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their technical context. And he also realized the need to introduce
scientific method in fields which have hitherto stubbornly resisted its
application.
In this respect, as in many others, Mead broke with traditional
philosophy. For the philosopher's concern with science has been
too often instinct with a deep,
if
not always conscious, antagonism.
While philosophers have used science for their own ends whenever
they could, they have always sought to limit its scope and to explain
away its disturbing implications. Seldom have they been willing to
accept it as heartily as Mead did; perhaps because seldom have they
possessed so thorough an understanding of the nature of its method
and of the meaning of its findings.
As
a result of his understanding of the proper jurisdiction of
science, Mead was able to perceive that knowledge can not transcend
the world within which
it
functions. And this in tum commits
him
to a whole-hearted naturalism. But he did not take the term "natur–
alism" to be synonymous with "materialism," either "mechanistic"
or "dialectical." For materialism is grounded on the traditional
assumption that the objective of the scientific quest is to reveal to us
the essential nature of the world; while Mead took the objective to be
the achievement of control. The materialist of course believes that
the essential nature of the world is "matter." The mechanist con–
cieves of matter in the billiard-ball mannet of Newtonian metaphysics.
And the dialectical materialist conceives of it in an essentially con–
fused manner which can be traced in its origins to the poetic sayings
of Heraclitus, a mystic aristocrat of ancient Ephesus, who projected
into the universe the social antagonisms of which he was a victim,
and thought cosmic development came about from the clashing of
immanent forces. But Mead was able to show, through elaborate an–
alysis, that the formulas of science are neither actual nor hypothetical
pictures of objects which lie beyond the range of ordinary perceptual
experience. It is true that science is usually supposed to deal with
"hypothetical
objects~
But since experimental science must submit
its theories to the test of immediate experience, its formulations are
more properly interpreted as in fact statements whose function
i~
to
control our actual world.
To show that scientific formulations are methods of control
is to show in passing the interrelation that must exist between thought
and action,
if
the former is to be meaningful and the latter rational;
in other words, it is to show that the task of thought is to guide ex–
perience, and that of experience must be to furnish the material and
test the adequacy of thought. One hears these days a great deal of
glib talk about the connection between thought and action. But
much of it comes from men whose dogmatic acceptance of alleged
P?~t~cal
"axioms" shows how inconsistent and shallow is their em–
pmciSm.
