II. Development of the Individual and the Species
One of the most basic beliefs of science is that everything has a cause, and that causes must be discovered. We say that things existing in a "natural state" but the natural state can be traced to past events: all plants and animals today are descendants of others that existed before them - that they have inherited certain traits from their forebears and developed other traits as a result of their individual experience.
And so it is in psychology: our minds, like our bodies, are the result of a process of evolution and we inherit certain mental traits from our ancestors (both humans and the animal species from which our own evolved) and develop others based on our own experience. And because our experience includes interactions with other persons, particularly those who seek to influence the way we think and behave, the culture in which a man lives plays a strong role in shaping his mentality.
As such it is fitting, as we enter into a consideration of psychology, to consider the development of the individual - to consider the cause of his "natural" state of mind. What traits are inherited, which are developed in the context of culture, and which do we develop as individuals within our species?
The Dynamic World
In previous generations, it was generally believed that the world was static and that everything was fixed and final, but this has reversed in recent years to a perspective that the word is dynamic and ever-changing and that events are interrelated and interdependent. The world is a network in which each thing is dependent on others.
In such a world, change is constant and ceaseless - the society we live in today will become a much different society ten years hence - and that man is responsive to these changes and adjusts himself accordingly. As such man is not the creator of the world, but is created by the world - he causes things to happen, but is affected by many things that occur that are not his doing.
This is critical to the notion of evolution: creatures change to become better suited to their environment and remain successful when their situation changes. The behavioral changes are much faster and more varied than physical changes. And while we have the hubris to feel powerful when we make a change, we must also consider whether it is more appropriate to feel humility in that we were caused to undertake that change by external forces.
Development and Causality
The idea of causality has an enormous impact upon the way we think, as the function of the mind is to define order in a chaotic world. It is thus causality that gives purpose to action: if we have no sense of what will result from taking an action, we have no motivation to act.
But even so, action takes place in an environment that is not perfectly predictable. We seem confident in the ability to make a movement, to extend an arm, but may find that the reason for which we extended it is invalid - such as when an object we meant to grasp is found to be out of reach, even though its appearance led us to believe it was in range.
It is with this uncertainty that we consider change. When we feel certain, we can act without much deliberation - our of habit. But when our certainty is undermined we must begin to question whether our interpretations of our sensations are correct and whether our sense of causality - that an action will produce and expected result - is well-founded.
Not only does our notion of causality instruct our own actions, but it also causes us to consider what we propose to others. Training is only possible because another person can be influenced, and they can only be influenced because they trust our proposals to be correct. Even a child will begin to ignore an adult when the things that they say are found to be incorrect. And as such the education of a child depends on the correctness of teaching - not just in the sense that it is proper, but in the sense that it is demonstrably valid.
Back to ourselves, to have self-confidence is to trust in one's own judgment, which is established by degrees over time. If we are able to effect a desired outcome by an action, we have the sense that this action is reliable. If we make a decision that enables us to achieve a desired result, we trust not only in that decision but in our ability to make other decisions.
And back to evolution, the men of today are the way that they are because of ideas they have inherited through the line of their ancestry. Pyle notes that "as these lines are being written, the greatest and bloodiest war of history is in progress" and in such conflicts we recognize that we have inherited much from ancestors who were "naked savages, killing their enemies and eating the their bodies." Indeed, civilization covers a period of several centuries, but our animal origins trace back over hundreds of millennia.
He subscribes to the notion that mankind is "by nature bad" - brutish, stupid, and unwilling to consider the damage he may do to others or even to his own future while pursuing his immediate self-interest. It is a struggle to teach children to be otherwise - to think of the long-term consequences of their actions and to show consideration of others. It is a necessity of civilized living, or so we are taught - though when an individual can profit by breaking the rules he has been taught, he seldom hesitates to do so.
One should not despair of this, but rather take some measure of pride in our ability to control our animalistic impulses. Neither is it an excuse for disregarding societal conventions and reverting to animal nature, but instead as a rationale for understanding the value of foresight and consideration - as no animal, acting on brute instinct, has secured for itself and its species such an existence as is enjoyed by modern man.
And as such, we must recognize the value of reason and seek to improve its application to further the benefit to mankind.
Individual Development
There is an interplay between the development of the individual and that of the species: it is generally observed that an individual develops in accordance with his species, carrying forward characteristics that were transmitted to him from the group. But the group itself has no characteristics except those of the individuals it comprises.
The biological characteristics of an individual are clearly inherited from the species - in that they are matters of heredity. Animals and plants are in most instances like their parents in form and structure, combining the characteristics of two separate individuals, with rare instances of mutative or atavistic qualities. The physical body does not deviate from this path unless it is damaged.
