CHAPTER I

DISCOVERY AND INVENTION

The purpose of Part I is to indicate the extent to which invention is dependent upon socialization. For economy of attention our study will be concentrated upon practical invention and scientific discovery. This selection of the evolution of technique for intensive study is made because advance in the technical control of nature is not only the most obvious criterion of progress, but also peculiarly open to objective observation and quite typical of the process of all invention. The meaning attached to the term "socialization" has already been given in the introduction. Socialization is the participation of the individual in the community of thought, feeling, and action of the group. The articulation of the individual into the collective activities is not passive, it is active. The socialization of the members of the group does not necessarily or fundamentally mean that they think together, feel together, and act together; not that the ideas and purposes and conduct of the members of the group are identical—indeed they may be radically dissimilar; but that the mental community of the group1 is constituted by the integration of the thoughts and desires of the individuals, so that the ideas and attitudes of each individual are organically related to those of the other members of the community. This organic relation of the mental attitude of the individual to the social mind, in which the psychic organization of the individual is a product of the reaction of the mind with the social environment, and in which social organization is the outcome of the interaction and consequent integration of many minds, cannot be without significance in human progress. In what way, then, are practical invention and scientific discovery dependent upon this union and interaction of the individual with his mental environment?

In his essay on "Great Men and Their Environment," William James says: "Social evolution is a resultant of the interaction of

1Cooley's books Human Nature and the Social Order and Social Organization are a valuable analysis of the person and society from this point of view. See Social Organization, 1909, p. 3. Mead in a series of articles has made an acute and significant analysis of the process of the development of the social self, in Psychological Bulletin, VI (1909), 401-8; VII (1910), 397-405.

two wholly distinct factors-the individual, deriving his peculiar gifts from the play of the physiological and infra-social forces, but bearing all the power of initiative and origination in his hands; and, second, the social environment, with its power of adopting or rejecting both him and his gifts. Both factors are essential to change. The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community." This pithy statement sums up our distinction between the processes of origination and generalization. The individual originates, the group appropriates; the person creates, society conserves. This is a statement of the process in its lowest terms; James indicates that the working of these factors is more complex. He perceives that an explanation of social evolution either as the product of congenitally gifted individuals or as the mere outcome of social needs and demands would be one-sided. Even an interpretation which combined these two standpoints might prove abortive. For it is not in the conjunction, but in the interaction of √ the individual and the social factors, that social evolution consists. Our purpose is to study one aspect of the interaction between the originating of the individual and the appropriating by the group, namely, the dependence of the evolution of technique upon the process of socialization.

2The Will to Believe, 1897, p. 232.

CHAPTER II

CONSERVATION AS A FUNCTION OF SOCIALIZATION

In our everyday thinking we emphasize origination, while conservation is assumed or taken for granted. It seems a paradox to suggest that for social evolution origination is of only secondary significance; it is the preservation of the new idea, process, or product which is of first importance. Anomalous as is this statement, a large number of facts may be brought forward to indicate the large measure of truth it contains. These facts fall under two heads: first, the selective function of conservation in appropriating invention; and, secondly, its role in inhibiting innovation.

1. The mental attitude of the group bent upon repressing variation and upon maintaining the tried and tested ways of thinking and acting comes into working relations with the human tendency to test and appraise the new, because both processes are predominantly social in origin and purpose, and because both are fundamental elements in the evolution of human valuations. The “social value" of an activity signifies either its objective or subjective advantage to the community; the "social valuation" of conduct denotes the appraisal placed upon it by the individuals constituting the group.1 The process of valuation in which values are evolved is, then, an inter-mental activity which integrates the reactions of the entire membership of the community, comprising the dead as well as the living. We shall now endeavor to show in detail that conservation in both its progressive and reactionary phases is a process in social valuation and a function of socialization.

