# Dewey (1898) and the reflex arc **URL:** \ **Category:** CSG1996\ **Created:** [September 29, 1996, 5:48pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/dewey-1898-and-the-reflex-arc/3471 "1996-09-29T17:48:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1

**Author:** ![Bruce\_Abbott](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/ba8739/32.png) [@Bruce\_Abbott](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Bruce_Abbott)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 1996, 5:48pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/dewey-1898-and-the-reflex-arc/3471/1 "1996-09-29T17:48:08Z")

[From Bruce Abbott (960929.1245 EST)] Psychology as an attempted science was only 20 years old when Dewey wrote "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology," a paper that appeared in \_Psychological Review\_ in 1898. It is interesting to think about where psychology would be today if Dewey's view had been adopted. Below, I quote a selected section of the paper that gives the essence of that view. The older dualism between sensation and idea is repeated in the current dualism of peripheral and central structures and functions; the older dualism of body and soul finds a distinct echo in the current dualism between stimulus and response. Instead of interpreting the character of sensation, idea, and action from their place and function in the sensori- motor circuit, we still incline to interpret the latter from our pre- conceived and preformulated ideas of rigid distinctions between sensations, thoughts, and acts. the sensory stimulus is one thing, the central activity, standing for the idea, is another thing, and the motor discharge, standing for the act proper, is a third. As a result, the reflex arc is not a comprehensive, or organic unity, but a patchwork of disjointed parts, a mechanical conjunction of unallied processes. What is needed is that the principle underlying the idea of the reflex arc as the fundamental psychical unity shall react into and determine the values of its constitutive factors. More specifically, what is wanted is that sensory stimulus, central con- nections and motor responses shall be viewed, not as separate and complete entities in themselves, but as divisions of labor, functioning factors, within the single concrete whole, now designated the reflex arc. What is the reality so designated? What shall we term that which is not sensation-followed-by-idea-followed-by-movement, but which is primary; which is, as it were, the psychical organism of which sensation, idea and movement are the chief organs? Stated on the physiological side, this reality may most conveniently be termed coordination. This is the essense of the facts held together by and subsumed under the reflex arc concept. Let us take, for our example, the familiar child-candle instance (James, Psychology, Vol. I, p. 25.) The ordinary interpretation would say the sensation of light is a stimulus to the grasping as a response, the burn resulting is a stimulus to withdrawing the hand as a response, and so on. There is, of course, no doubt that is a rough practical way of representing the process. But when we ask for its psychological adequacy, the case is quite different. Upon analysis, we find that we begin not with a sensory stimulus, but with a sensori-motor coordination, the optical-ocular, and that in a certain sense it is the movement which is primary, and the sensation which is secondary, the movement of body, head, and eye muscles determining the quality of what is experienced. In other words, the real beginning is with the act of seeing; it is looking, and not a sensation of light. The sensory quale gives the value of the act, just as the movement furnishes its mechanism and control, but both sensation and movement lie inside, not outside the act. Now if this act, the seeing, stimulates another act, the reaching, it is because both of these acts fall withiin a larger coordination; because seeing and grasping have been so often bound together to reinforce each other, to help each other out, that each may be considered practically a subordinate member of a bigger coordination. More specifically, the ability of the hand to do its work will depend, either directly or indirectly, upon its control, as well as its stimulation, by the act of vision. If the sight did not inhibit as well as excite the reaching, the latter would be purely indeterminate, it would be for anything or nothing, not for the particular object seen. The reaching, in turn, must both stimulate and control the seeing. The eye must be kept upon the candle if the arm is to do its work; let it wander and the arm takes up another task. In other words, we now have an enlarged and transformed coordination; the act of seeing is no less than before, but it is now seeing-for-reaching purposes. There is still a sensori-motor circuit, one with more content or value, not a substitution of a motor response for a sensory stimulus. Dewey, John (1898). The reflex arc concept in psychology. \_Psychological Review\_, \_3\_, 357-370. (Quoted material from Pp. 357-359.) To answer Dewey's question, "What is the reality so designated?", it is a control system. Dewey correctly intuits that each element within the "coordination" (as he calls the control system) simultaneously affects the others, and that the result is not a stimulus-bound act but purposful behavior. Moreover, he clearly understands that coordinations such as directed "seeing" themselves participate in higher-level coordinations such as visually guided reaching and grasping. And, of course, Dewey's insights were given the same open-minded reception by the scientific community then as they continue to receive today. Regards, Bruce