CHAPTER EIGHT HOW THESE RELATIONS ARE VERIFIED
In the last chapter a most important forward step was taken in our argument. We found reasons for believing that our responses of appreciation bring to light three uniformities of relation among the objects of the existing world. These enduring forms of relation are: coherence of character, functional adaptability, and significant harmony.
These are relations which hold among objects in virtue of the different qualities which make them valuable, rather than of their physical properties which we take account of in action. They are uniformities of intrinsic nature rather than of external determination. Now the next question is: Can these relations discovered by our responses of appreciation be
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verified as conclusively as science verifies its laws of physical causation? Science verifies the existence of physical laws by observation and experiment. Are the uniformities of relation existent among objects in their aspect of value also susceptible of empirical and experimental verification?
An experiment is a test or trial. The experimenter wishes to find out if some conclusion or conjecture to which he has been led is true in fact. He thereupon engages in a definitely planned course of action which his tentative conclusion suggests, and carefully observes the consequences. If they turn out to be what his own theory had led him to anticipate, he regards this theory as verified. Since the experiment proceeds under a prearranged plan which prescribes definite, detailed conditions, it can be repeated by anyone who is interested in the subject and thus
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the results originally obtained can be tested and confirmed by any and all investigators.
Such experimentation necessarily involves action. For only if it entails a sequence of movements a course of motor manipulation, does it fall within that outer world whose regular processes are open to the observation of all and can be relied upon to repeat themselves in case of all observers.
These conditions are fulfilled by the experiments of physical science. In this field of experimentation, motor adjustment and manipulation necessarily play a prominent part. For the generalizations of the scientist refer to the relations of physical determination among objects and these relations reveal themselves in the limitations which the external world imposes upon our motor responses. Sometimes the projected sequence of movements will be simply that of the observer to some point of vantage relative to
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the object and of focusing or fixating his sense organs upon it. And the outcome tells the tale: Will the projected series of movements be met by a succession of external stimuli which permit it to proceed unhindered to its anticipated ending? Sometimes the motor adjustments involve the manipulation of materials and the employment of instruments and apparatus like the telescope and microscope and chronoscope. As we know, laboratory experimentation is a technical art requiring experience and skill for its successful performance, but always the scientific observer must, as we commonly say, keep an open mind. He must be prepared for surprises as he surveys the field of his microscope or telescope, be prepared to make unexpected stoppings and shifts and alterations in his responses of visual accommodation and general sensory-motor adjustment. Likewise the manipulations and technical contrivances of laboratory
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experimentation are subject to external control; the chemist who embarks upon an extended experimental investigation must be prepared to alter his procedure the moment an unexpected turn of events calls a halt in his projected course of operation.
When we turn from the field of physical events to that of intrinsic values we leave the world of action (in the ordinary sense) for that of appreciation. Do we find in this latter field of value any motor responses which make possible experimental investigation and experimental verification? On first thought we shall be inclined to answer: No, appreciation is a purely mental or spiritual activity, not a physical response. But this answer, while natural is mistaken, a serious error, due to the preconceptions of traditional dualistic psychology and philosophy. Have we not found that the three responses instrumental in appreciation-those of understanding and
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insight, practical contrivance and invention, and aesthetic perception are in part bodily responses? Understanding and insight are not merely responses of our cognitive intelligence, they involve responses of our organs of articulate speech. Contrivance and inven- tion are not merely responses of our practical intelligence, they are also responses of our powers of motor manipulation and adjustment. The perception of beauty is not merely a response of our aesthetic intelligence, it is also a response of the mechanism of sensory adjustment supplemented by a variety of motor responses, some verbal and some determining the general bodily attitude.
Because each of these three responses is influenced by both the ideals of intelligence and the mechanisms of the body, (is in fact a psycho-physical response),, they all proceed experimentally. Our intelligent interpretations are freely conceived in the realm of ideal
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possibility, but they are also expressed in words, thus tested under fixed conditions of consecutive, consistent discourse, and modified in the light of the observed outcome. Our practical intelligence freely imagines new uses to which familiar objects may be put, new combinations and adaptations that can be made of existing materials and agencies, but at the same time it is rehearsing through slight motor responses the actual manipulations required to make the combinations and adaptations which are being imagined. Thus it is reminded of the limitations which external conditions impose upon our practical constructions and at the same time obtains fruitful suggestions as to other changes and transformations that may be wrought in existing objects. Our powers of aesthetic perception play freely with the beautiful object, but the resulting synthesis of qualities perceived and imagined is continually
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and motor impulses so that the meaning envisaged is corrected, modified, and enriched. It is extremely important to remember that the values we appreciate in existing objects are not discoveries of abstract intelligence as separated from body, nor are they properties of pure reason projected into, or enforced upon, material objects; they are features of the real world explored or, better, worked out by intelligent interaction of a bodily organism with its external environment.
But, we may ask, do not these three responses of appreciation differ in essential ways from those responses of outward movement on which the experimental procedure of science depends? It is true that they are, at least largely, imperceptible, and hence not open to general observation. And, secondly, they are to such an extent controlled by in- dividual intelligence and will that they lack
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the regularity and uniformity characteristic of mechanical causation. In this Connection, it should not be forgotten, of course, that these responses are all subject to habit which tends to reduce all our activities to something like mechanical regularity. But there is a difference between the three responses involved in appreciation and the responses of gross bodily movement and outward action; this must be admitted. Indeed, were this not the case, were the responses of intellectual insight and practical invention and aesthetic perception not more directly under the control of individual intelligence, and did they not work with greater freedom and spontaneity than those of ordinary bodily movement, they could not be effective in appreciation. While this is true, it is also true that each of these responses extends itself on the bodily side into the external world of outward movement and common observation:
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insight and understanding express themselves externally in oral and written discourse, practical contrivance and invention in mechanical instruments methods and appliances, and social customs, procedures and institutions, and aesthetic perception in artistic creations of all sorts.
