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The Symbol: The Origin and Basis of Human Behavior

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Leslie A. White
Leslie A. White*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
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Extract

In July, 1939, a celebration was held at Leland Stanford University to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the discovery that the cell is the basic unit of all living tissue. Today we are beginning to realize and to appreciate the fact that the symbol is the basic unit of all human behavior and civilization.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 7 , Issue 4 , October 1940 , pp. 451 - 463
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1940

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References

1 New York, 1936.

2 Anthropology, p. 39; New York, 1937.

3 We have a good example of this in the distinguished physiologist, Anton J. Carlson. After taking note of “man's present achievements in science, in the arts (including oratory), in political and social institutions,” and noting “at the same time the apparent paucity of such behavior in other animals,” he, as a common man “is tempted to conclude that in these capacities, at least, man has a qualitative superiority over other mammals,” (“The Dynamics of Living Processes,” in The Nature of the World and Man, H. H. Newman, ed., p. 477; Chicago, 1926). But, since, as a scientist, Professor Carlson cannot define this qualitative difference between man and other animals, since as a physiologist he cannot explain it, he refuses to admit it,— “... the physiologist does not accept the great development of articulate speech in man as something qualitatively new; ...” (p. 478)—and suggests helplessly that some day we may find some new “building stone,” an “additional lipoid, phosphatid, or potassium ion,” in the human brain which will explain it, and concludes by saying that the difference between the mind of man and that of non-man is '“probably only one of degree,” (op. cit., pp. 478-79).

4 “Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?”—Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Sc. 1.

5 “Now since sounds have no natural connection with our ideas, but have all their signification from the arbitrary imposition of men ...,” John Locke, Essay Concerning the Human Understanding, Bk. III, ch. 9.

“When I use ... [a] word, it means just what I choose it to mean,” said Humpty Dumpty to Alice, (Through the Looking Glass).

6 This statement is valid regardless of our theory of experiencing. Even the exponents of “Extra-Sensory Perception,” who have challenged Locke's dictum that “the knowledge of the existence of any other thing [besides ourselves and God] we can have only by sensation,” (Bk. 4, ch. 11, Essay Concerning the Human Understanding,) have been obliged to work with physical rather than ethereal forms.

7 A sign is a physical form whose function is to indicate some other thing—object, quality, or event. The meaning of a sign may be intrinsic, inseparable from its physical form and nature, as in the case of the height of a column of mercury as an indication of temperature; or, it may be merely identified with its physical form, as in the case of a hurricane signal displayed by a weather bureau. But in either case, the meaning of the sign is perceived with the senses.

8 “Surprising as it may seem, it was very clear during the first few months that the ape was considerably superior to the child in responding to human words,” W. N. and L. A. Kellogg, The Ape and the Child, (New York, 1933).

9 Professor Linton speaks of “the faintest foreshadowings of language ... at the animal level,” (op. cit., p. 74). But precisely what these “faintest foreshadowings” are he does not say.

10 What we have to say here would, of course, apply equally well to gestures (e.g., the “sign of the cross,” a salute), a color, a material object, etc.

11 Like a word, the value of a vase may be perceived by the senses or imperceptible to them depending upon the context in which it is regarded. In an esthetic context its value is perceived with the senses. In the commercial context this is impossible; we must be told its value—in terms of price.

12 Cf. “A Neurologist Makes Up His Mind,” by C. Judson Herrick, Scientific Monthly, August, 1939. Professor Herrick is a distinguished one of a not too large number of scientists who are interested in the structural basis of symbol using.

13 The misconception that speech is dependent upon the so-called (but mis-called) organs of speech, and, furthermore, that man alone has organs suitable for speech, is not uncommon even today. Thus Professor L. L. Bernard lists “The fourth great organic asset of man is his vocal apparatus, also characteristic of him alone,” (Introduction to Sociology, J. Davis and H. E. Barnes, eds., p. 399; New York, 1927).

The great apes have the mechanism necessary for the production of articulate sounds: “It seemingly is well established that the motor mechanism of voice in this ape [chimpanzee] is adequate not only to the production of a considerable variety of sounds, but also to definite articulations similar to those of man,” R. M. and A. W. Yerkes, The Great Apes, p. 301 (New Haven, 1929). Also: “All of the anthropoid apes are vocally and muscularly equipped so that they could have an articulate language if they possessed the requisite intelligence,” E. A. Hooton, Up From the Ape, p. 167 (New York, 1931).

Furthermore, the mere production of articulate sounds would not be symbolizing any more than the mere “understanding of words and sentences” (Darwin) is. John Locke made this clear two and a half centuries ago: “Man, therefore had by nature his organs so fashioned, as to be fit to frame articulate sounds, which we call words. But this was not enough to produce language; for parrots, and several other birds, will be taught to make articulate sounds distinct enough, which yet, by no means, are capable of language. Besides articulate sounds, therefore, it was farther necessary, that he should be able to use these sounds as signs of internal conceptions; and to make them stand as marks for the ideas within his own mind, whereby they might be made known to others ...,” Book III, Ch. 1, Secs. 2, 3, Essay Concerning the Human Understanding.

And J. F. Blumenbach, a century later, declared in his On the Natural Variety of Mankind, “That speech is the work of reason alone, appears from this, that other animals, although they have nearly the same organs of voice as man, are entirely destitute of it,” (quoted by R. M. and A. W. Yerkes, op. cit., p. 23).

14 Man's brain is about two and one-half times as large as that of a gorilla. “The human brain is about 1/50 of the entire body weight, while that of a gorilla varies from 1/150 to 1/200 part of that weight,” (Hooton, op. cit., p. 153).

15 “On the whole, however, it would seem that language and culture rest, in a way which is not fully understood, on the same set of faculties ...,” A. L. Kroeber, Anthropology, p. 108, (New York, 1923).

It is hoped that this essay will make this matter more “fully understood.”

16 It is for this reason that observations and experiments with apes, rats, etc., can tell us nothing about human behavior. They can tell us how ape-like or rat-like man is, but they throw no light upon human behavior because the behavior of apes, rats, etc., is nonsymbolic.

The title of the late George A. Dorsey's best seller, Why We Behave Like Human Beings, was misleading for the same reason. This interesting book told us much about vertebrate, mammalian, primate, and even man-animal behavior, but virtually nothing about symbolic, i.e., human, behavior. But we are glad to add, in justice to Dorsey, that his chapter on the function of speech in culture, (Ch. II) in Man's Own Show: Civilization (New York, 1931), is probably the best discussion of this subject that we know of in anthropological literature.

17 In their fascinating account of their experiment with a baby chimpanzee, kept for nine months in their home and treated as their infant son was treated, Professor and Mrs. Kellogg speak of the “humanization” of the little ape: “She may thus be said to have become ‘more humanized’ than the human subject ...” (p. 315).

This is misleading. What the experiment showed so strikingly was how like an ape a child of homo sapiens is before he learns to talk. The boy even employed the ape's “food bark”! The experiment also demonstrated the ape's utter inability to learn to talk, which means an inability to become humanized at all.

18 The reader will find a resume of the more significant facts of these cases in W. I. Thomas, Primitive Behavior, pp. 50-54, 776-777 (New York, 1937).