Mind-Society: From Brains to Social

Sciences and Professions (Treatise on

Mind and Society) (Oxford Series on
Cognitive Models and Architectures)
Paul Thagard
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i

Mind–​S ociety
ii

OXFORD SERIES ON
COGNITIVE MODELS AND ARCHITECTURES
Series Editor
Frank E. Ritter

Series Board
Rich Carlson
Gary Cottrell
Robert L. Goldstone
Eva Hudlicka
William G. Kennedy
Pat Langley
Robert St. Amant

Integrated Models of Cognitive Systems

Edited by Wayne D. Gray

In Order to Learn: How the Sequence of Topics Influences Learning

Edited by Frank E. Ritter, Joseph Nerb, Erno Lehtinen, and Timothy O’Shea

How Can the Human Mind Occur in the Physical Universe?

By John R. Anderson

Principles of Synthetic Intelligence PSI: An Architecture of Motivated Cognition

By Joscha Bach

The Multitasking Mind

By David D. Salvucci and Niels A. Taatgen

How to Build a Brain: A Neural Architecture for Biological Cognition

By Chris Eliasmith

Minding Norms: Mechanisms and Dynamics of Social Order in Agent Societies

Edited by Rosaria Conte, Giulia Andrighetto, and Marco Campennì

Social Emotions in Nature and Artifact

Edited by Jonathan Gratch and Stacy Marsella

Anatomy of the Mind: Exploring Psychological Mechanisms and Processes

with the Clarion Cognitive Architecture
By Ron Sun

Exploring Robotic Minds: Actions, Symbols, and Consciousness

as Self-​Organizing Dynamic Phenomena
By Jun Tani

Brain–​Mind: From Neurons to Consciousness and Creativity

By Paul Thagard

Mind–​Society: From Brains to Social Sciences and Professions

By Paul Thagard

Natural Philosophy: From Social Brains to Knowledge, Reality, Morality, and Beauty
By Paul Thagard
iii

Mind–​Society
From Brains to Social Sciences and Professions

Paul Thagard

1
iv

1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

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© Oxford University Press 2019

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above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Thagard, Paul, author.
Title: Mind-society : from brains to social sciences
and professions / Paul Thagard.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2019] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018033235 | ISBN 9780190678722
Subjects: LCSH: Social sciences and psychology. | Cognitive neuroscience.
Classification: LCC BF57. T534 2019 | DDC 150—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018033235

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

v

To John Holmes and Bob McCauley, good friends and social minds.
vi
vi

Contents
List of Illustrations xiii
Foreword xv
Preface xix
Acknowledgments xxi

Part I | Mechanisms
1. Explaining Social Change 3
Social Change 3
Explanatory Styles 6
Mental, Neural, and Social Mechanisms 9
Emergence 11
The Social Cognitive-​Emotional Workup 15
Applications 16
Summary and Discussion 19
Notes 20
Project 21

2. Mental Mechanisms 22
Cognition and Emotion 22
Brains and Semantic Pointers 23
Images 27
Concepts 29
Beliefs 31
Rules 32
Analogies 34
Emotions 35

vii
vi

viii Contents
Mapping Values 37
Inference and Coherence 40
Emotion-​Driven Inferences 42
Summary and Discussion 43
Notes 46
Project 47

3. Social Mechanisms 48
Social Mechanisms and Communication 48
What Are Social Mechanisms? 51
Structural Connections 54
Social Interactions 55
Verbal Communication 57
Nonverbal Communication 59
Interagent Inference 61
Social Mechanisms for Spreading Emotions 62
Multilevel Explanations 65
Change and Emergence 67
Summary and Discussion 70
Notes 74
Project 75

Part II | Social Sciences

4. Social Psychology: Romantic Relationships 79
Relationships Matter 79
Social Cognition and Microsociology 80
Mechanisms in Relationships 81
Murray and Holmes on Interdependent Minds 82
Romantic Relationships: Social Cognitive-​Emotional Workup 83
Trust and Commitment 92
Love 94
Romantic Interactions 96
Contrast with Gottman 98
Relationship Success and Failure 100
Does the Heart Want What It Wants? 102
Summary and Discussion 103
Notes 105
Project 106
ix

Contents ix
5. Sociology: Prejudice and Discrimination 107
Discrimination and Prejudice 107
Stereotypes 109
Women: Social Cognitive-​Emotional Workup 110
Jews: Social Cognitive-​Emotional Workup 117
Social Norms and Institutions 123
Overcoming Prejudice 127
Conceptual Change 131
Summary and Discussion 133
Notes 135
Project 136

6. Politics: Ideology 137

Political Change 137
Political Mechanisms 138
Ideology: Three-​Analysis 139
Ideology: Value Maps 141
Ideological Change 142
The Islamic State: Social Cognitive-​Emotional Workup 144
Power 164
Summary and Discussion 167
Notes 170
Project 172

7. Economics: Bubbles and Crashes 173

Beyond Animal Spirits 173
Economic Decisions 175
Booms and Bubbles: Social Cognitive-​Emotional Workup 178
Panics and Crashes: Social Cognitive-​Emotional Workup 188
Mindful Economics 193
Reflexivity 196
Summary and Discussion 197
Notes 199
Project 200

8. Anthropology: Religion 201

Cultures 201
Religion 202
The Latter-​Day Saint Religion: Social Cognitive-​Emotional Workup 204
x

x Contents
Why Is the LDS Church Successful? 217
Why Is Religion Generally So Successful? 221
Summary and Discussion 224
Notes 226
Project 227

9. History and International Relations: War 228

Explaining War 228
History 229
International Relations 230
Nationalism 231
Origins of the First World War: Social Cognitive-​Emotional Workup 233
Minds and Groups 247
Historical Explanation 250
Social Cognitivism as a Theory of International Relations 251
Summary and Discussion 253
Notes 255
Project 256

Part III | Professions

10. Medicine: Mental Illness 259

Mind, Society, and the Professions 259
Medicine 260
Mental Illness 262
Depression: Social Cognitive-​Emotional Workup 264
Depression: Multilevel Mechanisms 283
Treating Depression 287
Summary and Discussion 288
Notes 289
Project 291

11. Law: Wrongful Conviction and Criminal Responsibility 292

Legal Mechanisms 292
Legal Coherence 294
Wrongful Conviction: Social Cognitive-​Emotional Workup 300
Explaining Wrongful Convictions 310
The Brain and Legal Responsibility 311
Summary and Discussion 314
Notes 315
Project 317
xi

Contents xi
12. Education: Teaching and Conceptual Change 318
Learning and Teaching 318
Vaccination: Social Cognitive-​Emotional Workup 321
Teaching Better 340
Summary and Discussion 341
Notes 344
Project 346

13. Engineering: Creative Design 347

Creative Engineering 347
Steve Jobs and Apple: Social Cognitive-​Emotional Workup 348
Engineering Creativity 365
Teaching Creativity 369
Summary and Discussion 371
Notes 372
Project 373

14. Business: Leadership and Marketing 374

Vision 374
Emotional Intelligence 375
Charisma 379
Leadership of Ed Catmull: Social Cognitive-​Emotional Workup 380
Marketing and Emotional Coherence 389
Apple’s Marketing: Social Cognitive-​Emotional Workup 390
Enhancing Collective Emotional Intelligence 400
Summary and Discussion 403
Notes 406
Project 407

References 409
name Index 429
subject Index 439
xi
xi

List of Illustrations
1.1 A simple mechanism with only three parts 10
1.2 Duck-​rabbit illusion, which can perceptually emerge as either a
duck or a rabbit depending on whether you notice ears or a bill 12
1.3 Three kinds of emergence 14
2.1 Semantic pointer resulting from binding sensory, motor,
emotional, and verbal information 25
2.2 Schema for a value map 38
2.3 Value map of some vegetarians 39
2.4 Value map of some nonvegetarians 39
3.1 Kinds of social interaction 56
3.2 Kinds of communication 57
3.3 Coleman diagram for deepening social explanations by
psychological ones 66
3.4 Expanded diagram for recognizing relevance of neural and
molecular causes as well as social and mental ones 66
4.1 Value map of Pat’s infatuation with Sam 84
4.2 Value map of Pat’s disillusionment with Sam 85
4.3 Trust as a semantic pointer 93
5.1 Value map of misogynistic view of women 111
5.2 Value map of Hitler’s view of Jews 118
6.1 Fragment of the conceptual structure of right-​wing (conservative)
ideology 141
6.2 Fragment of the conceptual structure of left-​wing (progressive)
ideology 142
6.3 Value map of the Islamic State, depicting central concepts and
associated values of its adherents 145
6.4 Semantic pointer for emotion about Islam 151
xiii
xvi

xiv List of Illustrations

6.5 Multimodal value map of Nazi ideology 157
6.6 The emotional coherence of the decision to support Hitler and the
Nazis 159
6.7 Fragment of the conceptual structure of contemporary anarchism 160
6.8 Value map of the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011 161
6.9 Multimodal value map of parts of anarchist ideology 162
6.10 Value map of fear and anger arising from right-​wing concerns
about immigration and crime, with hope and pride arising from
the right-​wing prospects of a nationalist party and leader 162
6.11 Hutu ideology as one of the causes of the 1994 massacre 163
6.12 Value map of Hutu ideology 164
7.1 Value map of bubble mentality 179
7.2 Value map of crash mentality 180
8.1 Value map of Mormons 205
8.2 Joseph’s Smith vision of meeting Moroni 207
9.1 Value map of many monarchs and leaders in European countries
before World War I 235
9.2 Value map of Serbian nationalism in 1914 235
10.1 Value map of medical professional regarding a depressed patient 267
10.2 Semantic pointer for sadness as a pattern of activation in millions
of neurons resulting from binding of representations 274
10.3 Approximate interactions among the neurocognitive mechanisms
of semantic pointers and social and molecular mechanisms 286
11.1 Explanatory coherence in a simplified legal case 296
11.2 Legal trial as combining explanatory coherence with the value of
presumption of innocence 298
11.3 Value map of police view of Ron Williamson 300
11.4 The explanatory coherence of the prosecution’s case against
Williamson 306
11.5 Motivational contributions to the prosecution’s case against
Williamson 308
12.1 Core values in public health 323
12.2 Value map of pro-​vaccine view 324
12.3 Value map of anti-​vaccine view 324
13.1 Value map of Steve Jobs 350
14.1 Map of Catmull’s most important leadership values 381
14.2 Map of values in 1984 television ad for Macintosh 392
14.3 Map of values in 1997 television ad for Think Different 393
14.4 Map of values in television ad for Get-​a-​Mac 393
xv

