The Science of Human Nature: A Psychology for BeginnersPyle, William Henry
Science
The Science of Human Nature: A Psychology for Beginners
Pyle, William Henry
Educational psychology; Psychology
Use is not quite so evident in such cases as the following: "Who was
Cæsar? Who was Homer? Who is Edison? What was the Inquisition? What were
the Crusades?" However, one has, in these cases, very closely associated
ideas, and these ideas do center about what we have done with these men
and events in our thinking. "Cæsar was a warrior. Homer was a writer of
epics. Edison is an inventor," etc. These men and events have been
presented to us in various situations as standing for various things in
the history of the world. And when we think of them, we at once think of
what they did, the place they fill in the world. This constitutes their
meaning.
It is evident that an idea may have many meanings. And the meaning that
may come to us at any particular moment depends upon the situation. A
chair, for example, in one situation, may come to mind as a thing to sit
in; in another situation, as a thing to stand in the corner and look
pretty; in another, a thing to stand on so that one may reach the top
shelf in the pantry; in another, a thing to strike a burglar with; in
another, a thing to knock to pieces to be used to make a fire.
The meaning of a thing comes from our experience with it, and the thing
usually comes to have more and more meanings as our experience with it
increases. When we meet something new, it may have practically no
meaning. Suppose we find a new plant in the woods. It has little
meaning. We may be able to say only that it is a plant, or it is a small
plant. We touch it and it pricks us, and it at once has more meaning. It
is a plant that pricks. We bite into it and find it bitter. It is then a
plant that is bitter, etc. In such a way, objects come to have meaning.
They acquire meaning according to the connections in which we experience
them and they may take on different meanings for different persons
because of the different experiences of these persons. The chief
interest we have in objects is in what use we can make of them, how we
can make them serve our purposes, how we can make them contribute to our
pleasure.
The organization of experience is the connecting, through the process of
association, of the ideas that arise out of our experience. Our ideas
are organized not only in accordance with the way we experience them in
the first place, but in accordance with the way we think them later in
memory. Of course, ideas are recalled in accordance with the way we
experience them, but since they are experienced in such a multitude of
connections, they are recalled later in these various connections and it
is possible in recall to repeat one connection to the exclusion of
others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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