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Since scientific formulations are methods of control, they can be
of no use to those philosophers who are bent on throwing doubt on
the existence of the world as it reveals itself to unreflective com–
monsense. The activities of the scientist presuppose the world of un–
reflective experience from which problems arise. Therefore, science
can not force us to believe in the subjectivity of qualities and values,
for these are part of the perceptual evidence on which the scientist
depends for the verification of
his
hypotheses. Unless he takes them
for granted as objective he cannot advance a step. It is by means
of actual observations which depend on the scientist's perception·of
the qualities of the world and which are made with the aid of instru–
ments the existence of which it never occurs to the scientist to doubt,
that he is able to decide whether his formulas can be accepted or
must be discarded. These observations "sweep out a great deal of
riff-raff known as epistemology."
The uncritical reader can easily interpret Mead's doctrine to
be
a variant of phenomenalism; and the heresy hunters of the or–
thodox left will no doubt raise the cry of idealism. The danger of
misinterp~etation
is the greater since Mead incorporated perspectivism
into
his
thought, and held that our knowledge is never of things-by–
themselves but is ,always about things-in-perspectives. But Mead does
not deny that we can know there is a world-that we take for granted
since our knowledge-activity goes on within it. What he denies is
that we can know or that it means anythipg to want to know, what
is
its nature or essence. We never know the nature of the world.
All we can ever know is how it behaves.
Although Mead's elaboration of a philosophy of science is of
great value, more valuable still, and more original perhaps, is
his
contribution to social psychology. For instead of seeking to explain
the social activities of human animals in terms of their pre-existing
minds,
Mead shows how minds and selves develop from the group
activity of animals who in the process of evolution come by certain
neurological equipment. When the individual is able to anticipate
within himself, in the form of incipient behaviour, the reactions of
others to
his
gestures, the gestures become significant signs for the
individual who makes them, and we can say of him that he has
come into the possession of a mind. Of all forms of gesture, the
most important is of course language. But the equipment of an animal
endowed with mind does not consist merely of spoken language, but
of
all
types of significant signs which he is able to use, and of the
organized responses which these signs are able to call out. This is
what ideas and thoughts mean. They are not something which goes
on only in the brain. They are inhibited activity of a very complex
10rt,
"telescoped" into aptitudes for arrested or delayed behavior.
And although in an account of their mechanism the central nervous
em
must necessarily play a very important role, our whole or–
. m is involved in their production, particularly our hands, whose