Foreword
Frank E. Ritter

Three decades ago, Newell, Anderson, and Simon shared a desire for a unified
theory of psychology, that is, how cognition arises, and what a mechanistic expla-
nation would look like. Today, much still remains to be done to pursue that desire,
but much has been accomplished.
Allen Newell talked about narrow and deep theories, and broad and shallow the-
ories, and that theories could differ in these ways. Many psychology theories are
deep, explaining a few phenomena in great detail but not explaining many phe-
nomena nor how they interact and mutually constrain each other.
In the trio of books making up his treatise, Paul Thagard creates a much broader
and accessible explanation than we have seen before of what a mechanistic ex-
planation of mind and human behavior would look like for psychology and also
areas related to psychology. These books explain the cognitive science approach to
cognition, learning, thinking, emotion, and social interaction—​nearly all of what
it means to be human—​and what this means for a wide variety of sciences and
philosophy. These books provide a good overview of cognitive science and its im-
plications. Different readers will be drawn to the treatise in different ways. It does
not matter where they start.
The lessons in these books are based on the semantic pointer architecture (SPA)
by Chris Eliasmith, Thagard’s colleague at the University of Waterloo. SPA is a
very useful dynamic theory that can do multiple tasks in the same model, and it

xv
xvi

xvi Foreword
is explained in journal articles and by Eliasmith’s (2013) book in the Oxford Series
on Cognitive Models and Architectures. Most of the implications based on SPA are
also supported by and have lessons for other computational models of cognition,
so these books can be useful to users of other cognitive architectures, particularly
related architectures. Mind–​Brain, another book in Thagard’s treatise, focuses on
what SPA means for brain and mind.
In this book, Mind–​Society, after explaining the use of SPA, Thagard examines
what this approach means for social science and related professional fields. This
book provides a very broad, singular framework for explaining the breadth of
human behavior.
Is this framework useful? Very much so. This three-​book treatise starts to ad-
dress some problems that I have seen in various fields by using multilevel ana-
lyses, with a cognitive architecture at its middle level. These topics include how
cognitive limitations can be addressed by legislation and professional practice.
This treatise also notes how the SPA provides explanations naturally for many
phenomena directly and that many similar cognitive architectures also provide.
While this treatise does not note the linkages for other cognitive architectures,
many architectures can be seen to provide most (but not all) of the support for this
framework to explain how minds work in society.
In his book, Natural Philosophy, Thagard examines what this approach means
for philosophy, including important topics of philosophy of mind and of beauty.
It provides a useful and engaging overview of philosophy, particularly for those
interested in cognitive science or working in cognitive science.
These books introduce several useful theories and methods about how to do
science as well. Beyond allowing and using explanations via multilevel mechan-
isms, particularly valuable are Thagard’s introduction and use of three-​analysis
for definitions and coherence. The three-​analysis definitions are a way to explain
concepts without using simple definitions. They define a concept using exemplars,
typical features, and explanations. This approach resolves several problems with
simple dictionary definitions.
Coherence is a valuable concept for reasoning and is used in this book as a way
to describe the quality of theories. Theories are not just good when they predict
a single result but also how they cohere with multiple sources of data and with
other theories. Coherence is hard to quantify itself, in some ways, but it is clearly
useful. But the use of coherence is not just normative—​we should use it—​it is also
descriptive in that scientists and laypersons appear use it in everyday life and that
even scientists use it in their work. Making this often implicit reasoning process
explicit will help us to apply, teach, and improve the process.
xvi

Foreword xvii
These books will be useful to cognitive scientists and those interested in cogni-
tive science. They will also be useful to those who simply want to learn more about
the world and cognition. They offer one of the best and clearest explanations we
have for cognition and how it would apply to the humanities and to the social
sciences. Pieces of liberal education are sprinkled throughout because this book
draws examples and support from a wide range of material. Thus, humanists and
social scientists interested in knowing how cognitive science works will find some
answers here.
These books contain powerful ideas by one of the most highly cited living philo-
sophers. They can change the way you think about the world, including brains and
mind, and how you might think that the mind works and interacts with the world.
Thagard calls these trio of books a treatise, and I found them so compelling that
I’ve decided to use them in a course this next semester.

Reference

Eliasmith, C. (2013). How to build a brain: A neural architecture for biological cognition. New York,
NY: Oxford University Press.
xvi
xi

Preface

This book is part of a trio (Treatise on Mind and Society) that can be read
independently:

Brain–​Mind: From Neurons to Consciousness and Creativity

Mind–​Society: From Brains to Social Sciences and Professions
Natural Philosophy: From Social Brains to Knowledge, Reality, Morality, and
Beauty.

Brain–​Mind shows the relevance of Chris Eliasmith’s Semantic Pointer

Architecture to explaining a wide range of mental phenomena concerning per-
ception, imagery, concepts, rules, analogies, emotions, consciousness, intention,
action, language, creativity, and the self. This book, Mind–​Society, systematically
connects neural and psychological explanations of mind with social phenomena,
covering major social sciences (social psychology, sociology, politics, economics,
anthropology, and history) and professions (medicine, law, education, engi-
neering, and business). After the ­chapters 1 to 3, the remaining chapters can be
read in any order. Chapters 4 to 9 concern social sciences, and ­chapters 10 to 14
discuss professions.
My aim is not to reduce the social to the psychological but rather to display
their harmony and interdependence. This display is accomplished by describing

xix
x

xx Preface
the interconnections among mental and social mechanisms, which interact to
generate social changes ranging from marriage patterns to wars. The major tool
for this description is a method I call the social cognitive-​emotional workup, which
connects the mental mechanisms operating in individuals with social mechanisms
operating in groups. I call this general approach social cognitivism.
Because this book includes in ­chapter 2 a succinct summary of the relevant ideas
about mind and brain, it can be read on its own. But readers who want a deeper
discussion of mental mechanisms can read Brain–​Mind and the more technical
journal articles it cites. Natural Philosophy extends the integrated mental–​social
approach to apply to the humanities, primarily philosophy but also the arts, es-
pecially painting and music. An integrated account can be given of all branches of
philosophy—​epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics—​by applying the
intellectual tools developed in Brain–​Mind and Mind–​Society.
The integration of cognitive sciences, social sciences, and professions in this
volume requires new methods that have broader application. The method of
three-​analysis characterizes concepts by identifying examples, features, and ex-
planations rather than definitions. Value maps (cognitive-​affective maps) provide
a concise depiction of the emotional coherence of concepts. The general method of
social cognitive-​emotional workups guides the investigation of societies as groups
of interacting individuals with complex minds.
These methods can also be applied to understanding the development of the
natural sciences, whose cognitive and social processes I have discussed in pre-
vious books: Thagard 1992b, 1999, 2012b. Most of my papers can be found via
paulthagard.com, which also contains live links for the URLs in this book.
xxi

Acknowledgments

Most of this book was newly written in 2015–​2018, but I have incorporated
some extracts from other works, as indicated in the notes and in the figure and
table captions. I have also used excerpts from my Psychology Today blog, Hot
Thought, for which I hold the copyright.
I am grateful to University of Waterloo students, especially Peter Duggins and
Louise Upton, for corrections to earlier versions. I have benefitted greatly from
discussions with Tobias Schröder, Thomas Homer-​Dixon, John Holmes (com-
ments on ­chapter 4), and Robert McCauley (comments on ­chapter 8). For helpful
suggestions, I am grateful to Richard Carlson, Shawn Clark, Christopher Dancy,
William Kennedy, Laurette Larocque, Jonathan Morgan, Frank Ritter, Jose
Soto, and anonymous reviewers. I thank Joan Bossert for editorial advice, Phil
Velinov and Shanmuga Priya for organizing production, Alisa Larson for skilled
copyediting, and Kevin Broccoli for professional indexing. CBC Radio 2 and Apple
Music provided the accompaniment.

xxi
xxi
1

Part I
Mechanisms
2
3

1
Explaining Social Change

Social Change

When I was a child in Saskatchewan in the 1950s, my parents and their friends
smoked cigarettes, women were mostly housewives, birth control and homosexu-
ality were illegal, and pornography was scarce. Today, almost no one I know smokes,
many women are professionals, Canada and some other countries allow same-​sex
marriage, and hard-​core pornography is available to anyone with Internet access.
What causes such enormous social changes?
Contemporary social science is oddly incompetent to explain such transform-
ations. Many economists and political scientists still assume that individuals
make rational choices, despite the abundance of evidence that people frequently
succumb to thinking errors such as motivated inference, confirmation bias, sunk
costs, and framing losses differently from gains. Much of sociology and anthro-
pology is taken over with postmodernist assumptions that everything is con-
structed on the basis of social relations such as power, with no inkling that these
relations are mediated by how people think about each other. Social psychology
should serve as the connection between changes in individual minds and social
transformations, but the study of social cognition tends to focus on how pairs of
individuals make sense of each other, rather than on the group processes that pro-
duce the spread of concepts and emotional attitudes across societies.
A better approach to explaining social change needs to be constructed by
building on current work on the neural mechanisms responsible for cognition and
emotion. Brain–​Mind shows how all mental representations—​images, concepts,

Mind–Society: From Brains to Social Sciences and Professions. Paul Thagard, Oxford University Press
(2019). © Paul Thagard. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190678722.003.0001
4

4 Mind–Society
beliefs, rules, analogies, emotions, desires—​can be built out of patterns of neural
firings that Chris Eliasmith calls semantic pointers, which can function like
symbols but unpack into sensory-​motor representations. His Semantic Pointer
Architecture aims to provide a unified, brain-​based account of the full range of
human thought, from perception to language. What does social change look like
from this perspective?
If all thinking in individuals builds representations out of semantic pointers,
then communication between individuals produces approximate transfer of such
neural processes. It is possible to identify the full range of social interactions that
produce transmission, which go beyond verbal means such as conversation and
argument. Nonverbal ways of communicating semantic pointers include pictures,
gestures, and touches, as well as collective activities like singing, marching, and
participating in religious rituals. Technologies such as television and Facebook
use words, images, and sounds to communicate emotional attitudes in addition
to verbal and pictorial information. Because semantic pointers cover nonverbal
information from the senses and emotions in addition to words and sentences,
they can provide the basis for a general theory of communication. Social changes
result from adjustments in the neural representations in individuals and from the
exchanges between people that causally interact with what goes on in their heads.
Social change comes from the combination of communicative interactions
among people and their individual cognitive-​emotional processes. This approach,
which I call social cognitivism, does not attempt to reduce the social to the individual
as rational choice approaches want, nor does it attempt to reduce the individual to
the social as social constructionist approaches want. Rather, it views social change
as the result of emergence from interacting social and mental mechanisms, which
include the neural and molecular processes that make minds capable of thinking.
Validation of hypotheses about social cognitivism and multilevel emergence re-
quires detailed studies of important social changes, from norms about smoking
and pornography to economic practices, political institutions, religious customs,
and international relations. The study of social change should serve not only to
explain past developments but also to suggest how to deal with ongoing problems
such as racism, gender discrimination, inequality, global warming, and technolog-
ical development.
It would be futile to try to give an exact definition of social change, but the new
method of three-​analysis provides a useful alternative. This method draws on a
new theory about concepts to characterize them using exemplars, typical features,
and explanations, rather than necessary and sufficient conditions. Exemplars are
standard examples, such as Fords and Toyotas for the concept of car. The typical
features of cars need not belong to all and only cars, but usually apply to them,
5

Explaining Social Change 5

including their standard parts such as wheels, engines, and doors. The third aspect
of a concept captured by a three-​analysis is its explanatory use, including both
what the concept explains and what explains the concept. We use cars to explain
how people often get around their environments and travel from place to place.
The existence and operation of cars is in turn explained by the history of the in-
vention of the automobile, the social processes that led to their adoption, and the
physical interactions of their parts.
Similarly, we can characterize social change by identifying exemplars, typical
features, and explanations, as summarized in Table 1.1. Important examples of
social change are prominent in politics, economics, and numerous collective be-
haviors. In politics, consider the origins and adoption of influential ideologies,
such as free enterprise capitalism, communism, and fascism. In economics, there
are dramatic general trends such as industrialization in the nineteenth century
and increasing uses of information technology in the twentieth century. Sociology
studies dramatic changes in social norms such as patterns of behavior concerning
marriage and smoking. In anthropology, there are the origins and spread of cul-
tural innovations, including religions such as Christianity and Islam. History and
international relations investigate major events such as the great wars of the twen-
tieth century and ongoing international conflicts, for example, in the Middle East.
Social change also occurs in the professions, for example the rise of science-​
based medicine in the twentieth century, and the spread of universal healthcare.
Remarkable legal changes include the development of common law in medieval
England and the adoption of the Napoleonic code in France in the nineteenth cen-
tury. Education has witnessed many social changes such as the development of
universities and the spread of public education. Business changes are partly re-
flections of economic ones, such as cycles of prosperity, but they can also reflect
different ways of managing and marketing, for example using television. Finally,

Table 1.1

Three-​Analysis of Social Change

Exemplars Cultural shifts, political revolutions, industrial transformations,
religious movements, technological replacements
Typical features Individuals, groups, institutions, communication, old system,
new system
Explanations Explains: changes in individual behavior and institutional
practice
Explained by: mental mechanisms, social mechanisms
6

6 Mind–Society
engineering as a profession has undergone frequent changes in the past century,
for example the increasing use of computers in design projects.
The great variety of social changes makes it hard to say what they have in
common, but we can identify typical features. Social changes take place in groups
of people, not just isolated individuals. They often affect institutions, which are
organizations such as churches governed by goals and rules. In addition to insti-
tutional modifications, social changes also take place in individuals through alter-
ations in their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.
What does social change explain? The existence of broad social changes helps
to explain more particular kinds of events. For example, to understand why a par-
ticular household contains a single parent with one or two children rather than
a husband, wife, and three children, we can see it as an instance of a general so-
cial trend. Much more challenging is to explain how and why social changes take
place, for example why economies crash, why wars break out, and why ideologies
flourish or fail. What form should such explanations take?

