Genesis account of creation or who was unacquainted with the scientific advance of the time could possible have made the generalization. Points (3) and (4) show that the social organization provided the leisure and opportunity for personal specialization upon which the discovery rested. Only a highly complex social organization enables certain of its members to spend years in collecting zoological specimens. The inter-mental aspect of private property and inheritance, not to mention other relations involved in our present social order, was the prerequisite of any such unproductive activity. Therefore, though I do not deny that "the flash of similarity . . . between the rivalry for food in nature and the rivalry for man's selection was too recondite to have occurred to any but exceptional minds," as James asserts,33 I do maintain that the social factors are quite as essential and, in this case, paramount. Elsewhere, James recognizes this other aspect. "Some thoughts act almost like mechanical centers of crystallization; facts cluster of themselves about them. Such a thought was that of the gradual growth of all things, by natural processes, out of natural antecedents." 34 The list of simultaneous inventions and discoveries might be prolonged indefinitely. We mention only certain ones of common knowledge. Darwin35 assigns priority by publication to E. Forbes of a theory earlier developed independently by him in which both men explain by means of the Glacial Period the marked resemblances of the fauna and flora in the Arctic region and on distant mountain tops. The independent reference by both Adams and Leverrier of the minute irregularities of the orbit of Uranus to a hypothetical planet whose position they indicated will suffice to close the case for scientific discovery. In mechanical invention, the simultaneous perfection of the telephone by Bell and Gray, and that of the telegraph by Morse in America, Steinheil in Germany, Cooke and Wheatstone in England, represent the numerous instances in which priority is difficult of determination. The role of the accidental in invention is sometimes urged as an argument against the dependence of invention upon acquired knowledge. The objection assumes that invention is often a mere coincidence, a "happy chance." Bain indicates the fallacy of this position when he directs attention to the factors determining both 83 Psychology, 1890, II, 360-61. 34 Memories and Studies, 1911, p. 124. 35 Life and Letters, I, 88. 36Iles, op. cit., p. 378. the occurrence of the accident and its utilization: "The inventions of the scarlet dye, of glass, of soap, of gunpowder, could have come only by accident; but the accident, in most of them, would probably fall into the hands of men engaged in numerous trials upon the material involved." 37 The ability of the person to utilize the accident is the vital factor, and an examination of the typical instances of the part played by accident will indicate that the mental discipline necessary to take advantage of the accident is the result of participation in the science and activities of the group. It is true that a cut finger38 turned Nobel's attention to collodion, and it was an impulse of the moment, no doubt, that led him to pour it into some nitroglycerine. This accident, if you wish to call it so, gave him an active absorbent for dynamite. Yet all the materials with which he was working, all his expert training, the opportunity to devote himself to this special pursuit, were the result of his relation to the inter-mental unity which makes the achievements of all men in the past the basis of future achievement. The accident simply shortened the time of eventual discovery. Then, too, was it mere chance which enabled Edison to perceive39 in the humming noise emitted by the passing of the indented paper over a rotating cylinder under a tracing point-an apparatus designed to repeat Morse characters-a resemblance to human speech? No, this association of ideas which resulted in the phonograph was due to his fertile and disciplined imagination. And this discipline of his mental powers was largely a social product derived from the friction of his mind with the minds of other men. We read that a mere accident in the home circle, the chance upsetting of a mixture of rubber and sulphur,40 was responsible for the discovery of the process of vulcanization which renders rubber insensible to both heat and cold. This cursory account overlooks the following facts: (1) that Goodyear was actively engaged at the time in solving this problem; and (2) that he was working on the basis of the previous labors of Hayward. The tendency of the human mind is to 37 Bain, Senses and Intellect, 1868, 3d ed., p. 596. 38 Iles, op. cit., p. 411. 39 Edison, "The Perfected Phonograph," in the North American Review, CXLVI (1888), 643. 