To Understand Is To Invent.

For The Fundamental Fact Of Human Psychology Is That Society, Instead Of Remaining Almost Entirely Inside The Individual Organism As In The Case Of Animals Prompted By Their Instincts, Becomes Crystallized Almost Entirely Outside The Individuals. In Other Words, Social Rules, As Durkheim Has So Powerfully Shown, Whether They Be Linguistic, Moral, Religious, Or Legal, Etc., Cannot Be Constituted, Transmitted Or Preserved By Means Of An Internal Biological Heredity, But Only Through The External Pressure Exercised By Individuals Upon Each Other.

The More The Schemata Are Differentiated, The Smaller The Gap Between The New And The Familiar Becomes, So That Novelty, Instead Of Constituting An Annoyance Avoided By The Subject, Becomes A Problem And Invites Searching.

In Other Words, Knowledge Of The External World Begins With An Immediate Utilisation Of Things, Whereas Knowledge Of Self Is Stopped By This Purely Practical And Utilitarian Contact.

We Learn More When We Are Compelled To Invent.

At One Time, Many Philosophers Held That Faultless "laws Of Thought" Were Somehow Inherent, A Priori, In The Very Nature Of Mind. This Belief Was Twice Shaken In The Past Century; First When Russell And His Successors Showed How The Logic Men Employ Can Be Defective, And Later When Freud And Piaget Started To Reveal The Tortuous Ways In Which Our Minds Actually Develop.