Explanatory Styles

Explanation in science usually takes one of three forms: narrative, deductive, or

mechanistic. A narrative explanation tells a story about how something came to
be, for example about how Canada and some other countries came to legalize
same-​sex marriage. Most current explanations of social change employ such
stories. In more mathematical sciences such as physics, deductive explanations of
events show how they follow from general laws of nature. I am not aware of any
deductive explanations of important social changes, but mathematical-​deductive
explanations are sometimes used in economics.
The style of explanation most relevant to society describes mechanisms whose
parts and interactions produce regular changes. Relevant mechanisms occur both
in the minds of individuals and in the interactions of people who communicate
with each other. Mechanistic explanations are familiar in biology, where inter-
actions between parts such as cells and organs explain the successful functioning
of living things and can also explain breakdowns that lead to diseases.
Narrative explanations are employed in other fields besides the social sciences.
For example, in evolutionary biology, we can explain the existence of our species,
Homo sapiens, by telling how millions of years of mammalian evolution led eventu-
ally to the development of more than a dozen species of human-​like animals. Homo
sapiens eventually became the dominant human species and the only surviving
7

Explaining Social Change 7

one, perhaps because of our greater intelligence and capability of cooperation.
Even physics has its share of narrative explanations, for example in the evidence-​
supported story about the formation of our planet and solar system from the con-
densation of gases and dust whose origins date back to the Big Bang. For social
change, narrative explanations apply to developments such as how the current
economic system came about through the rise of capitalism since the Middle Ages.
Similarly, the development of democratic government can be seen as the result of
historical events such as the elected parliaments in medieval England.
Narrative explanation has two great sources of appeal. First, people love stories,
and storytelling plays a major role in human cultures independent of literacy.
Second, there can be substantial truth in the stories that are told to explain social
changes that resulted from sequences of events naturally told in story form.
On the other hand, narrative explanation has some obvious weaknesses. First,
narrative explanations may be short on truth, because stories can be appealing
for reasons other than their correspondence to reality. For example, we may like
a story because it makes us feel happy or because it fits with various unsubstan-
tiated prejudices that we hold. Mythology is full of fanciful stories that are be-
guiling but have no basis in correspondence to fact, as in the creation myths that
are found in hundreds of different cultures.
Second, narrative explanations rarely consider alternatives, that is, different
stories that may yield the same result based on very different assumptions and
relevant facts. For example, stories about the evolution of human traits often rely
on elements gained from analogy with current societies, which may not corre-
spond to the crucial circumstances under which humans actually evolved their
genetic makeup. Social phenomena are always so complex that there are alterna-
tive stories that might be told about the developments, and it is hard to choose
between alternative stories when the links between the events are quite arbitrary.
For example, some sociologists endorse Max Weber’s story about the capitalist
economic system resulting from the adoption of Protestantism and its associated
work ethic. But there are other stories about the origins of capitalism that trace it
to other factors such as population shifts.
Third, narrative explanations often string together events while leaving it mys-
terious how one event led to the next. The story is appealing of how the activities
of Martin Luther and other critics of Catholicism generated Protestant religions
that encouraged behaviors conducive to capitalist enterprise. But it would be
much more compelling to know precisely how protest led to successful churches,
how these churches established patterns of behavior, and how these behaviors en-
couraged the flourishing of capitalism.
8

8 Mind–Society
Ideally, deductive explanations would avoid these three problems. Deduction
would give us a solid mathematical link from one event to the other because tran-
sitions would be explained as instances of general laws. Alternative stories could
be comparatively evaluated according to how well they predict past and future
events. The truth of competing deductive explanations would largely be assessed
by this kind of predictive value, with mathematics providing the predictions, sup-
plemented by checks to ensure that the assumptions fed into the deductive ex-
planations correspond to observed events. Physics has made such use of deductive
explanations, from the basic mechanics of Galileo and Newton up to the much
more complicated mathematics of relativity theory and quantum theory. Sadly,
however, the general mathematical laws found in physics are extremely rare in the
social sciences, so they cannot help us much to fill in the gaps in narrative explan-
ations of social change.
Fortunately, mechanistic explanations provide a powerful alternative. Such ex-
planations sometimes employ stories but try to show how one event leads to an-
other as a result of the mental and social mechanisms that connect the two events.
Sometimes these mechanisms can be described in mathematical form, when equa-
tions describe precisely the behaviors and interactions of the parts that make up
a mechanism. But the core part of a mechanistic explanation is a description of
parts whose interactions lead to regular changes, including the social change to
be explained. For example, in Weber’s explanation of the rise of capitalism we can
ask what was going on in the minds of Luther’s followers that made the critique
of Catholic practices plausible to them and others who shifted to Protestant reli-
gions. Crucial to this account is the consideration of social mechanisms by which
people communicate with each other and transfer beliefs, goals, and emotions. To
put it succinctly, social change results from the interplay and interdependence of
cognitive and social mechanisms.
The mechanistic approach to social explanation should identify connections
between events that are stronger than narrative explanation provides but more
obtainable than mathematical deduction requires. Mechanism avoids the poten-
tial mythology of narrative explanation because of the demand that the relevant
parts, structural connections, and interactions fit well with evidence concerning
what goes on in the world, both in minds and in social interactions. Rather than
being satisfied with one appealing narrative, alternative mechanistic accounts can
be comparatively evaluated with respect to how well they (a) explain a wide array
of social changes, (b) make empirically verified descriptions of parts and inter-
actions, and (c) employ assumptions about contributing conditions that are con-
sistent with available evidence. Table 1.2 summarizes the concept of mechanism
using a three-​analysis.
9

Explaining Social Change 9

Table 1.2

Three-​Analysis of Mechanism
Exemplars Machines such as bicycles, physical systems such as the solar
system, organisms such as bacteria, organs such as the brain,
groups such as political parties and markets
Typical features Wholes, parts, connections, interactions, regular changes
Explanations Explains: changes in parts and wholes
Explained by: underlying mechanisms inside parts

Mechanisms are invaluable for explaining the successful functioning of ma-

chines, organisms, and groups, but they can also be useful for explaining failures.
Machines sometimes break because of weakness in their parts, connections, and
interactions, so that they fail to produce the regular changes that accomplish their
function. Later chapters show that mechanism breakdown is important for ex-
plaining romantic disasters, economic crashes, mental illness, and wrongful con-
victions. Some mechanisms lack functions or purposes, for example the solar
system. But machines built by humans always have a purpose, and biological
mechanisms resulting from natural selection always have a function unless they
are vestigial results of earlier adaptations.
Mechanisms always operate in an environment, for example the physical world
that people interact with using their sensory-​motor systems. To understand how
the mechanistic explanatory style operates, we need a more detailed description
of socially relevant mechanisms.

Mental, Neural, and Social Mechanisms

Consider a very simple machine, a pair of scissors like the one shown in Figure 1.1.
This machine has two main parts, each consisting of a blade and handle, connected
by a screw. The interactions of the three parts take place when someone moves the
handles in order to bring the blades together or apart. The regular changes pro-
duced by the scissors are primarily the cutting of pieces of paper or cloth that are
placed between the blades when the handles are moved. This machine operates in
an environment that includes the person whose hand moves the handles and also
the paper or cloth placed between the blades for cutting.
Biological, psychological, and social mechanisms are more complicated systems
but work like a machine in that they have connected parts whose interactions
01

10 Mind–Society

Figure 1.1 A simple mechanism with only three parts.

produce regular changes. In the brain, the most important parts are neurons,
which are cells connected to other cells by synapses. The synapses allow neurons
to interact with each other, so that when one neuron fires it can excite another
neuron, making it more prone to firing, or inhibit the other neuron, making it
less prone to firing. Other parts of the brain include neurotransmitters, which
are chemicals that move from one neuron to another across the synapse between
them. Biological mechanisms operating in the human brain also include molecular
interactions of genes and proteins inside each neuron and the influence of hor-
mones circulating in blood supplies on neurons. The changes resulting from these
interactions generate all the thoughts and feelings that occur in human minds, as
Brain–​Mind argues.
Mental occurrences can also be described in terms of higher level mechanisms,
where the parts are representations such as perceptions, images, concepts, beliefs,
rules, and analogies. For example, anyone reading this volume has the concept of
a book, consisting of standard examples such as the Bible, typical features such
as having pages with words on them, and explanations such as that books en-
able you to read. Mental representations are connected to each other in various
ways, for example by part–​whole relations: the concept book is part of your be-
lief that the Bible is a book. The interactions among mental representations are
diverse, ranging from simple associations such as the one between the concepts
peanut butter and jam to more elaborate inferential relationships that occur when
there are beliefs that correspond to elaborate sentences such as: the Bible is the
most frequently printed book in the world. One of the most challenging questions
for cognitive science is to figure out how mental mechanisms derive from neural
mechanisms; current ideas about how this works are outlined in c­ hapter 2.
1

Explaining Social Change 11

Although it is becoming more common in the social sciences for writers to de-
scribe social change in terms of mechanisms, theorists are usually vague about
what a mechanism is. I want to be more precise following the scheme of parts,
structural connections, interactions, and regular changes. Here “regular” does
not have to mean universality but merely causal correlation: some events make it
more probable that other events will occur. Social mechanisms can operate in very
small systems, such as a family, or in much larger ones, such as a whole country. In
all such mechanisms, the main parts are people who are connected to each other
physically and/​or psychologically. Through connections, people can interact with
each other by different forms of verbal and nonverbal communication but also
by purely physical acts such as violence. These interactions can lead to regular
changes, for example in the reciprocal behaviors of a romantic couple becoming
attached to each other or in the political activities of a whole country whose people
communicate with each other by talking, writing, marching, or voting.
The central question to be answered for the explanation of social change
is: What are the relations among neural mechanisms, mental mechanisms, and
social mechanisms? A full answer must wait for the end of ­chapter 3, following a
more detailed description of specific social and mental mechanisms. This answer
requires an understanding of emergence.