Socialization made possible the first great human achievements. In the very process of conservation, as well as in the transfer of culture from one group to another, the conserved idea, the sanctioned ways of doing things, the transmitted objects experience a gradual modification, due, of course, to the initiative of numerous individuals, but not assignable to any isolable person, but rather to be accounted for by the interplay of the co-operative mental activity which we name the "folk-mind." The origin and the development of language is the example par excellence and type of all invention 1Small, The Meaning of Social Science, 1910, p. 244.

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which results from the "give and take" of social life. Presupposing a low stage of socialization, the evolution of the capacity to control in an indirect way the thinking and the conduct of others by the employment of definite vocal symbols made the mental community possible and facilitated the inter-generation solidarity of the group. The taming of wild animals was the work of individuals, but their domestication was the result of the sum of the efforts of generations. The first control of fire was secured in learning to conserve it;2 not until later was the process of creating fire invented. McGee thinks that the graceful curves of the reed-bundle boat of the Seri Indians are "nothing more than the mechanical solution of a complex problem in balanced forces wrought out through the experiences of generations." The evolution of the plowshare is said to have been guided by raising the metal at the place where the mud clung. The beginnings of all the arts and sciences are to be found in this mental co-operation of the folk-mind. Bücher in his study, Arbeit und Rhythmus, correlates the development of rhythm with its functional value as an accompaniment of co-operative work. The drama, as the representation of the significant moments in tribal experience, borrowed its material and inspiration from the common life; the ballad was a composite product of a series of men, each of whom added to or subtracted from the poem as it came to his hand. Counting by twos and threes on the fingers led to arithmetic ;5 the invention of money is a social process worked out by generations of exchange. The beginnings of medicine are to be traced back to the collection of herbs and practices handed down by the old women or by the medicine-men in the group. The mixture of the ingredients in cooking receipts, like the proportion of metals in the old alloys, seems to have been worked out on a rude empirical basis of the selection of the desirable modifications. Our social etiquette, our marriage and funeral rites, our ceremonies of church and state, our parliamentary procedure, all have a long and complex history in which the outstanding fact is their origin in the

2This is the present state of the art among the Andamanese (Mason, Origins of Invention, 1895, p. 101).

3"The Seri Indians,” in the Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, XVII (1895-96), 173.

4Iles, Inventors at Work, 1906, p. 91.

"Conant, The Number Concept, 1896, p. 7.

collective activities. In short, "social refraction," as Tarde designated this deflection of invention, as it is transmitted from person to person and from group to group, not merely transmits, but modifies and improves as well.

The socializing process provides the conditions, not only for the emergence, but also for the preservation of the innovation. The conservation of the invention is assured by its appropriation by the group, or by its diffusion through society and by its transmission in the group. This machinery of conservation is set in operation by the utilization of psychic forces: by the fixation of attention, by the appeal to interest, by the formation of habits with reference to stimuli which have a real or apparent value for human welfare. The evolution of human wants and the process of social change involved, while conditioned, in a measure of course, by the congenital equipment and the individual experience of the person and by the requirements of the physical environment, are almost entirely determined by the psychic interrelations of men in association. An analysis of the processes of appropriation, diffusion, and transmission will clarify this point, namely, that conservation is a function of socialization. Appropriation by imitation differs from diffusion by education in that in the former process social consciousness and social control are either reduced to a minimum or are unobtrusive and non-coercive. Powerful sense stimuli, such as alcohol, narcotics, and condiments, possess an organic sanction and, therefore, the highest degree of transmissibility. Ornaments, weapons, and tools, with their obvious relation to the control of life, leap only less readily the barriers of race, language, and custom. The contact of the Europeans and the American Indians furnishes instructive instances of the relative rapidity of the adoption of new cultural values. The European and the Indian soon negotiated the exchange of fire-water for tobacco. It was not long before the horse and the dog and the gun of the white were in the possession of the red man. But the religion of the Caucasian and his esoteric symbols for reading and writing were not appreciated by the Indian; the missionary must create an artificial demand for his commodities where the trader had only to appeal to the eye and the ear to adapt his business to the activities of the savage. In modern times, fashions, fads and crazes, those social institutions of ephemeral appropriation by imitation which