Introduction to the Science of Sociology

by Robert Ezra Park; E. W. Burgess

There is a remarkable case reported by Sidis and Goodhart which illustrates the rôle that memory plays in giving us control over our inherited tendencies. It is that of Rev. Thomas C. Hanna, who, while attempting to alight from a carriage, lost his footing, fell to the ground and was picked up unconscious. When he awoke it was found that he had not only lost the faculty of speech but he had lost all voluntary control of his limbs. He had forgotten how to walk. He had not lost his senses. He could feel and see, but he was not able to distinguish objects. He had no sense of distance. He was in a state of complete "mental blindness." At first he did not distinguish between his own movements and those of other objects. "He was as much interested in the movements of his own limbs as in that of external things." He had no conception of time. "Seconds, minutes, and hours were alike to him." He felt hunger but he did not know how to interpret the feeling and had no notion of how to satisfy it. When food was offered him he did not know what to do with it. In order to get him to swallow food it had to be placed far back in his throat, in order to provoke reflex swallowing movements. In their report of the case the authors say:

Like an infant, he did not know the meaning of the simplest words, nor did he understand the use of language. Imitation was the factor in his first education. He learned the meaning of words by imitating definite articulate sounds made in connection with certain objects and activities. The pronunciation of words and their combination into whole phrases he acquired in the same imitative way. At first he simply repeated any word and sentence heard, thinking that this meant something to others. This manner of blind repetition and unintelligent imitation was, however, soon given up, and he began systematically to learn the meaning of words in connection with the objective content they signified. As in the case of children who, in their early developmental stage, use one word to indicate many objects different in their nature, but having some common point of superficial resemblance, so was it in the case of Mr. Hanna: the first word he acquired was used by him to indicate all the objects he wanted.

The first word he learned was "apple" and for a time apple was the only word he knew. At first he learned only the names of particular objects. He did not seem able to learn words with an abstract or general significance. But although he was reduced to a state of mental infancy, his "intelligence" remained, and he learned with astonishing rapidity. "His faculty of judgment, his power of reasoning, were as sound and vigorous as ever," continues the report. "The content of knowledge seemed to have been lost, but the form of knowledge remained as active as before the accident and was perhaps even more precise and definite."

One reason why man is superior to the brutes is probably that he has a better natural memory. Another reason is that there are more things that he can do, and so he has an opportunity to gain a wider and more varied experience. Consider what a man can do with his hands! To this he has added tools and machinery, which are an extension of the hand and have multiplied its powers enormously. It is now pretty well agreed, however, that the chief advantage which mankind has over the brutes is in the possession of speech by which he can communicate his ideas. In comparatively recent times he has supplemented this means of communication by the invention of the printing press, the telegraph, and the telephone. In this way he has been able not only to communicate his experiences but to fund and transmit them from one generation to another.

As soon as man began to point out objects and associate them with vocal sounds, he had obtained possession of a symbol by which he was able to deliberately communicate his desires and his intentions to other men in a more precise and definite way than he had been able to do through the medium of spontaneous emotional expression.

The first words, we may suppose, were onomatopoetic, that is to say, vocal imitations of the objects to which they referred. At any rate they arose spontaneously in connection with the situation that inspired them. They were then imitated by others and thus became the common and permanent possession of the group. Language thus assumed for the group the rôle of perception in the individual. It became the sign and symbol of those meanings which were the common possession of the group.

As the number of such symbols was relatively small in comparison to the number of ideas, words inevitably came to have different meanings in different contexts. In the long run the effect of this was to detach the words from the particular contexts in which they arose and loosen their connections with the particular sentiments and attitudes with which they were associated. They came to have thus a more distinctively symbolic and formal character. It was thus possible to give them more precise definitions, to make of them abstractions and mental toys, which the individual could play with freely and disinterestedly. Like the child who builds houses with blocks, he was able to arrange them in orders and systems, create ideal structures, like the constructions of mathematics, which he was then able to employ as means of ordering and systematizing his more concrete experiences.

All this served to give the individual a more complete control over his own experience and that of the group. It made it possible to analyze and classify his own experiences and compare them with those of his fellows and so, eventually, to erect the vast structure of formal and scientific knowledge on the basis of which men are able to live and work together in co-operation upon the structure of a common civilization.

The point is that the breadth of the experience over which man has control and the disinterestedness with which he is able to view it is the basis of the intellectual attainment of the individual, as of the race.

If human beings were thoroughly rational creatures, we may presume that they would act, at every instant, on the basis of all their experience and all the knowledge that they were able to obtain from the experience of others. The truth is, however, that we are never able, at any one time, to mobilize, control, and use all the experience and all the knowledge that we now possess and which, if we were less human than we are, might serve to guide and control our actions. It is precisely the function of science to collect, organize, and make available for our practical uses the fund of experience and of knowledge we do possess.