Emergence

Mechanistic explanations relate the whole to its parts but do not assume the re-
ductionist view that the whole is nothing but the sum of the parts. A reductionist
approach to social change would require that all changes at the group level be de-
rived from changes in individual people. In contrast, the mechanistic explanations
that I advocate frequently identify emergent properties that belong to wholes but
that cannot be reduced to the properties of parts, because they result from the
interactions of parts. A university, for example, has properties such as being able
to grant degrees not possessed by any individual administrators or professors or
by any aggregate of these people.
The concept of emergence is often attributed to Aristotle, in the form of the
saying that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. What he actually said is
that the totality is not a mere heap, and the whole is something besides the parts.
The slogan that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts is confusing because
it does not indicate the respects in which wholes are supposed to be greater. Many
discussions of emergence in philosophy and in complexity theory are equally
21

12 Mind–Society
mysterious, making it seem that emergence is some magical property rather than
a frequent part of scientific explanation.
Fortunately, a comprehensible and scientifically respectable characterization of
emergence has been given by the philosophers of science William Wimsatt and
Mario Bunge. In their view, emergence occurs when (a) the whole has a property
not found in any of its parts, (b) the property of the whole is not simply the sum
or aggregate of the properties of the parts, and (c) the property results from the
interactions of the parts. Even machines can have emergent properties, for ex-
ample when a whole bicycle has the property of carrying a rider along a street
when none of the parts such as wheels and pedals could do so alone.
Examples of such emergence abound in science, from physics to psychology.
Molecules of water have the property of being liquid at room temperature, un-
like their constituent hydrogen and oxygen, which are gases at room temperature.
Cells have properties such as the ability to divide and send signals, which are not
just the aggregate of the properties of their parts—​proteins and other molecules.
Organs such as the heart have properties such as the ability to pump blood, which
are not merely the sum of the properties of the cells that compose them. The
whole body has properties such as the ability to move around and have sex, which
are not properties of individual organs, because they require the interactions of
numerous organs such as the heart, the brain, and the limbs. Brain processes such
as perception have emergent properties, for example the recognition of ambig-
uous figures in different ways, as in the duck-​rabbit shown in Figure 1.2. In con-
trast, body weight is a not an emergent property, because it is just the sum of the
weights of the body parts.
Attempts to explain social change need to watch for emergent properties of
whole groups that include couples, families, governments, ethnicities, and coun-
tries. Recognizing a property as emergent does not locate it outside the realm of
scientific explanation but rather points to the need for detailed accounts of the

Figure 1.2 Duck-​rabbit illusion, which can perceptually emerge as either a duck or a rabbit
depending on whether you notice ears or a bill.
31

Explaining Social Change 13

mechanisms operating at all levels from which social changes emerge. Social cog-
nitivism does not aim to reduce the social to the mental, because it recognizes that
there are emergent social changes that result from the interactions of individual
thinkers and also from the interactions of groups. My goal is not to dispense with
the social but rather to understand social change as interdependent with mental
change in individuals.
Accomplishing this goal requires recognizing that emergence is more complicated
than the account so far given. Social mechanisms depend on mental mechanisms,
which depend on neural mechanisms, which depend on molecular mechanisms,
and so on. Without going down all the way to the level of subatomic particles and
quarks, we need to recognize recursive emergence, which is repeated emergence
from emergence. For example, the properties of the heart such as pumping blood
emerge from the properties of the muscles in it, where the properties of muscles
such as contracting and relaxing result from the interactions of the cells in them.
Hence the pumping of blood comes from emergence from emergence. We will see
in later chapters that recursive emergence is important for understanding the op-
erations of brains, minds, and social groups.
To understand social change, however, we also need an even more complicated
kind of emergence. Emergence is usually identified as a relation between two
levels, a higher and lower one. Properties of the whole at the higher level emerge
from the interactions of the parts at the lower level. The scientific strategy of
looking at just two levels at a time is often highly productive, but for social change
we need to pay attention to the simultaneous interactions of more than two levels,
resulting in what I call multilevel emergence.
Brain–​Mind (­chapter 12) argues that the human self is a case of multilevel emer-
gence, in that a full understanding of human selves or persons requires looking at
interactions among four levels: social, mental, neural, and molecular. Multilevel
emergence is more intricate than recursive emergence, which would allow that the
social emerges from the mental, which emerges from the neural, which emerges
from the molecular. Understanding the self requires appreciating how social
changes can lead to molecular changes. For example, social interactions such as
compliments and insults translate quickly into molecular changes in individual
brains, such as increase in dopamine levels for compliments and increase in cor-
tisol levels for insults. Figure 1.3 portrays the differences among ordinary, recur-
sive (repeated), and multilevel emergence.
Later chapters will show that important instances of social change, ranging from
the spread of ideologies to the outbreaks of wars, are cases of multilevel emer-
gence. For example, ­chapter 7 argues that explaining economic crashes requires
noticing interactions among people that influence their molecular states such as
41

14 Mind–Society

Figure 1.3 Three kinds of emergence. Arrows indicate causality and explanation.

the stress hormone cortisol, which feed back to influence social interactions such
as buying and selling.
The concept of emergence can be summarized in the three-​analysis provided
in Table 1.3. The exemplars of emergence include water molecules, cells, organs,
bodies, and social groups. The typical features of emergence include a lower level
of parts, a higher level of wholes, a property of the whole that is not a property
of its parts, and interactions among the parts that generate the property of the
whole. Emergence explains why wholes have properties that are not just the sum
of the properties of the parts. Explaining emergence is often difficult because of
lack of knowledge of the mechanisms operating at both higher and lower levels.
Fortunately, in many cases in physics, biology, and neuroscience, advances in sci-
entific knowledge have moved to fill in these gaps. A major aim of this book is sim-
ilarly to fill in the gaps between social and mental mechanisms while recognizing
several kinds of emergence.
If the cognitive and social sciences used deductive explanations, then filling
the mental–​social gap would amount to the reductionist project of mathemati-
cally deriving the higher levels from the lower levels. This project fails for two
reasons: the difficulty of finding general laws for biological, psychological, and

Table 1.3

Three-​Analysis of Emergence
Exemplars Molecules such as water, biological systems such as cells and
organs, social systems such as universities
Typical features Whole, parts, interactions, properties that belong to the whole
but not the parts
Explanations Explains: complex change
Explained by: interconnections, mechanisms inside parts
51

Explaining Social Change 15

neural systems; and the prevalence of causal effects of changes at the higher level
on the social level at the lower level, for example the effects on mental states of
compliments and insults. Accordingly, explanations of how emergence works in
the social sciences need to go beyond simple two-​level cases by paying attention
to recursive emergence and multilevel emergence. How this works will be shown
generally at the end of c­ hapter 3 and in much more detail in later chapters with
particular examples across the social sciences and professions.
Systems with emergent properties are often prone to unpredictable changes.
In the study of complex systems, the term “chaos” describes systems where small
changes can lead to large effects, for example when introduction of a new animal
such as zebra mussels to an ecosystem can lead to extinction of other species. In
the duck-​rabbit example in Figure 1.3, a small change in focus of attention can
lead to a large perceptual shift. Because emergent properties result from ongoing
interactions, sometimes small changes can take a system past a tipping point
that produces a critical transition to new properties of the whole. A tipping point
is a threshold that can turn small changes into large ones, and critical transi-
tions occur when crossing a threshold produces major changes. We will see that
many social systems from romantic couples to stock markets are chaotic with tip-
ping points that lead to critical transitions, all because of multilevel interacting
mechanisms.

The Social Cognitive-​E motional Workup

The task of identifying multiple mechanisms might seem daunting but becomes
tractable through a method for tackling change across all the social sciences and
professions. I call this method a social cognitive-​emotional workup. In American
medicine, a workup is a systematic set of diagnostic procedures designed to di-
agnose a disease, including a battery of tests that help determine the causes of a
patient’s symptoms. I use “workup” to describe a battery of questions that help
identify the interacting causes of a social change. Obviously, social change requires
attention to social mechanisms, but we will also see the advantages of considering
mechanisms at the mental, neural, and molecular levels. A workup should attempt
to answer all of the following questions:

1. Who are the relevant individuals participating in the social change?

2. What are the groups that constrain the social interactions of the individ-
uals, including institutions with identifiable goals and rules?
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16 Mind–Society
3. What are the representations in the minds of individuals and how do they
change as the result of mental, neural, and molecular mechanisms?
4. What social mechanisms contribute to the changes in representations
across individuals?
5. How do the changes in representations and interactions lead to changes in
the behaviors of individuals and groups?
6. What are the emergent properties of groups and how do they result from
interdependencies of social, mental, neural, and molecular mechanisms?
7. What are the tipping points that produce critical transitions, turning small
mental and social changes into major ones?

The description of the relevant mental and social mechanisms in c­ hapters 2

and 3 will make it much clearer how a social cognitive-​emotional workup can
proceed.
The seventh question requires attention to dramatic changes that can occur as
the result of apparently minor occurrences. For example, in 1914 the assassina-
tion of an Austrian archduke set off a cascade of events that led to millions of
people dying in World War I, establishing political and economic conditions that
contributed to World War II in which even more people died. Many important so-
cial changes result from critical transitions at both the mental and social levels,
for example revolutions, economic crashes, religious frenzies, and wars. Such crit-
ical transitions often produce new emergent properties in individuals and groups,
when local interactions produce global changes.

Applications

Much work in current social science is dominated by two inadequate methodo-

logical approaches: the methodological individualism that prevails in much of
economics and political science in the form of rational choice theory, and the
postmodernism that prevails in much of anthropology, sociology, and history
in the form of vague discussions of discourse and power relations. The cogni-
tive sciences, especially psychology and neuroscience, can provide a powerful
third alternative, but not simply by reductively explaining the social in terms
of the psychological. Rather, social cognitivism shows how to integrate the
social and the cognitive sciences nonreductively, displaying both psycholog-
ical effects on social processes and social effects on psychological processes.
The social sciences and professions need to be mindful, not mind-​blind and
brain-​blind.
71

