White Bluffs spokesman. [volume] (White Bluffs, Wash.) 1907-1938, 1930-10-10
Why We Behave
Like Human Beings
We Learn by Exploring
B, GEORGE DORSEY, Ph. D., IL. D.

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out to see the sights. We need moi
move foot: there are sights all
around us. All is new; nothing seems
like home. The very atmosphere has
peculiar Odor, different feel. The
sun is not the same. The houses, trees
birds, shops, signs, noises, voices, cries.
cattle, carts, carriages, trans, are diff.
ferent. Swarms of human beings un.
like any that we know; different in
face, build, gait, dress, couture, foot
and headgear, and personal adornment
Bombay is new world. Nothing
In our past experience has prepared
us for it. Suppose we have come to
settle down in Bombay? We realize
that we have much to learn-more
than we can realize at first. We do
not know how to act. Why does that
man stare at me that way? What is
the meaning of such behavior? We
have no ready-made behavior by which
we can adjust ourselves to their be-
havior.
Even the flies, bugs and insects are
different. How are we to know which
are harmful or dangerous? At the
edge of park we meet little green
snake. 1t appears harmless; 1t may
be deadly poisonous. How can we
know?
How do we? How do we know the
world outside our skin?
We enter the native market. Piles
of strange vegetables and fruits. But
nothing that we know. We see only
certain shapes, sizes, colors. But what
are they inside-sweet, bitter, mushy,
hard, juicy? We do not know them.
Our mouth does not water. Suddenly
we espy box Of peaches. Our mouth
waters now. We have very clear
knowledge Of peaches. rat runs
out; we jump back. We have not seen
rat for forty years, but we have not
forgotten rats; nor that rat is not
to be caught with the bare hands.
The world we know is the world we
explore with our fingers, tongue, eyes,
ears, nose, and all the receptors with
which our body is so abundantly sup
piled on or in the surface or within.
We know some objects, beings, quail
ties and quantities, we'll; some, not so
well. Included in this knowledge of
objects are attitudes toward objects.
We learn eventually to let sleeping
dogs. lie, and many objects, persons
and situations alone.
Don't monkey with that!
But we do. There is more monkey
than rabbit in our Inheritance. AS
result, lively boy or girl of fifteen
years knows as much as the average
American"
Here is baby. 1t has learned the
location of it's eyes, ears, nose, and
toes, and can reach and grasp and han
die. Assume that it has been "care-
fully guarded'-which usually means
1t knows next to nothing. Offer it
peach pin, stick of candy, match, red
hot poker, cats tail, firecracker; same
reaction: baby wants it. 1t may learn
enough in one lesson to alter it's be-
haviOr thereafter to each of these OBJ
jects Why? Because hot pokers,
frecrackers, cats tails, pins, candy,
etc., have their own behavior. Sooner
Or later baby learns that the tail Of
cat is not a handle to a playthilg
The first peach baby meets is, let us
say, through the eyes. Mere visual
stimulus was enough for the first les.
son. The peach did not explode, or
bite, or burn. Baby explores further.
hand, or body or face; also the nose,
the tongue, and sense organs in the
canal and kinesthetic
senses. BY the time the exploration
is complete, the child knows peach.
Through the responses to the many di-
verse stimuli peach can make, the
child knows more or less Of it's color,
shape, weight, hardness, odor, taste.
That it has skin, that the skin Is
tough and covered with down, that the
down Is unpleasant to skin of hands,
face, mouth and tongue, ETC., etc.
knowledge of peach was kuilt up.
Visual stimulus was adequate to pro-
yoke grasping response: odor stimulus
provoked another response and so on.
BY and by any one stimulus may call
forth all the responses Of all the other
stimuli, because these responses are
While seeing peach, nose
,melled peach, hand felt peach, tongue
.asted peach, etc. Until at last the
mere word peach" on an empty tin
an in the middle Of a desert can be
elt, seen, shifted, and tasted-there
nay he no peach within thousand
niles.
The kick hack, the response the OBJ
ect itself makes to our exploration, is
lot only part of our knowledge, but
argey determines whether we shall
pursue the subject further" child
caches out for dogs tongue or a
ats paw: bark, meow, bite, q
cratch. II bite and scratch are Sc
ious, and especially IL mother yelled,
Don't ~ at the top of her voice, we