
is the impression made distinctive, and given a character
marked off from other qualities that call out unlike reactions.
Children, for example, are usually quite slow in apprehending
differences of color. Differences from the standpoint of the
adult so glaring that it is impossible not to note them are
recognized and recalled with great difficulty. Doubtless they do
not all feel alike, but there is no intellectual recognition of
what makes the difference. The redness or greenness or blueness
of the object does not tend to call out a reaction that is
sufficiently peculiar to give prominence or distinction to the
color trait. Gradually, however, certain characteristic habitual
responses associate themselves with certain things; the white
becomes the sign, say, of milk and sugar to which the child
reacts favorably; blue becomes the sign of a dress that the
child likes to wear, and so on, and the distinctive reactions
tend to single out color qualities from other things in which
they had been submerged.--JOHN DEWEY, “How We Think.”
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