The child's mind : its growth and training being a short study of some processes of learning and teaching / by W.E. Urwick.

  • Urwick, W. E. (William Eddowes)
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The child's mind : its growth and training being a short study of some processes of learning and teaching / by W.E. Urwick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    26/306 (page 10)
    moulded by circumstances as water moulds a stone. It always makes certain demands upon its environ- ment, and it lives by reacting upon its environment. The very conditions which make its existence possible are those which are necessary to its growth. In order that reproduction or the birth of an organism may take place, a certain kind of environ- ment must already prevail; and as soon as it comes into being, the organism can only continue its life by exercising those modes of reaction which it pos- sesses. To denote such inherited modes of reaction the term ‘ adaptation ’ is here used. These are always of a twofold nature, manifesting themselves in strivings, conscious or unconscious, on the part of the organism, either, on the one hand, to ensure the continuance of an environment to which the organism is preadapted, or, on the other, to provide a new mode of response to a change in environment of such a nature that it cannot be avoided. The former of these strivings may be called con- servative strivings, the latter progressive strivings. The function of the one is to avoid change, to secure the continuation of conditions which suit the mode of reaction of the organism, and to ward off any threatening change. The function of the other is to meet an inevitable change by accommodation. In the exercise of these two functions, which every animal organism possesses, though different organ- isms in very different degrees, both the organism and the environment undergo a change, and the life of the organism, so long as it lasts, involves a