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Leçons Sur Les Phénomènes De La Vie
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Historical SummaryThe physiologist Claude Bernard has emphasized a distinction between life as it is led in an external environment and life as it is lived in an internal environment. There are for the animal really two environments, an external environment in which the animal, the fish, the worm is placed, and an internal environment in which the constituent cells live and are bathed by a nourishing blood stream.1 The internal environment contains an incredibly complicated integration of cells, blood chemicals, hormones, enzymes, various nervous systems, chromosomes, endogenous electrical stimuli, catalytic transformations, tensional relationships, etc. The chemically generated energy of this system of organs is devoted partly to the regulation of the growth and the integration of the parts of the organism into a unity and partly to initiating and sustaining anticipatory goal reactions. The two organic drives or impulses involved in goal seeking are the hunger and sex appetites, whose satisfaction is necessary for the continuance of the life of the individual on the one hand and of the species on the other. Hull points out that the anticipation of the goal represents the concept of purpose, desire, or wish.2 In the higher animal forms the equipment with organs of locomotion, distance receptors (eye, ear, nose), prehension, claws, jaws, etc., the activities of pursuit, fighting, capture, copulation, care of the young, and, negatively, avoidance and flight, together with the concomitant emotions of anger, hate, love, jealousy, ambition, exultation, and despair, are derivatives of the primary impulses, supporting them or reflecting organic agitations in the struggle for their consummation. Craig has described in psychological terms the agitations in anxiety situations representing anticipation, hesitation, apprehension, and preparation for approach or withdrawal:
CHAPTER IV
Language Behavior
I
An appetite (or appetence, if this term may be used with purely behavioristic meaning), so far as externally observable, is a state of agitation which continues so long as a certain stimulus, which may be called the appeted stimulus, is absent. When the appeted stimulus is at length received it stimulates a consummatory reaction, after which the appetitive behavior ceases and is succeeded by a state of relative rest.
An aversion is a state of agitation which continues so long as a certain stimulus, referred to as the disturbing stimulus, is present; but which ceases, being replaced by a state of relative rest, when that stimulus has ceased to act on the sense organs.
The state of agitation, in either appetite or aversion, is exhibited externally by increased muscular tension; by static and phasic contractions of many skeletal and dermal muscles, giving rise to bodily attitudes and gestures which are easily recognized signs or "expressions" of appetite or of aversion; by restlessness; by activity, in extreme cases violent activity; and by "varied effort." . . .
A young bird . . . makes feints of flying before it has ever flown. . . . One of my young doves . . . looked at the perch and aimed at it with perfect definiteness, opening its wings and making feints of flying. In the evolution of birds, there can be no doubt, flying developed gradually from jumping. The new movements of flying were gradually intercalated into the interval between the initial action, leaping from the ground, and the final action, landing again upon the feet. The young dove to this day shows first the incipient end action, aiming at the perch to be alighted on, and only after it has launched itself toward this end situation does the "chain" of flight reactions take place.1
In human relations these internal agitations come to the surface in the emotional expressions of crying, threatening, sulking, sneering, shrugging, leering, laughing, embracing, kissing, blushing, patting, smiling, nodding, bowing, "giving the once over," which are observable releases or restraints of agitation and tension, having a social meaning, and able to be read like a language. The sneer, for example, is an incipient vomiting, the snarl an incipient biting, the bow an incipient prostration, and in some populations the varieties of the shrug form a small vocabulary.
1 , 2: 5–6.
2 Hull, C. L., "Goal Attraction and Directing Ideas Conceived as Habit Phenomena," Psychol. Rev., 38: 505.
1 Craig, W., "g>Appetites and Aversions as Constituents of Instincts," Biol. Bull., 34: 91–92, 99–100.
Chicago: Leçons Sur Les Phénomènes De La Vie in Primitive Behavior: An Introduction to the Social Sciences, ed. Thomas, William I. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1937), Original Sources, accessed April 25, 2024, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=P24IA58G7DSKC66.
MLA: . Leçons Sur Les Phénomènes De La Vie, Vol. 2, in Primitive Behavior: An Introduction to the Social Sciences, edited by Thomas, William I., New York, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1937, Original Sources. 25 Apr. 2024. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=P24IA58G7DSKC66.
Harvard: , Leçons Sur Les Phénomènes De La Vie. cited in 1937, Primitive Behavior: An Introduction to the Social Sciences, ed. , McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York. Original Sources, retrieved 25 April 2024, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=P24IA58G7DSKC66.
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