The instinct of workmanship, and the state of industrial artsVeblen, Thorstein
Philosophy
The instinct of workmanship, and the state of industrial arts
Veblen, Thorstein
Industrial arts -- History; Industries -- History; Technology -- History; Workmanship -- History
While the instinctive sensibilities may not be explained as derivatives
of the tropisms, there is enough of similarity in the working of the
two to suggest that the two classes of phenomena must both be accounted
for on somewhat similar physiological grounds. The simple and more
narrowly defined instinctive dispositions, which have much of the
appearance of immediate reflex nervous action and automatically defined
response, lend themselves passably to such an interpretation,--as, for
example, the gregarious instinct, or the instinct of repulsion with its
accompanying emotion of disgust. Such as these are shared by mankind
with the other higher animals on a fairly even footing; and these are
relatively simple, immediate, and not easily sophisticated or offset
by habit. These seem patently to be of much the same nature as the
tropismatic sensibilities; though even in these simpler instinctive
dispositions the characteristic quasi-tropismatic sensibility
distinctive of each appears to be complicated with obscure stimulations
of the nerve centres arising out of the functioning of one or another
of the viscera. And what is true of the simpler instincts in this
respect should apply to the vaguer and more complex instincts also, but
with a larger allowance for a more extensive complication of visceral
and organic stimuli.
Whether these subconscious stimulations of the nerve centres through
the functioning of the viscera are to be conceived in terms of
tropismatic reaction is a difficult question which has had little
attention hitherto. But in any case, whatever the expert students
of these phenomena may have to say of this matter, the visceral or
organic stimuli engaged in any one of the instinctive sensibilities
are apparently always more than one and are usually somewhat complex.
Indeed, while it seems superficially an easy matter to refer any one of
the simple instincts directly to some certain one of the viscera as the
main or primary source from which its appropriate stimulation comes to
the nerve centres, it is by no means easy to decide what one or more of
the viscera, or of the other organs that are not commonly classed as
viscera, will have no part in the matter.
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