The continuity
of the work of the carpenter distinguishes it from a routine
repetition of identically the same motion, and from a random
activity where there is nothing cumulative. What makes it
continuous, consecutive, or concentrated is that each earlier act
prepares the way for later acts, while these take account of or
reckon with the results already attained -- the basis of all
responsibility. No one who has realized the full force of the
facts of the connection of knowing with the nervous system and of
the nervous system with the readjusting of activity continuously
to meet new conditions, will doubt that knowing has to do with
reorganizing activity, instead of being something isolated from
all activity, complete on its own account.
(ii) The development of biology clinches this lesson, with its
discovery of evolution. For the philosophic significance of the
doctrine of evolution lies precisely in its emphasis upon
continuity of simpler and more complex organic forms until we
reach man. The development of organic forms begins with
structures where the adjustment of environment and organism is
obvious, and where anything which can be called mind is at a
minimum. As activity becomes more complex, coordinating a
greater number of factors in space and time, intelligence plays a
more and more marked role, for it has a larger span of the future
to forecast and plan for. The effect upon the theory of knowing
is to displace the notion that it is the activity of a mere
onlooker or spectator of the world, the notion which goes with
the idea of knowing as something complete in itself.
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