Explaining Social Change 17

Social cognitive-​emotional workups are applicable to a wide range of social phe-
nomena, but this book provides only some important cases. I will try to show the
method is useful for answering two sorts of descriptive questions and two sorts
of normative questions. The descriptive questions, concerning how the world ac-
tually is, are (a) Why did a particular social change take place? and (b) Why did
various social changes not take place? The second question shows that a workup
should be able to explain social stability as well as social change by identifying
mental and social mechanisms.
Normative questions concern how the world ought to be, not just how it is,
including (c) How can the world be made better? and (d) How can the world be
prevented from getting worse? A workup can be applied to the third question by
considering the mental and social mechanisms that are relevant to bringing about
the desired change, such as reducing poverty and malnutrition. Sometimes, as
with global warming, social interventions based on people’s thinking are needed
to keep things from getting worse. The fourth question considers what mental and
social mechanisms are relevant to preventing a dangerous change from occurring.
My emphasis is primarily on explaining social change, but I occasionally address
social stability and allude to the normative questions about promoting good
changes and preventing bad ones. The ethical question about what makes changes
normatively good or bad is addressed by considering human needs in Natural
Philosophy (­chapters 6 and 7).
After a review of mental and social mechanisms in ­chapters 2 and 3, the next
six chapters show the usefulness of performing social cognitive-​emotional
workups for the following branches of social science: social psychology, soci-
ology, politics, economics, anthropology, and history. Chapter 4 considers so-
cial psychology as operating at the intersection of psychology and sociology
but develops a synthesis not found in either of them. The subfields of social
cognition and micro-​sociology can be enhanced by an account of how romantic
human relationships depend on a complex of social, mental, neural, and molec-
ular mechanisms.
Close relationships involve a small number of individuals, as few as two in a
romance, but much larger groups are involved in the all too common practice of
discrimination on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, age, and disability. Chapter 5
uses social cognitive-​emotional workups of misogyny and antisemitism to show
how prejudice tied to social stereotypes can lead to discrimination. Overcoming
discrimination requires changes in social norms, which are conscious and uncon-
scious emotional rules rather than rational choices.
Various kinds of political change require explanation, but ­chapter 6 focuses on
changes in ideologies, which are systems of ideas, beliefs, and values that affect a
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18 Mind–Society
political community. The rise and fall of ideologies—​their adoption and rejection
in a community—​results from the interplay of mental and social mechanisms, as
illustrated by the recent rise of the Islamic State.
Many important kinds of social change are economic, concerning the pro-
duction and trade of goods and services. Chapter 7 investigates a particularly
salient kind of economic change, the booms and crashes that have been promi-
nent in capitalist economic systems for hundreds of years. Both the psychology
and the molecular neuroscience of individual minds turn out to be relevant
to explaining dramatic economic changes, which also result from social inter-
actions constrained by economic institutions and other groups. The 1929 and
2008 economic crashes are good examples of multilevel emergence involving
interactions at the social, mental, neural, and molecular levels, leading to crit-
ical transitions.
Religion is a ubiquitous social phenomenon studied by anthropologists and
other social scientists. The rise, spread, transformation, and sometimes decline
of religious movements are important social changes whose explanation needs to
knit together the social and the mental, right down to the molecular. In c­ hapter 8,
I offer a psychological explanation of why religions in general are so appealing to
individuals, and I also consider how their spread is an important kind of social
change resulting from social mechanisms interconnected with mental ones. How
this works is shown by a social cognitive-​emotional workup of a rapidly growing
religion, Mormonism.
Chapter 9 treats history as a social science whose aims should include pro-
viding explanations, for example of the origins of wars. The pathetic story of the
inception of World War I illustrates the interplay of mental and social mechan-
isms. This chapter requires an excursion into the field of international relations,
which also belongs to politics. Wars are a good example of social changes that
need explaining, but they also demand normative investigation of how they can
be avoided in the future.
The rest of this book describes applications of the method of social cognitive-​
emotional workups to the professions, including medicine, law, education,
engineering, and business. In each chapter, case studies are used to develop
new accounts of central concerns, including mental illness, wrongful convic-
tions, teaching, creative design, leadership, and marketing. Taken together,
­chapters 4 to 14 provide a long argument that the best explanations of social
change stem from the interactions of mental and social mechanisms described
in ­chapters 2 and 3.
91

Explaining Social Change 19

Summary and Discussion

I am proposing a new approach to the social sciences and professions that assesses
the following hypotheses:

H1. All social change results from mental mechanisms in individuals and
from social mechanisms for the interactions of thinking individuals.
H2. The relevant mental mechanisms operate with these representations: im-
ages, concepts, rules, analogies, and emotions.
H3. All of these representations derive from neural mechanisms based on an
important kind of neural process called semantic pointers.
H4. The interactions of individuals contribute to changes in their mental rep-
resentations through cognitive and emotional communication that trans-
fers, prompts, and instigates semantic pointers.
H5. Changes in the mental states and behaviors of individuals and groups re-
sult from changes in representations and interactions.
H6. Explanation of social changes requires identification of emergent prop-
erties of groups that are not simply the sum of change of changes in
individuals.
H7. Social change resulting from cognitive and social mechanisms often re-
sults from critical transitions, not just gradual accumulations.
H8. Emotional gestalt shifts are important critical transitions that occur when
individuals and groups reconfigure their arrays of attitudes and values.

These eight hypotheses are not dogmatic pronouncements but rather conjec-
tures that need to be tested against numerous historical cases. Evidence for their
plausibility arrives when they yield novel, plausible, and rich explanations of cases
of social change and stability, occurring in romantic relationships, social prejudice,
political ideologies, economic cycles, religious practices, and wars. If historically
justified, these hypotheses provide the basis for explaining social changes and sta-
bility, and they yield a framework for addressing normative questions about how
to bring about desirable changes and about how to prevent dangerous ones.
The approach developed here differs markedly from the purely individual ex-
planations offered by rational choice theorists and from the purely social explan-
ations offered by social constructionists and postmodernists. My integration of
the individual and the social is accomplished by combining rich accounts of mental,
neural, and molecular mechanisms with a full description of social mechanisms
02

20 Mind–Society
that allow the minds of people to influence each other. Understanding the opera-
tions of brains turns out to be crucial for understanding how minds and societies
make each other work.

Notes

I use quotation marks to indicate words and italics to indicate concepts. For ex-
ample, the word “book” can stand for a book that is mentally represented by the
concept book.
For an overview of social change, see Weinstein 2010. Varnum and Grossman
2017 discuss the psychology of cultural change.
Other attempts to synthesize the cognitive and social sciences can be found
in Sun 2012, Turner 2001, and Huebner 2013. Social neuroscience is reviewed by
Schutt, Keshavan, and Seidman 2015 and Decety and Cacioppo 2011.
On semantic pointers, see Eliasmith et al. 2012, Eliasmith 2013, Brain–​Mind, and
­chapter 2. Published papers can be found at the following websites:

http://​compneuro.uwaterloo.ca/​publications.html
http://​cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/​Biographies/​pault-​new.html

The semantic pointer theory of concepts is presented in Blouw, Solodkin,

Thagard, and Eliasmith 2016. The method of three-​analysis originates with this
Treatise. Traditional conceptual analysis in philosophy presumes a theory of con-
cepts that psychological experiments have made obsolete: Murphy 2002. The
method of three-​analysis is useful for describing current concepts and also for
laying out the dynamics of conceptual change, as described in the chapters on prej-
udice and education.
For an overview of explanation, see Woodward 2014. Velleman 2003 discusses
narrative explanation. Work on mechanistic explanation includes Bechtel 2008,
Bunge 2003, Craver and Darden 2013, and Findlay and Thagard 2012. Natural
Philosophy (­chapter 5) examines the strengths and weaknesses of additional ex-
planatory styles, along with a more thorough account of reduction and emergence.
For present purposes, field A reduces to field B if all phenomena in A can be ex-
plained by B. A good review of scientific reduction is van Riel and Van Gulick 2014.
Sometimes deductive, mechanistic, and narrative explanations can be comple-
mentary, for example when mathematical models of neurons are used to describe
how neural interactions lead to mental changes.
12

Explaining Social Change 21

The narrative explanation of the rise of capitalism is in Weber 2009.
My account of emergence adapts Wimsatt 2007 and Bunge 2003. Aristotle says
that the whole is besides the parts in his Metaphysics, Book H, 1045a. I do not
know who introduced the phrase “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
It is sometimes attributed to the Gestalt psychologists, who were actually closer
to Aristotle.
On complexity, see Mitchell 2011. Scheffer 2009 examines critical transitions,
which are sometimes also called tipping points, bifurcations, inflection points, ca-
tastrophes, and singularities. Complexity, chaos, and critical transitions explain
little without specification of mechanisms that produce them.

Project

Compile a catalog of important social changes and analyze the kinds of explana-
tion that have been given for them.
2

2
Mental Mechanisms

Cognition and Emotion

Why do we do what we do? To understand how people interact with each other,
we need to know what is going on in their individual but interdependent minds.
Since the 1950s, cognitive science has developed an understanding of how minds
work using mental representations and procedures. You are already familiar with
representations in the world, for example verbal ones such as words and sentences
and visual ones such as signs and diagrams. Much less familiar is the hypothesis
that people have representations operating in their minds that can also stand for
things in the world. Just as you can use the word “apple” to stand for apples, so
your mind can use the concept apple to stand for apples in the world.
Mental representations would be useless if they did not have procedures that
operate on them. For example, if you have the concept of an apple as a kind of
fruit, then you can move from the belief that something is an apple to the conclu-
sion that it is a fruit. Representations and procedures working together constitute
mental mechanisms, where the parts are mental entities such as concepts and im-
ages and the interactions are procedures such as inference and image construction.
Brain–​Mind shows how human thinking can be explained using basic kinds of
mental representation: perceptions, images, concepts, beliefs, rules, analogies,
and emotions. This chapter gives a compact summary of how these representa-
tions contribute to human thinking, including the intertwining of cognition and
emotion. All mental representations are formed out of the same underlying neural
mechanisms, including representation by groups of neurons, binding of these

Mind–Society: From Brains to Social Sciences and Professions. Paul Thagard, Oxford University Press
(2019). © Paul Thagard. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190678722.003.0002
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
paleness of her sorrow it seemed to sit like a shroud. They made large
masses of her hair to flow dishevelled down her neck, and mingled with it
locks of wool, to signify that, in her new station, she was to imitate the
purity of the vestals, whose peculiar emblem it was. The extremities of her
long ringlets were curled and arranged with the steel of a lance; and among
her attendants there were many pretty flutterings and drawings-back as they
handled so terrible a comb. Then they suffered her to wait in quiet the
approach of the bridegroom. He was not long in his coming. They drew
over her head the crown of vervain, and concealed her deathlike features
beneath the flame-coloured veil. They put on, too, the yellow slippers,
which it was the fashion for brides to wear: they were so contrived as to add
considerably to the height, but Julia’s was so much diminished by sadness
and disease, that even with this assistance she did not seem near her usual
stature.
It was night; and she was borne to the house of her husband by the light
of flambeaux. Three young persons, whose parents were still living, were
her conductors. Two supported her, and Julia indeed stood in need of
support; the third walked before her, bearing a torch of pine. A distaff and
spindle, a child’s coral, and other emblems of her future duties, were carried
behind her. Her friends and relations also followed, each bearing in his arms
some present to the new married couple. Cœlius was among them, but he
concealed his face in the folds of his gown, and his smothered sighs
attracted no observation.
At last they came to the threshold of the bridegroom: it was tastefully
adorned with wreaths of flowers; and woollen fillets, smeared with oil, were
hung round to keep out enchantments. The master of the house stood at the
door, and the crowd gathered round it to witness the conclusion of the
ceremony.
They asked her, according to custom, under what title she came? She had
opened her lips to answer, when Cœlius ran forward and threw himself
between Marcius and his beloved. “Oh! no, no!” he cried; “I cannot hear it!
—do not, do not kill me quite!” “Back, back!” she said, shuddering. “Shall I
not obey my father?” The youth heard not—saw not; he was led away,
senseless and unresisting; and the ceremony proceeded. Again she was
asked under what title she came; and she answered, as was prescribed for
her, in a low but distinct tone, “Ubi tu Caius, ego Caia!”[7] They lifted her
from the ground, for it was reckoned an evil omen to touch the threshold in
her entrance. They lifted her from the ground, and she spoke no word, and
made no struggle. But ere they had set down her foot upon her husband’s
floor, she trembled with a convulsive quivering, and her head fell back upon
the youth who supported her left shoulder. Again they put down their
burden, but it was quite motionless! They tore the veil from her head—her
look was fixed and quiet—her eye open and dull! She was quite dead!
 PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE OF PEREGRINE
COURTENAY.
I.

PEREGRINE OF CLUBS TO GEORGE OF ENGLAND.

