Background
Mead, George Herbert was born on February 21, 1863 in South Hadley. Massachusetts.
social psychologist Pragmatist
Mead, George Herbert was born on February 21, 1863 in South Hadley. Massachusetts.
Oberlin College, AB 1883. Harvard University, 1887-1888. Universities of Leipzig and Berlin.
1891-1894, Instructor to Assistant Professor, University of Michigan. 1894-1931, Assistant Professor to Professor. University of Chicago.
Ranked among American pragmatists only aRoJ Peirce, James and Dewey. Mead is esteeme because of his contributions to social psychologyPresented in Mind, Self and Society (1934), h)s theory of social behaviourism traces naturalist! cally the origin of mind to animal conduc • Central is the role of gestures, and most essentia > the vocal gesture, inasmuch as it recoils as muc on the organism making it as on the organist0 receiving. In the case of biological individua with complex cerebral structures, such as human the refiexiveness of the vocal gesture gives rise "leanings or significant symbols. Mead’s explana-,10n of significant symbols is behaviouristic. and his definition of language is in terms of a social system of such symbols. On his theory, moreover, mind is tantamount to language. Mead's theory of the individual conscious self )s also behaviouristic. The self is social; its individuation arises within the social process. Fundamental to its development is its capacity to take the role of the other and ultimately the generalized other. In play an individual assumes the role of another, as, for example, a small girl playing with her doll pretends to be her mother. In a game an individual performs a role and also assumes the role of the generalized other, as, for Sample, in baseball when a batter takes into account all the other baseball players on the field a"d the rules of the game when he bats. Individuals using language or acting in society are habituated to assume such roles to share "leanings and values. Indeed, the selfhood of the ■"dividual is a product of such social processes. Mead sought to explain the categories of "latter, space and time in terms of the principles sociality advanced in his social psychology. He Proposed a theory of the past as a representation from the present in The Philosophy of the Present I * 938), and he was at work on a cosmic philosophy °f the act, an objective relativism, in The Philosophy of Act (1938). Still he construed the sPeculative feat to ‘see the world whole’ pragmatically. Dependent on the ability of individuals to *ake the attitude of the generalized other, it consists in infusing their own experience and conduct with ‘the most highly organized logical, dhical, and aesthetic attitudes of the community, those attitudes which involve all that organized thinking, acting, and artistic creations and appreciation imply’.