Through these external expressions, these physical extensions, of the three responses of appreciation, the constant relations discovered among objects in their aspect of value become capable of experimental investigation and verification. Through them the values discovered in appreciation are communicated by their discoverers to others and made intelligible to them so that they can try for themselves to realize them in the objects of everyday perception. Thus the uniformly valuable features of existing objects gain social corroboration and general recognition. Those identities and differences of meaning
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which connect a given object with all other objects of human interest are expressed in spoken words and given permanent embodiment in descriptive, historical, and scientific writings. Thus the opinions and conclusions of one individual can be examined and criticized by others who will pass independent judgment upon their consistency with fact. Adaptations of actual objects to rational uses are embodied in mechanical appliances and social procedures, to be employed and tested by others contemporary with the inventor and of later generations. Intrinsic and significant harmonies felt through aesthetic percep- tion are given sensuous embodiment in painting and sculpture, poem and song, drama and instrumental music, architectural design and decorative embellishment; thus they can be critically appraised and, if beautiful, can be enjoyed by all.
Suppose now that individual experience
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and judgment are corroborated and the existence of these values in actual objects is socially verified. The particular insight, the practical invention, the artistic creation, is added to the accumulating body of literature, of industrial and social procedures and insti- tutions, and of products of fine art in all its forms, which constitute the material of social culture. The accumulated material of social culture, therefore, embodies and symbolizes the fact that objects in their aspect of value disclose themselves to our intellectual insight, our practical intelligence, and our aesthetic intuition, as a developing system correlated by identities of meaning, presenting limitless possibilities of expansion and reorganization, and mirroring its own unity in the structure and constitution of some of its component parts. The true function and importance of these products of social intelligence only become
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clear when they are thus understood as the enduring and generally intelligible symbols of the relations which connect objects so far as they possess rational and personal value. Scientific and historical writings, poetry, drama,, music, paintings, architecture, industrial tools and methods, political forms and procedures, social customs and institutions, all these furnish the human individual with the means of relating the objects of his own everyday perception, whose value he has appreciated perhaps subjectively and in terms of his own needs and desires, to the one objective value-system. They enable him to verify in the most convincing way possible, i.e., by his own practical experimentation, the objective values inherent in the objects he perceives. As members of civilized society we have, each one of us, ready at hand and available for use, the means and the methods for testing and appreciating the real values of
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existing things. As a matter of fact, we have become so accustomed to the presence of these agencies and instrumentalities which social progress has placed at our disposal that our appreciation of their marvelous efficacy has been,dulled and deadened by very familiarity. But they do create possibilities of realizing the substantial., the universal values in everyday things and everyday activities, which ,arise from moment to moment in connection with the commonest incidents and most ordinary occupations of every passing day.
Imagine that I am sitting outdoors and a beetle lights on my sleeve. I may glance with admiring curiosity at its odd markings, or Rick it off with instinctive repugnance. But if I am versed in entomology I can identify, it by its scientific name and this name will be a key to its structural peculiarities and life-habits, its place in the family of beetles, and its genetic relations to other insects and to the
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divergent forms of evolving life. Or think of the farmer ploughing his field on a spring morning. Considered as events in space and time, his own steps, the pull of the horses, the drag and thrust of the plough as it turns up sod and loam, all of them dissolve into the, ceaseless process of physical change. And indeed the performance may have little enough meaning for the human actor; just a familiar sequence of external occurrences and habitual responses of sensation and movement. But the plough itself as the embodiment and symbol of nun's protracted and severe struggle, first to extract from the earth a regular if scanty food supply, this familiar and prosaic instrument takes the act of ploughing out of its purely physical setting and places it in entirely different relations. It appears as a necessary factor in the far-reaching industrial enterprise of producing and distributing the amount of suitable food required to maintain
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all members of human society in health and strength, and thus as an essential part of the great co-operative task of mankind in developing and utilizing the resources of this planet and of the natural world. Even the money which I pay over the counter when I buy some needed article--these coins are symbols of the exchange value of the article purchased, linking my transaction with the organized system of commerce and industry whereby the economic needs of human society are met and its cultural interests given opportunity of fulfillment. Likewise the telephone which I use symbolizes the wider relations of my conversation as part of the intricate web of intercommunication on which the organized life of society depends. Marking a ballot is a trivial act, physically, considered; only enough energy is expended to move very slightly an arm and the fingers holding a pencil which rubs over a white
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surface and leaves a black mark. But the ballot symbolizes the value of political co-operation and, if thoughtfully employed, brings home to me the significance of citizenship in a self-governing nation. The architectural dignity and appropriateness and beauty of a public auditorium or legislative chamber frequently help legislators, committee members, delegates, and visitors to realize the social import and value of proceedings which, divorced from this context, seem frivolous, ineffective, banal.
The individual who would realize these values for himself must acquire from his social surroundings, language habits, practical skill, and aesthetic discrimination, as well as develop his original capacity for using these responses as tools of exploration, experimentation, and appreciation. Then, the accumulated culture of the race embodying the insights, inventions, and aesthetic
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intuitions of his fellows will provide him with a means of interpreting objects of direct perception in terms of inclusive human life and experience. And the three responses referred to, when thus trained in the field of social inter-communication, will equip him with permanent symbols in which to embody his own discoveries, practical achievements, and artistic creations, and thus make them part of the spiritual heritage of humanity.