May it please your Majesty,

I am your loyal subject, and an editor. I am induced to address you in print
by three considerations. First, I am like yourself, a King; although my claim
to the title is not quite so legitimate as your Majesty’s. Secondly, I am an
author, and it is much the fashion with authors of the present day to indite
letters to the Crown. Thirdly, I am enthusiastically fond of novelty in every
shape; and I flatter myself I am going to strike one—a letter to the King,
without an ounce of politics in its composition.
I am not going to offer my congratulations upon “glorious accession,”
“recent successes,” or “the flourishing state of our manufactures;” neither
am I going to present you with memorials relating to “excessive taxation,”
“starving weavers,” or “Ilchester Gaol.” I am myself too tired of flattery
and abuse to offer such insipid dishes to the palate of a brother monarch.
No, Sire! I am about to offer you some observations upon that part of your
Majesty’s dominions which falls more immediately under the notice of the
King of Clubs—the Royal Foundation of Eton.
May it please your Majesty, I have been long a member of it, and I am
sure that (exceptis excipiendis) you have not in any part of your sovereignty
five hundred better disposed subjects than are to be met with in its “antique
towers.” I shall not therefore be repulsed with harshness if I lay before you
a few of the grievances, or the fancied grievances, under which we labour.
I think it was in the year 1814 that I first saw your Majesty at Frogmore.
The Emperor of Russia was there, and the King of Prussia, and Blucher, and
Platoff, and sundry other worthies, whom were I to attempt to enumerate
the line would reach out “to the crack of doom.” One single individual of
that illustrious body could have drawn all London to the Monument, if he
had promised to exhibit himself in the gallery; and we, favoured alumni,
had the privilege of staring by wholesale. I never shall forget the reception
of those illustrious potentates. All voices were loud in hurras, all hats were
waving in the air; and there was such a squeezing, and pushing, and
shouting, and shaking of hands, and treading on toes, that I have often
wondered how I escaped in safety from the perils into which my enthusiasm
threw me.
Never shall I forget the soul-enlivening moment when your Majesty,
stepping into the midst of our obstreperous group, proclaimed aloud, “A
whole holiday for the Emperor of Russia.” (Cheering.) “A whole holiday
for the King of Prussia,” (Renewed cheering.) “Now, my boys,” you said,
with a good-humoured laugh that set Whiggism and awe at defiance, “I
must add my mite”—and there was long, loud, reiterated, unanimous,
heartfelt cheering. In that look of yours there were years of intimacy. The
distinction which rank had placed between us seemed at once overturned;
you raised us up to your own level, or rather you deigned to come down for
a moment to ours. One could almost have imagined that you had been
yourself an Etonian, that you had shared in our amusements, that you had
tasted of our feelings!
It was a proud evening for Eton, but a troublesome one for those who
made it so. The warmth of an English welcome is enough to overpower any
one but an Englishman. Platoff swore he was more pestered by the Etonians
than he had ever been by the French; and the kind old Blucher had his hand
so cordially wrung that he was unable to lift his bottle for a week
afterwards. To your Majesty the recollection of that evening must have been
one of unmingled gratification. You had enjoyed that truly royal pleasure,
which springs from the act of bestowing pleasure upon others; you had been
applauded by Etonians, as the patron of Etonians ought to be; you
purchased more than three hundred whole hearts at the price of only three
whole holidays.
It would be needless, as it would be endless, to enumerate all the
instances of Royal favour which since that time have been extended
towards our Foundation; I have not room to give an extended narration of
the cricketing at Frogmore, nor to describe your Majesty’s visit to our
Triennial Montem. One subject, however, there is, the omission of which
would be both irksome to myself and ungrateful to your Majesty. I mean the
gracious liberality which gave to the school your lamented father had so
constantly esteemed the permission to attend at his obsequies, and follow
their patron to his grave. That unsolicited attention, and the delicate manner
in which the notice of it was conveyed to us, live still in our hearts. They
proved to us that you were aware of the loss we had sustained; they proved
to us that by your munificence that loss would be alleviated or repaired.
Having thus performed what I conceived to be my duty, by expressing
the sense we entertain of your Majesty’s bounty, let me call your attention
to the situation in which we are now placed.
Eton is a soil which has been used to the sun of Royal patronage, and, if
that invigorating heat is withheld, what can be expected but that the earth
should be unproductive, and that its plants should fade? This is a most
comfortable doctrine, inasmuch as it enables us to set down to your
Majesty’s account all the degeneracy which modern Eton is said to exhibit.
The remedy is as obvious as the evil. Pay us a visit! Are our cricketers weak
in the arm? Your patronage shall add vigour to their sinews! Are our poets
weak in the head? Your encouragement shall give new life to their
hippocrene! Are our alumni diminishing in numbers? Beneath your
influence recruits shall tumble in like locusts! Are they diminishing in
stature? They shall grow like mustard beneath a Royal smile.
This, however, is all theory and speculation. There are many who will
attribute our degeneracy to other causes, and many who will deny that there
is any degeneracy in the case at all. I am now going to mention a specific
grievance, the existence of which no one can deny, and to which your
Majesty alone can apply a remedy. During the life of your father we
enjoyed three annual holidays, under the denomination of “King’s visits;”
and the enjoyment of them had become so much a thing of course, that few
were aware upon how short a tenure we held our blessings. They are gone!
We have no “King’s visits,” because your Majesty has never visited Eton.
It seems to be pretty well determined that your Majesty, sooner or later,
will visit some place or other. Some recommend a visit to Hanover, some
recommend a visit to Ireland—I recommend a visit to Eton. It will be less
troublesome, less expensive, and less formal, than either of its rival
proposals. It will be soonest begun, and it will be the soonest over. It would
be without a hundred inconveniences which would wait upon your two
other journeys. At Eton, you would not be bothered by counts and courtiers;
you would not be stifled with Phelims and Patricks; you would not he
pestered with German addresses, as at Hanover; and you would not have to
dine with the Mayor and Corporation, as at Dublin.
The time of your visit I will not presume to point out. If you happen to
come on the fourth of this month, you will find certain illicit proceedings
going on, which I cannot in this place describe. I can tell you, however, that
we shall have a splendid show, and a band that shall play “God save the
King,” ad infinitum. If you prefer being present at our public speeches, as
your Majesty’s father occasionally was, you will hear much embryo oratory
and see much sawing of the air.
To be serious—may it please your Majesty, I think you ought to come to
Eton. Let us have due notice of the honour intended us, and you shall be
received in a style worthy both of us and of you. Come, and by your coming
disperse over the face of Etona her wonted smile: paste another bright leaf
into her annals: give a new excitement to her talents, her studies, and her
amusements. You need not come in state: you must not depart in a hurry:
bring to us as many smiles, and as few lords, as you please: above all, drive
away for an hour the formality of dress and manner which public life
enjoins; come to us provided with an English heart, and dressed in the
Windsor uniform.
On Windsor Bridge you shall be met by the Fellows with “God save the
King,” and, as you step into College, you shall be saluted by my friend the
Captain with a Latin address. This shall not detain you longer than three
minutes and a half; and Sir Benjamin Bloomfield shall hold the watch. You
will then be conducted to all the lions of the College, amongst which you
will feel particularly interested in the new library established last month,
and you will probably put a small donation into the hands of Mr. Hawkins,
the Treasurer. After your peregrinations you will have the option of taking a
cold collation with the Provost, or a hot beefsteak with the King of Clubs. If
you prefer the former, my duty for the day is over; but if, as I prognosticate,
your choice falls upon the latter, the talents of Mr. Rowley shall be
forthwith put in requisition. We will give your Majesty a real English
dinner, and a hearty welcome. I will not present my book unless your
Majesty desires it, and your Majesty shall not be required to knight any of
the Club, unless you would condescend to confirm the title of my worthy
friend Sir Thomas. We will be very merry, may it please your Majesty, and
we will have your Majesty’s favourite punch, if your Majesty will give us
the recipe. Mr. Oakley shall be driven from the Club-room, and we will
make our furious Whig, Sir Francis, sing loyal staves in honour of the
occasion. If this does not bring you to Eton, I don’t know what will—that’s
all.
In the evening your Majesty shall return to—bless my soul, I had
forgotten the holidays. But your own good-nature will prompt you. I have
finished my epistle, and—may it please your Majesty.
(Signed) Peregrine.

II.

PEREGRINE COURTENAY TO MR. BENJ. BOOKWORM.

[Mr. Courtenay is both surprised and grieved to hear that the unwarrantable curiosity of
the public has cast a sacrilegious eye upon his private correspondence; and that his private
letter to a brother monarch has been made the subject of animadversions totally
unjustifiable. To prevent mistakes, he thinks it necessary to inform the public that his
private correspondence is—not to be read.]

My dear Benjamin,
Allow me to congratulate you upon the happy termination of your literary
labours. Allow me to congratulate you, not hypocritically, or sarcastically,
or triumphantly, but sincerely, and as a friend. We have been long opposed
to each other, as writers; and although the sword of attack was sheathed by
me almost as soon as it was drawn, on your side its point has been
constantly protruded in a very threatening attitude. I mean not to complain
of this; I will say nothing but what is civil and conciliatory; it would be
unmanly in me to do otherwise, now that my adversary is hors du combat.
Well then, you have said your say, and we will, if you please,
Leave this keen encounter of our wits,
And fall to something of a slower method.

