The sight of a baby often calls out the question: “What do you
suppose he is thinking about?” By the nature of the case, the
question is unanswerable in detail; but, also by the nature of
the case, we may be sure about a baby’s chief interest. His
primary problem is mastery of his body as a tool of securing
comfortable and effective adjustments to his surroundings,
physical and social. The child has to learn to do almost
everything: to see, to hear, to reach, to handle, to balance
the body, to creep, to walk and so on. Even if it be true that
human beings have even more instinctive reactions than lower
animals, it is also true that instinctive tendencies are much
less perfect in men, and that most of them are of little use
till they are intelligently combined and directed. A little
chick just out of the shell will after a few trials peck and
grasp grains of food with its beak as well as at any later
time. This involves a complicated coordination of the eye and
the head. An infant does not even begin to reach definitely for
things that the eye sees till he is several months old, and even
then several weeks’ practise is required before he learns the
adjustment so as neither to overreach nor to underreach.
It may not be literally true that the child will grasp for the
moon, but it is true that he needs much practise before he can
tell whether an object is within reach or not. The arm is thrust
out instinctively in response to a stimulus from the eye and
this tendency is the origin of the ability to reach and grasp
exactly and quickly; but nevertheless final mastery requires
observing and selecting the successful movements and arranging
them in view of an end. These operations of conscious selection
and arrangement constitute thinking, tho of a rudimentary
type.--JOHN DEWEY, “How to Think.”
(3228)