John Wesley Powell

“ Fundamentally, we reason by abstraction because we consider properties severally. By reason of the total unlikeness of disparate properties, the most fundamental and clearest distinctions in psychology are those which we make when we call a faculty the cognition of a property. Reflection is one of those faculties because, as the term is here defined, it is the cognition of the property of causation. ”

“ Cognition of kind by sensation arises with a certain degree of experience; cognition of form arises with a higher degree of experience; cognition of force arises with a still higher degree of experience; but judgments of kind, judgments of form, and judgments of force are accumulated contemporaneously. So concepts of causation succeed concepts of force; but the judgments of causation are contemporaneous with the judgments of force, form, and kind, and there can be no judgments of causation without judgments of force, form, and kind. ”

“ It was thus that concepts of cause were primitively generated in the mind of man. Hearing is also the sense by which time, the reciprocal of cause, is first conceived. We must remember that properties are concomitant, and though the faculties operate abstractly in that they primarily conceive properties as abstract, yet the indissolubility of the concomitants compels us to consider the manifestation of one property as the symbol of all others. In this manner the senses all become vicarious, and we make judgments with one sense that we might make with another. ”

“ All judgments are liable to error, and cognition comes only with verification. In quantitative judgments the liability to error is infinite as that term is used by mathematicians, and all judgments must be verified unless the amount of error may be neglected.
In scientific research verification is often by measurement. Counting itself is measuring, and the sum is the number of units which the measured body contains, and these units are units of a kind. It is only in counting that the units are natural ”

“ Certain kinds of reasoning, like certain kinds of muscular activity, come by frequent repetition to be so easily accomplished that the processes involved are unrecognized by the mind. Perhaps this can be explained by the theory that in recalling one concept we recall others with which it is associated, reviving them as they are woven into the structure of the cortex by the act of choice. All judgments of causation are more or less serial in this manner, and as most of them are habitual they become intuitive. ”

“ Of all the primordial senses we have hitherto discussed as the primal sense of a faculty, that of hearing is the most facile to perform the functions of the others, though we shall hereafter observe that seeing is the grand vicar of the senses. ”

“ I cannot longer dwell on this subject to set forth the devices by which judgments are measured, but must content myself with the statement that the attempt to measure judgments has but recently been made, and that already there are many devices. All of the properties can be reduced to or considered as number. Space can be considered as number, when its elements are counted in natural units, or it can be considered as number when its elements are measured in conventional units. Motion can be considered as space, and then as number. ”

“ Words are used with many meanings, but in science we are compelled to use them with one meaning. All psychological words are singularly ambiguous, because they are used as tropes to such an extent as to conceal their fundamental meaning. ”

“ Judgments of reflection are verified by the judgments of a higher faculty, but they themselves are used to verify the judgments of lower faculties. Motion and force are expressed in rapidly passing events, but causes produce effects that remain; causes and effects are states; forces are events that separate states; hence it is that the judgments of understanding are relegated to those of reflection for verification. ”

“ The discursive choice is sporadic, and by following such concepts the stream of thought is directed in a meandering course that flows to nowhere; but the choice for a fixed purpose, in which there is an interest, leads to results that influence the conduct of life. The presentative judgments of reflection are removed from the sense impression by intuitional or by more deliberate judgments of sensation, perception, and understanding, so that the judgments of reflection, both presentative and representative, are more deliberative than of the lower faculties. ”

“ Another part of the metaphysical doctrine is erroneous in assuming that the concomitants or properties are derived one from another, one school affirming that all of the properties are derived from force, the other that they are all derived from intellection.
There is a valid concept involved in the use of the term presupposition, so often occurring in metaphysics, for when one property is considered abstractly the others are known to exist ”

“ It will be seen that the concepts of causation are exceedingly compound. In the practical affairs of life, events are of profound importance, for the events of yesterday affect the events of today, and those of today will have a consequence in the events of tomorrow; thus life is a constant discipline. ”

“ The river in the process of its growth has carved a valley, and the enlarging land has at last caught water enough to fill a river; the growth of the valley and of the river are contemporaneous, but the forming of the valley logically succeeds to the falling of the rain and the flowing of the river with its lateral streams; that is, effect succeeds cause. ”

“ In this manner the experiences of sensation, perception, and apprehension are connate, they spring up together, and yet concepts of sensation precede concepts of understanding, and concepts of apprehension precede concepts of reflection. One part of the doctrine of presupposition, as it is put in metaphysics, is a fallacy, and is replaced by the doctrine of causation, which explains that that which was supposed to be antecedent is consequent, or that which was supposed to be cause is effect. This is the great contribution made by science in demonstrating the laws of evolution. ”

“ In judgments of original cognition the pentalogic elements can always be discovered by introspection, but in the judgments of recognition it is difficult to discover them in the cortical consciousness. When cognition is fairly accomplished recognition thereafter becomes instantaneous.
Audition is the primordial sense of causation. Sound comes to us through a medium, and primordial man has no knowledge of this medium; he does not recognize the ambient air. ”

“ Thus he thinks that sound is something emitted from bodies, just as Newton believed that light was something emitted from bodies, and Plato that forms were emitted from bodies. So the savage looked about him for the cause, and often the cause as a form he could not see, and as he knew nothing of molecular force he formed no concepts of force in relation to sound ”

“ I see the track of a man in the sand. The left track is full, the right track shows only the impression of the toe. I see the one and then the other, and I infer that the man was lame and walked upon his right toe. ”

“ You explain that a small tract of land is gradually left bare by the retiring sea, that is, the land is slightly upheaved; the rain falls upon the land and carves channels, the tract of land is extended, new channels are formed and the old channels are deepened ”