I have heard it remarked, my good Benjamin, that your last number is

somewhat dear. I must confess, and I believe you must confess, that the
matter contained therein is somewhat scanty; but nevertheless, as it is the
last time I shall have an opportunity of patronizing you, I have not grudged
you my shilling. You have taken leave very decently, or, in the words of the
old housewives, “You have made a good end!” I must say I rather envy you.
But there is one passage in your last scene which rather surprised me:
 “If the Etonian has behaved in a manner unworthy of its conductors
towards the Salt-Bearer, there is no reason that I should retaliate a single
word upon them!
My magnanimous rival! Let us go over the grounds of our squabble
temperately.
I was originally, as you know, the conductor of a small miscellany in
manuscript; I was requested to establish a periodical publication in its place.
I declined it, on the ground that the talent of Eton was not adequate to such
an undertaking. Soon after the Salt-Bearer was advertised. I felt a curiosity
to know something of its authors, because, had the work been conducted by
any person upon whose discretion or authority I could rely, I should have
been glad to have supported him to the best of my abilities. I made
inquiries, without effect, among such of my schoolfellows as were most
distinguished for genius or industry: it was suggested to me that the Salt-
Bearer was not actually set on foot by an Etonian, or at least not by one at
that time belonging to the school. I made inquiries upon this point at your
bookseller’s, and could get no answer. Was it not natural enough for me to
believe that my suspicions were correct? I did believe so, and I made no
secret of my belief. Was I obliged by any motive of justice to withhold my
ideas respecting one who voluntarily thrust himself in a mask before the
public? Who has any scruple in expressing his opinions relative to Junius?
—or the Scotch novelist—or John Bull?
Well! the work appeared, and if I thought that it was not calculated to
advance the credit of Eton, my judgment may have been erroneous; but it
was the judgment of many persons, wiser far than either Peregrine
Courtenay or Benjamin Bookworm. I expressed that judgment, and my
reasons for it, very openly; and again I must ask, by what principle should I
have been withheld from doing so? There were one or two cuts at myself in
your début, but they were so insignificant that I cannot even censure you for
making use of them.
The work proceeded, and some friends, who took more interest in my
little manuscript miscellany than it deserved, wished me to publish some
extracts from it, in order to do away the stain which the reputation of Eton
had suffered from the writings of the Salt-Bearer. It is needless for me to
explain why the project of the Selection was given up, and that of the
Etonian substituted in its place. Suffice it to say that the hearty promises of
support which I immediately received convinced me that those of my
schoolfellows whose good opinion I wished to enjoy were not displeased at
the steps I had taken.
When the first number of the Etonian was in a state of forwardness, I
received from a friend, whom no one can know without esteem, some very
witty remarks upon the Salt-Bearer, intended for insertion in the King of
Clubs; it had been my intention to refrain from any mention of your
publication, but the remarks in question amused me so much that I felt very
loth to withhold them from my readers. While I was thus wavering, your
fourth number appeared, in which I was alluded to in a most extraordinary
manner. I have not room to quote the whole of your attack. I was accused of
“rancour,” “malice,” “pride,” “hatred”—and a variety of ill-natured
offences.
Alas! the infirmities of human nature! I confess it, Mr. Bookworm, I
flew into a most devouring passion. I lost my temper, Mr. Bookworm, and I
shouted, “To arms!” And, truth to say, a youth like me, who had all his life
preserved a good, respectable, quiet, silly sort of character; who had always
had a great propensity to sitting indoors, and a great horror of duelling; who
had borne no reputation more disgraceful than that of “Sap,” no nickname
more opprobrious than that of “Toup”—I say, Mr. Bookworm, such a youth
as this might fly off at a tangent, when he was fulminated at by so terrible
an assailant. I repeat it—I lost my temper; I hurried to the printing-office;
and I not only discharged the light javelin[8] which had been put into my
hands by my friend, but took from my own armoury a less keen, but more
ponderous weapon, which you may look for in the “Second Meeting of the
Club.” I confess it; I was very abusive. But my abuse lighted upon literary,
not moral character. I believe I accused you of dulness, stupidity,
presumption; I am not sure if I did not call you a blockhead! But if I had
said one word of “malice,” “rancour,” or “hatred,” I should have felt it my
duly to apologize for it long ago!
Well! No. I., with all its severity, went forth to the world; I grew cool,
and I was sorry that I had been so violent. I said to myself, “If the author of
this work receives my attack in silence, and honours me with not one word
in reply, he will take a high ground, and obtain a superiority over me which
I shall never be able to recover.” This made me very uneasy.
 By-and-by your next number appeared! I was happier than you can
conceive! Every sarcasm I had uttered was answered by one twice as
furious; if Peregrine was angry, Benjamin was mad. I hugged the dear
invectives with delight: as you waxed more wrathful I waxed more pleased;
and at last, when, as the climax of my happiness, I found that you had been
carping at the “Lines to——,” those lines which would have done honour to
any living poet; those lines which, had they appeared in your columns,
would have made the Salt-Bearer worthy of immortality—then I flung
down the book in transport, and exclaimed, “Our enemies are the best
friends we have!”
From that time to the present the Etonian has never renewed the contest.
The answers, however, which you have published to the strictures of a
correspondent upon Wordsworth and Coleridge have shown that the Salt-
Bearer was somewhat reluctant to lay down the cudgels. There was also an
occasional sly hit at Peregrine—especially one on the score of plagiarism,
which the author did not think fit to support by any examples. You
remember the lines “To a Young Lady on her Fourteenth Birthday,” inserted
in your fourth number? You have accused me of plagiarism, but I did not
retaliate. Neither was I severe upon your literary connection with a certain
Mr. H., because I believe that connection was at least commenced when you
were ignorant of the man’s notorious character.
And now, after the furious reply in your fifth number, and the occasional
hits in its successors, you come forward and say, “There is no reason that I
should retaliate a single word.” The palpable absurdity of this generosity
must be so evident both to yourself and your readers that I need say no
more upon the subject.
At all events our warfare is now over. I know not what your feelings may
be towards me, but I assure you that in mine not a particle of hostility
exists: if I may use the expression, I have shaken hands with you, not re
verâ, but by a poetical license. I feel no reluctance in allowing that the
prose composition of your latter numbers has exhibited many signs of
improvement; and that if the support you have received has been no greater
than I believe it to have been, the editor of the Salt-Bearer has gone through
his work respectably.
You and I, Mr. Bookworm, have made much noise in our day, and have
excited, among our fellow-Etonians, a greater sensation than two such
insignificant beings ever excited before. There has been much talk about us,
which has now, I believe, ceased; and there has been much hot blood
between us, which has now, I trust, grown cool. For my part, I can look
back to our early disputes as if they were the events of a former age; and
detect our respective blunders and mistakes as calmly as if I were making
the same examination into the conduct of our great-grandfathers.
When I throw a glance over the journey which our Etonian writers have
travelled, I fancy that I see three different routes leading towards the same
point. In the centre, Messrs. Griffin and Gildrig are riding a couple of clever
nags, at a good round trot: on one side, Mr. Bookworm is bestriding what is
commonly termed “a safe cob for an infirm gentleman,” which scrambles
over his ground in such a manner that the spectators imagine he will come
to a dead stop every instant; on the other side is Mr. Courtenay, whip and
spur, whip and spur, the whole way—up hill and down hill, bush and briar,
furze and fence, it is the same thing. Mr. C., they say, never uses a curb; and
the animal occasionally waxes so formidably obstinate that he has infinite
difficulty in keeping his seat.
The meaning of all this is, that it would have been well for you to have
had a little less discretion, and for me to have had a little more; it would
have been well for you to have drunk a little more punch, and for me to
have drunk a little less. But what could I do? The Salt-Bearer appeared, and
was voted milk and water! It was necessary for me to prepare a more potent
beverage. I will venture to assert, that if the Microcosm itself had appeared
immediately after the Salt-Bearer, its success would have been precarious.
Eton wanted something more pungent! The Etonian substituted the punch-
bowl for the tea-pot; and people ran away from Mr. Bookworm’s best
Bohea to see Mr. Golightly squeezing the lemons.
I, Peregrine Courtenay, as is well known, am a very sober long-faced
sort of editor, somewhat of a friend to a quiet pint of ale or a social glass of
old port, but a most abominable enemy (I hope Sir Thomas will not be
angry) to everything that bears the name of downright jollification. I was
therefore not less surprised than my friends at finding myself a member—-
nay, the president of a club—so formidably jovial. Many times during the
first week of my reign did I turn round in an absent fit and exclaim, “How
in the name of sobriety did I come here?” However, finding that there were
no spirits in our punch-bowl saving the spirit of good-humour, and no
danger of intoxication saving the intoxication of success, I gradually
became reconciled to my situation, and can now get drunk, in print, with
very tolerable success. With you, however, my dear sir, I am quite sober. I
would not have ventured to obtrude myself upon your retirement in a
condition of which you could have disapproved. I do assure you, upon the
word of an editor, that I have drunk nothing this morning but some
“Meanders of Sensibility,” by “Juvenis,” very weak and corky indeed; and
some “Tricklings from Tweed,” by “Allen-a-Dale,” the first bottle of which
has poisoned half the Club.
I have been remarking upon the birth of you and me. Let me now look
back to your decease, and forward (alas!) to my own.
You have taken leave of your readers, I must say, pretty decently. I
regret, however, that you have not thought fit to disclose to the world the
names of your several correspondents, and the papers for which you are
indebted to them. I regret it not, believe me, from any silly curiosity, but
merely from a regard for your own character. I wish you had shown (I know
you could have shown) that it was not your hand which put “rancour” and
“malice” and “hatred” into your fourth number; that it was not your
ingenuity which coined that unlucky nullæ in your fifth. But, however—
you have delivered your farewell address, and I am getting ready mine. On
the 28th of July—I weep as I think of it—the Club will be dissolved, and
the Etonian will be no more.
In the concealment of your correspondents’ names, I think I shall not
imitate you. It is at present my intention to adopt a contrary line of conduct.
I am actuated in this by two very opposite motives—by a feeling of
modesty and a feeling of pride. Modesty induces me to take care that I may
not be commended, as I have been, for writings which are another’s; and
that others may not be abused, as they have been, for writings which are
mine. Pride, on the other hand, compels me to wish that my name may
appear in print, coupled with names which are, and long will be, a part of
our most triumphant recollections. When I reflect exultingly on the
powerful minds upon which Peregrine Courtenay has leaned for support, I
would fain hope that in after years he may continue to share in their praises
—to partake of their immortality!
I shall be very sorry, Mr. Bookworm, to give up my editorship; and yet,
upon second thoughts, I think I shall be very glad. To say the truth—the
plain, honest, unvarnished, unsophisticated truth—editorship is a desperate
bore. Eh bien! I did not encounter it voluntarily! As Shakespeare says,
“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness
thrust upon them!”
What a bore it is to have an idle contributor! “My dear Mr. Montgomery!
your pen has been dry a long time, and we can ill do without you.” “I will
go to work immediately, Mr. Courtenay; what shall it be?—another essay!”
“Excellent!” “But then I’m so idle! or another Somnium?” “Admirable!”
“But then I’m so idle! or another poem in the Ottava Rima?” “Inimitable!”
“But then I’m so in-com-pre-hen-si-bly idle!”
What a bore it is to be criticized by a blockhead! “Mr. Editor, the public
opinion of your merits is higher than it should be.” “I beg your pardon, sir,
but I think you are singular in your opinion.” “Mr. Editor, your levities are
disgusting!” “I beg your pardon, sir, but I think you are mistaken!” “Mr.
Editor, your impertinence is insufferable!” “I beg your pardon, sir, but I
think you are——”
What a bore it is to have a troublesome contributor. “Mr. Moonshine, it’s
absolutely impossible for me to insert your ode.” “My ode! oh! dock it, and
dress it, and alter it; I leave it quite to your judgment; you’ll oblige me—
really now!” “I have made a few corrections here, Mr. Moonshine. I hope
you approve.” “Approve! why zounds! Courtenay, I won’t swear, but
you’ve cut out the sting, the point, the attraction of the whole. Look here,
man, what have you done! Bless me! what have you done with Urien’s
beard?” “Urien’s beard, sir! Oh! Urien’s beard was too long, a great deal too
long, sir; flowed through three stanzas and a half. I have used the razor,
shaved him pretty close, indeed!” “Ignorance! May you never have a beard
of your own to shave, or a razor to shave with! And, murder! sir, what have
you done with Ætna—my ‘ejaculated flames,’ my ‘vomit of sulphur,’ and
my ‘artillery of Tellus?’” “Why, really, sir, without a joke, your Ætna was
too loud—too loud, a great deal, sir; and you have put too much fire in it—
oh! by far too much fire; more fire than Ætna ever vomited since she
swallowed her first emetic!” “Fire, Mr. Courtenay! You have left my verses
cold as the love of a blockhead, or Sir Thomas Nesbit before his morning’s
draught! However, sir, I depend on my picture of Melpomene in my last
strophe! Don’t you think it must strike, Mr. Editor?” “Strike, sir! I have
struck it out!” “Struck it out! struck out Melpomene! What! the ‘pale blue
eye,’ and the ‘gaze of wonderment,’ and the ‘long dishevelled hair,’ and the
dagger, and the bowl!” “It went to my heart, sir, to strike out a bowl of any
sort, but it was the most insipid bowl I ever tasted!” “Go to the devil, Mr.
Courtenay!” “I am going there this minute, Mr. Moonshine; but, upon my
honour, the ode can’t go with me!”
What a bore it is to be pointed at! What a bore it is to be laughed at!
What a bore it is to correct manuscripts! What a bore it is to correct proofs!
What a bore it is to scribble all day! What a bore it is to scribble all night!
What a bore it is to—— But I will stop before I work myself into a fever!
Helas! My trammels are indeed heavy upon me; but you have got rid of
yours. Whether you have retired to your Sabine farm, or to the sacred
recesses of Granta; whether you are chopping logic, or chopping cabbages;
whether you are invocating Mathesis or the Muse; whether you are
dreaming of problems or of proof-sheets—of the Senate House or of second
editions;—assure yourself, Mr. Bookworm, that the best wishes of
Peregrine Courtenay are with you; and allow him to conclude, as he began,
by congratulating you most sincerely.
Yours editorially,
Peregrine Courtenay.

III.