Much of this is necessary to the continuation of the species: the child of a horse is a horse, the child of a cow is a cow, and the child of a human is a human. A generation's difference from its parents and recent ancestors is very minor, and the child resembles its parents in most details.
Psychological characteristics are likewise passed from one generation to the next, but in a less infallible way. In the animal world, behaviors are instinctive and derive entirely from biology - but the majority of mankind's behavior is learned. A child raised by its parents will adopt the mannerisms and perspectives of its parents because of exposure to them - but a child raised by individuals who are not its parents will take on their qualities instead.
And while, in previous generations, it was the typical arrangement for a child to be sequestered to a family environment in which it could learn no other traits than those of its family, it is more common in the present world for a child to be exposed to a broader array of influences. Our psychological heredity is not as direct and immediate, and is affected (or effected) from a broader pool of traits and characteristics of the people to whom a child is exposed from a very young age, and throughout its lifespan.
In biology, such extensive study has been made into heredity that it is generally accepted that physical characteristics are transmitted physically, through genetic material, to a far greater degree than they are acquired environmentally.
But in psychology, it is recognized that mental characteristics are transmitted in a non-physical manner - we merely observe the behavior of others we perceive and may even be influenced by those we are unable to perceive. Stories, true or fictional, provide us with models - and are often more detailed regarding the inner workings of those individuals depicted than we are capable of observing in our observation of actual people.
As such the concept of "mental heredity" shows a greater variance along biological lines. Children may possess some of the traits of their parents, but many are idiosyncratic and it is rare that we are able to trace, with confidence, a psychological characteristic to its genuine point of origin.
Even for those characteristics we presume to be inherited, there is less certainty. Mendel's observations of inheritance shows that the various properties of a child are taken from dominant and recessive traits in parents. Two feeble-minded parents may have a normal child, or vice-versa, depending on the combination of their genetic material, and certain recessive traits that have been dormant for generations may become evident several generations later.
Pyle ultimately concedes that, at his time, there has been very little science in this area. The manner in which a child's psychological characteristics resemble those of its parents, grandparents, and more distant ancestors has been entirely casual and incidental - which is to say it is general rather than scientific observation. As such we should be cautious of relying on conclusions until "very careful experimental studies" have been undertaken.
Eugenics
Eugenics is a biological practice of controlling the characteristics of the next generation by selective breeding among the present stock. It is a practice rather than merely a theory because it is well established in cultivating plants and raising domesticated animals.
Simply stated, it works. It is not infallible, due to the randomness of combinations and the influence of dominant and recessive genes, but it is generally reliable in producing offspring that embody certain characteristics.
Ethical concerns aside, it is entirely possible to scientifically breed human beings to possess certain desired characteristics by selective breeding among the present generation. Large, strong, and healthy parents will generally have large, strong, and healthy children and if breeding is controlled over multiple generations the undesirable characteristics can be winnowed out of the group.
However, eugenics is largely limited to biological and physical characteristics rather than psychological ones because, as was previously stated, the psychological characteristics of a person are more a matter of their exposure to the behavior of others rather than the genetic material received from the parents.
That is not to say that the psychological characteristics of children cannot me molded with a purposeful hand, merely that breeding is not the surest method of doing so. Moreover, the methods of doing so are already in practice in human societies: we educate children purposefully, and just as purposefully seek to expose them to desirable influences during their upbringing, and their exposure to others is often limited by their profession and class through their adult lives.
Nature versus Nurture
In questions of heredity, there is a customary argument over whether the characteristics of an individual are inherited from their parents or developed as a result of their experience, and this argument is all the more common when speaking of matters of psychology.
It is not an argument of facts so much as an argument of beliefs, as it is generally impossible to raise an individual in a manner that strips away all the elements of experience so that hereditary factors may be isolated. As such, neither side can prove its case by means of evidence and it degenerates into speculative bickering, however sophisticated the rhetoric of the argument.
In biology we can observe that the height of a person is inherited from parents or other ancestors - that tall parents have tall children, or if the parents be short the child had a very tall grandparent. But at the same time poor nutrition stunts the growth, such that the child of tall parents may be very small. Or small parents who were poorly nourished in their own lives provide better for a child, who grows quite taller than any of his ancestors.
A reasonable position to take is that both factors influence an individual. Heredity sets up their basic capacities and influences the manner in which a person will react to experience. And experience itself is a history of conflict - being taught different things by different parents, different things in the school than in the home, different things in the world than in school or home, and different things in different environments. Each of these factors has a hand in determining an individual's psychological characteristics, and none can be isolated entirely from the rest.
And again, there has been little formal research and a great deal of speculation based on casual observations in this area. We have not yet reliably identified the factors that lead a person to have desirable qualities such as intelligence and morality and often operate on a general assumption of cause and effect. Educational institutions represent not so much a "science" of teaching as a haphazard attempt to do what seems to work out for the best.