40 Twelfth Census, loc. cit., III, 777. neglect the fundamental commonplace factors in invention and to seize upon and to emphasize the sensational and the personal. Similar to the rôle of accident in invention is the suggestion utilized from folk-practice, except that here the group origin of the discovery is undeniable. Jenner's prolonged study of vaccination was due to the fact that his attention was called to the belief of the English country folk in the efficacy of cowpox as a preventive of smallpox. Whatever are the merits of the sour-milk cure for old age, its discovery was the outcome of a vacation12 spent by Metchnikoff in the Caucasus Mountains during which he associated the longevity of the inhabitants with their sour-milk diet. The utilization of ribbed and maze glass to increase effective light was the discovery of an American visitor in an English factory, surprised by the fact that the reason for the use of rough glass was because of its local reputation for better and more uniform light. In all these cases cited, a practice is in common use in a restricted area in the first two instances a specialist, in the last case a man keenly alive to commercial possibilities, stumbles upon a group practice; in all three cases a vast amount of experimentation is undertaken before the discovery is perfected and given to the world. The decisive moment in all these instances seems to have been the moment of actual contact between the isolated group mind and the highest integration of verifiable human experience as embodied in the mind of the specialist. This examination of inventions where accidents have apparently played an important part reveals the fact that the accident is the lesser factor in the situation. The dominant and dynamic factors are, first, the direction of attention, and, secondly, the special knowledge of the inventor, both of which, as has been indicated, are organically related to personal participation in the thinking and the action of the group. The study of the simultaneity of discovery, and the rôle of the accidental in invention simply enforce the truth that the personal functioning in the social heritage is the decisive factor in scientific 41 Vierkandt, op. cit., p. 22. 42 Williams, "Metchnikoff, 'Seeker after Eternal Youth,'" in the Cosmopolitan, LIII (1912), 440-46; cf. Metchnikoff, The Prolongation of Life (R. C. Mitchell's trans., 1908). 43 Iles, op. cit., pp. 72-73. discovery and mechanical application. That the knowledge which the individual possesses is social in its origin; that the knowledgegetting process of which the person is a part is a social activity has been recognized over and over again. We close this part of the discussion with such a statement of the dependence of the individual upon the group. "The mass of our knowledge," says Patten, "we derive at second hand from the society of which we are members. Acquired knowledge is not a part of our heredity, nor are its data ever fully presented to the senses. Each generation impresses its thought, language and civilization on the next. The social process on which the continuation of this knowledge depends is outside of individuals and acts according to its own laws. A child growing up in such a society has his ideas shaped and the content of his knowledge determined by the contrasts and agreements which the social process presents and enforces. The mass of our knowledge is derived from our civilization and not from personal experience. The testing of acquired knowledge by individuals is incomplete, and could not of itself be made the basis of its reliability." A mathematical estimate of the ratio of importance of the individual and social factors. is offered by Mr. Bellamy. "All that a man produces today more than did his cave-dwelling ancestor, he produces by virtue of the accumulated achievements, inventions, and improvements of the intervening generations, together with the social and industrial machinery, which is their legacy. Nine hundred and ninetynine parts out of the thousand of every man's produce are the result of his social inheritance and environment."45 99 44 44"Pragmatism and Social Science," in the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, VIII (1911), 655–56. 45"What Nationalism Means," in the Contemporary Review, LVIII (1890), 18. CHAPTER IV ORIGINATION AS A FUNCTION OF SOCIALIZATION. II. SOCIAL ORGANIZATON Social heredity, we see, supplies the material for invention. The character of the social organization, on the other hand, decides in large measure the tempo of progress. What is meant by social organization, and how does it impede or facilitate invention? Social organization, like social heredity, is an aspect of the inter-mental community. Social heredity consists in the function of the inter-generation communication of ideas. Social organization comprises the relatively stable phases of the inter-mental process. These more or less permanent mental attitudes tend to take objective form in the social structure with its division of labor and its specialization of function. Social organization consists, then, whatever its external forms, in the organized mental attitude of the members of the group. Consequently in the use of the term "social organization," stress will be laid upon its fundamentally psychic character. As related to invention, several stages in the social organization may be traced: (a) mental attitudes in general, as expressed in social tendencies rather than incorporated in social structure; (b) the fundamental stratification of mental attitude as exhibited in division of labor and specialization of occupation; (c) the emergence of a leisure class; (d) the rise of a scientific class; (e) organized research. a) The organized mental attitude of the group has played a decisive part in the conservation of invention. The attitude of the group is even more important in facilitating origination. In the first place, the freedom of the individual, so important for invention, varies with the group feeling. "There cannot be the least doubt," says Royce, "that individuals themselves vary more in their own habits, become more productive of novel processes, and contribute more to the variation of social habits, when the conditions are such as to favor the social tendencies often called by the general name individualism. The periods of great individualism have 38 |