PEREGRINE COURTENAY TO THE PUBLIC.

My dear Public,
How rejoiced I feel in being able to rid myself of all weighty affairs for a
few minutes, and sit down to a little private conversation with you. I am
going, as usual, to be very silly, and very talkative, and I have so much to
say that I hardly know where to begin.
Allow me to congratulate you upon the flourishing state of your affairs.
There has been a Coronation, and you have had lighting of lamps, and
drinking of ale, and breaking of heads, to you heart’s content; and there are
two new novels coming from Sir Walter, and the King is going to Ireland,
and Mr. Kean is come from America, and—here is No. X. of the Etonian!
How happy you must be!
But you will have to pay an extra shilling for it. I hope you will not be
angry. The fact is, that the approaching conclusion of our work has put into
our contributors such a spirit of goodwill and exertion, that we found it
quite impossible to comprise their benefactions within our usual limits,
although I myself gave up to them many of my own pages, and burned
several first-rate articles, especially one “On the Digamma,” which would
have had a surprising effect. For, to parody the poet,
 Those write now, who never wrote before,
And those who always wrote, now write the more.

And you will be satisfied, I think, with the augmentation of bulk and of
price, when you consider what you would have lost if such a step had not
been adopted. Perhaps you might not have had “The Bride of the Cave;”
perhaps you might not have had “The Hall of my Fathers;” perhaps you
might not have had—oh, yes! you certainly should have had “Maimoune,”
though it had filled our whole number. But you would not have had my
“Private Correspondence,” which I should have regretted extremely,
although my modesty hints to me that you would not have cared a rush
about the matter.
I used to promise, you will remember, that in all and in each of our
numbers, twenty pages only should be devoted to our foreign
correspondents. This resolution was, I believe, rigidly adhered to during the
existence of the Salt-Bearer; but since his exit I have grown more idle and
less scrupulous. In our present number you will find a much greater
proportion of matter from the Universities. I tell you so fearlessly, because
you are, in no small degree, a gainer by the fraud.
When I look back on my life, my dear public, I cannot help thinking
what a life of impudence, what a life of hoaxing, what a life of singularity, I
have led. If all the brass I have shown in my writings could be transferred to
my monument, my memory would be immortal. I have told, in print, more
lies than ever Munchausen did; and, in the sphere of my existence, have
been guilty of as much deceit as the Fortunate Youth. As for the “Letter to
the King,” however, I can’t, for the life of me, see a grain of impertinence in
its composition; all I wonder at is that it did not procure a holiday for Eton,
nor knighthood for Sir Thomas, nor a thousand a year for myself.
Nevertheless, in spite of the mortifying silence with which my
communication was received, I am happy to observe that our Etonians
continue very loyal. On the night of the Coronation, when the mob said
“Queen!” the boys said “King!” and many, forthwith, risked their own
crowns in behalf of his Majesty’s. But whether this proceeded from the love
of loyalty, or the love of blows, must remain a question.
Howbeit, I am not naturally addicted to impudence, or hoaxing, or
singularity. To convince you of this, I had at one time an intention of
drawing up a memoir of my own life, containing an accurate detail of my
thoughts and words and actions during the whole period which my memory
comprehends. I found it very difficult to settle the title of my book. Should
it be the stately “Life of Peregrine Courtenay, Esq., of the College of Eton,
foolscap octavo”? or should it be the quaint “Notice of a Gentleman who
has left Long Chamber?” or should it be the concise and attractive
“Peregriniana”? It was a weighty affair; and I abandoned the design before I
could settle the point. For I at last began to believe, my public, that this is
all of which you ought to be informed—that I have lived long at Eton, and
that have I edited the Etonian; that I am now bidding farewell to the first,
and writing the epilogue of the other.
I leave Eton at a peculiarly auspicious time. Her cricket is very good this
year (I wish we could have had a meeting with Harrow, but Diis aliter
visum est), and her boats are unusually well manned, and there are in her
ranks more youths of five-feet-ten than I have seen for a long time. She has
also just effected the establishment of a public library, which has been so
spiritedly supported by our alumni themselves, and by the friends of the
school, that it is already rising into importance. And, thanks to the exertions
of many who have been our friends, and a few of our correspondents, she
maintains a high ground at the Universities. I am bound for Cambridge
myself; but this is nothing at all to concern you, inasmuch as I do not mean
to edit a Cantab.
I resign my office too at a propitious moment, before time has quelled
the enthusiasm with which it was entered upon—before warmth and
impetuosity have yielded to weariness and disgust. My spirits are still
unabated, my friends are still untired, and you, my public, are still kind! I
might have waited to experience the sinking of the first, the anger of the
second, and alas! the fickleness of the third. It is well that I stop in time.
I have two drawers of my bureau filled, almost to bursting, with divers
manuscripts; I am afraid to open either of them, lest somebody passionate,
or somebody stupid, or somebody wearisome should stare me in the face.
Of these compositions, my pages witness against me that I have promised
insertion to many, and my conscience witnesses against me that I ought to
have given insertion to many more. I don’t know what to do with them. I
have some thoughts of sending them to my publisher’s in a lump, or
bequeathing them as a legacy to my successors. I believe, however, my
better plan may be to put them up to auction. Amongst the numerous
authors, great and small, good and bad, who are at the present day wasting
their pen, ink, paper, and time, in “doing honour to Eton,” I cannot but think
that some of my literary treasures would fetch a pretty good price. There are
all the articles, of which we have at various times given notice; some of
which I know our readers are dying to see. But these form but a trifling part
of the heap; I will subjoin a few specimens of my wares, but catalogues
shall, of course, be printed previous to the sale.
Several “Reminiscences”—very useful for writers who wish to recollect
what never occurred.
A few “Visions,” “Musings,” “Odes,” &c.—a great bargain to any young
person who wants to be interesting, or unintelligible.
“Edmund Ironside, an Old English Tale,” in the style of “The Knight and
the Knave,” very valuable—in consequence of the Quarterly’s hint about
“Ivanhoe.”
“Thoughts on the Coronation,” to be had for a trifle, as the article is a
common one, and will not keep.
A great many “Classical Tales,” strongly recommended to those authors
who are not learned, and wish to be thought so.
A large bundle of “Notices to Correspondents,” admirably adapted to the
use of those who have none.
A portfolio of cursory hints, remarks, puns, introductory observations,
windings-up, &c., capable of serving any purpose to which the purchaser
likes to put them.
With such a repository, it will be evident that, if the Fates were willing
that I should proceed in my undertaking, I should be in no want of support.
This, however, is not the decree of the Destinies; I must go, and like him
who

Oft fitted the halter, oft traversed the cart,

And often took leave, but seemed loth to depart,

I continue to say to you, I am “going, going, going,” while you methinks

are waiting with the uplifted hammer, impatient to pronounce me “gone!”
Everybody, who wishes to do anything worthy of record, is anxious to
know what will be said of him after his decease. I am thinking what will be
said of me, after my literary death.
 I fancy to myself a knot of ladies, busy with their Loo and scandal. The
tenth, the last number of the Etonian, is brought upon the carpet, and every
one flies at Peregrine in the flirting of a fan. “So he’s gone, is he! Well, it’s
time he should; he was getting sadly tiresome;”—“and so satirical;”—“and
so learned;”—“as for all his Greek, I’m sure it must be very bad, for Lord
St. Luke can’t construe me a word of it, and he was three years at
Oxford;”—“and that abominable ‘Certain Age!’”—“and that odious
‘Windsor Ball’”—“Oh! positively we can never forgive the ‘Windsor Ball!’
I have not bought a copy since!” Pray be quiet, ladies; I never meant one of
you—never, on the word of an editor! Howbeit, if the cap fits—— you
know what I would say, though politeness shall leave it unsaid.
Then I picture to my mind a set of sober critics taking my reputation to
pieces, as easily as you would crack a walnut. “Peregrine Courtenay?—ay!
he was a silly, laughing fellow. He had some spirit; yes—and a tolerable
rhyme now and then; but he had no sense, no solidity; he was all froth, all
evaporation. He was like the wine we are drinking—he had no body!
‘Where did you get this wine, Mr. Matthew?’” And so I am dismissed.
Then I begin to think of what is much more interesting to me. What will
be the talk of my schoolfellows? I fancy that I hear their censures, and their
praises not sparingly bestowed. I fancy that I am already taken up with
kindness, or laid down with a shrug! “The Etonian! oh! the last number is
out, is it? How does it sell? Some of it was good, but I wish they had less of
their balaam, as they call it! And then all the punch was low—horribly low;
and all that slang about the Club!—and that foolish picture on the cover!—
and then the puffing and the puns! For my part, I never saw a grain of wit in
it—and the sense was in a still less proportion! In short, it was bad, oh! very
bad! but, I don’t know how, it certainly did amuse one, too!”
Such are the sounds which haunt my imagination in my leave-taking.
And ever and anon, I put my prayer to the Goddess with the brazen trumpet,
who proclaims the titles and the exploits of great men: “Fame, Fame, when
I am removed from the scene of my exertions, let me not be quite forgotten!
let me be talked of with praise, or let me be talked of with censure; but let
me, at all events, be talked of! Whether I be remembered with pardon or
with condemnation, I care little—so that I be only remembered.”
I wish all manner of success and prosperity to the members of the Club,
my affectionate coadjutors. Mr. Sterling, I have no doubt, will make an
exemplary Vicar, and Mr. Lozell will do excellent well to say his “Amen.”
Mr. Musgrave will be a capital whip, unless he breaks his neck in the
training; and Sir Francis Wentworth will probably rise to great honours and
emoluments—when the Whigs come in. Golightly will die with a jest in his
mouth, and a glass in his hand. Bellamy will live with elegance in his
manners, and love in his eye. Oakley will be a spiteful critic; and
Swinburne an erudite commentator. As for Gerard, he will go forward on
his own path to eminence, destined to shine in a nobler arena than that of a
schoolboy’s periodical, and to enjoy more worthy applauses than those of
Peregrine Courtenay.
And I, my dear public, shall walk up the hill of life as steadily as I can,
and as prosperously as I may. For the present I have wiped my pen, and
given a holiday to the devils; but if, at any future period, I should, in my
bounty, give to your inspection a political pamphlet, or a treatise on law, a
farce or a tragedy, a speech or a sermon, I trust that you will have a respect
for the name of Peregrine Courtenay, and be as ready with your pounds,
shillings, and pence, as I have always hitherto found you.
One word more. I have been much solicited to have my own effigies
stuck in the front of my work, done in an editorial attitude, with a writing-
desk before me, and a pen behind my ear; and I am aware that this is the
custom of many gentlemen whom I might be proud to imitate. Mr. Canning
figures in front of the Microcosm, and Dr. Peter Morris presents his goodly
physiognomy in the vanguard of “Peter’s Letters.” And I know, what has
often before been remarked, that when the public sit down to the perusal of
a work, it imports them much to be convinced whether the writer thereof be
plump or spare, fair or dark, of an open or a meditative countenance. Would
any one feel an interest in the fate of Tom Thumb, who did not see a
representation of the hero courting inspection, and claiming, as it were, in
propriâ personâ, the applause to which his exploits entitle him? Would any
one shudder with horror at the perilous adventures of Munchausen, who
could not count the scars with which they are engraven on the Baron’s
physiognomy? In opposition to these weighty considerations, I have two
motives which forcibly impel me to adopt a contrary line of conduct. In the
first place, I am, as is known to all my acquaintance, most outrageously
modest. I have been so from my cradle. Before I ever entered upon a public
capacity, a few copies of a caricature came down to our Eton bookseller,
one of which contained a figure of a starved poet. One of my friends