George Herbert Mead (February 27, 1863 – April 26, 1931) was an American philosopher, sociologist and psychologist, primarily affiliated with the University of Chicago, where he was one of several distinguished pragmatists. He is regarded as one of the founders of social psychology. James M. Mead: U.S. Senate Portrait File links The following pages link to this file: James M. Mead ... February 27 is the 58th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1863 (MDCCCLXIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Saturday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... April 26 is the 116th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (117th in leap years). ... 1931 (MCMXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link is to a full 1931 calendar). ... A philosopher is a person who thinks deeply regarding people, society, the world, and/or the universe. ... Sociology is the study of the social lives of humans, groups and societies. ... A psychologist is a scientist and/or clinician who studies psychology, the systematic investigation of the human mind, including behavior and cognition. ... The University of Chicago is a private university located principally in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. ... Pragmatism is a school of epistemology that originated with Charles Sanders Peirce (who first stated the pragmatic maxim) and came to fruition in the early twentieth-century philosophies of William James and John Dewey. ... The scope of social psychological research. ...

Biography

Mead was born February 28, 1863 in South Long Beach, California. He studied at Oberlin College from 1879–1883 and spent several years as a railroad surveyor prior to his enrollment in Harvard University in 1887. At Harvard, Mead studied with Josiah Royce, a major influence upon his thought, and William James, whose children he tutored. In 1888, Mead moved to Germany to study with psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, from whom he learned the concept of "the gesture", a concept central to his latter work. Despite never finishing his dissertation, Mead was able to obtain a post at the University of Michigan in 1891. In 1894 Mead moved, along with John Dewey, to the University of Chicago, where he taught until his death. No detached philosopher, he was active in Chicago's social and political affairs; among his many activities include his work for the City Club of Chicago. Mead died of heart failure, April 26, 1931. February 28 is the 59th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1863 (MDCCCLXIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Saturday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... Oberlin College is a small, selective liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, in the United States. ... Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League. ... Josiah Royce (November 20, 1855, Grass Valley, California. ... For other people named William James see William James (disambiguation) William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher. ... Wilhelm Wundt Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (August 16, 1832 – August 31, 1920) was a German physiologist and psychologist. ... The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (UM, U of M or U-M) is a coeducational public research university in the state of Michigan. ... John Dewey (October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, whose thoughts and ideas have been greatly influential in the United States and around the world. ... The University of Chicago is a private university located principally in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. ... The City Club of Chicago [1] is a nonpartisan, nonprofit membership organization intended to foster civic responsibility, promote public issues, and provide a forum for open political debate. ... April 26 is the 116th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (117th in leap years). ... 1931 (MCMXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link is to a full 1931 calendar). ...

Work

Mead is a major American philosopher by virtue of being, along with Charles Peirce and William James, one of the founders of pragmatism. Mead is also an important figure in 20th century social philosophy. His theory of how the mind and self emerge from the social process of communication by signs founded the symbolic interactionist school of sociology and social psychology. He also made significant contributions to the philosophies of nature, science, and history, to philosophical anthropology, and to process philosophy. Dewey and Alfred North Whitehead considered Mead a thinker of the first rank. He is a classic example of a social theorist whose work does not fit easily within conventional disciplinary boundaries. Charles Sanders Peirce (IPA: /pɝs/), (September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American polymath, physicist, and philosopher, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... For other people named William James see William James (disambiguation) William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher. ... Pragmatism is a school of epistemology that originated with Charles Sanders Peirce (who first stated the pragmatic maxim) and came to fruition in the early twentieth-century philosophies of William James and John Dewey. ... Social philosophy is the philosophical study of interesting questions about social behavior (typically, of humans). ... For other uses, see Mind (disambiguation). ... From a classical sociological perspective, the self is a relatively stable set of perceptions of who we are in relation to ourselves, to others, and to social systems. ... Look up signs in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Symbolic interactionism is a sociological perspective which examines how individuals and groups interact, focusing on the creation of personal identity through interaction with others. ... Philosophical anthropology is the discipline that seeks to unify the several empirical investigations of human nature in an effort to understand individuals as both creatures of their environment and creators of their own values. ... Process philosophy identifies metaphysical reality with change and dynamism. ... Alfred North Whitehead, OM (February 15, 1861 Ramsgate, Kent, England – December 30, 1947 Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA) was an English-born mathematician who became a philosopher. ...

Mead the social psychologist argued the antipositivistic view that the individual is a product of society, the self arising out of social experience as an object of socially symbolic gestures and interactions. Rooted intellectually in Hegelian dialectics, theories of action, and an amended "anti-Watsonian" social behaviourism, Mead’s self was a self of practical and pragmatic intentions. Antipositivism is the view in sociology that social sciences need to create and use different scientific methods than those used in the field of natural sciences. ... Young people interacting within an ethnically diverse society. ... Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 - November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher born in Stuttgart, Württemberg, in present-day southwest Germany. ... Pragmatism is a school of philosophy which originated in the United States in the late 1800s. ...

Mead grounded human perception in an "action-nexus" (Joas 1985: 148), ingraining the individual in a "manipulatory phase of the act" as the fundamental “means of living” (Mead 1982: 120). In this manipulatory sphere “the individual abides with the physical objects” of everyday life (Mead 1938: 267). In humans the "manipulatory phase of the act" is socially mediated, that is to say, in acting towards objects humans simultaneously take the perspectives of others towards that object. This is what Mead means by "the social act" as opposed to simply "the act" (the latter being a Deweyan concept). Non-human animals also manipulate objects, but this is a non-social manipulation, they do not take the perspective of other organisms toward the object. Humans are unique in taking the perspective of other actors towards objects, but this is what enables complex human society and subtle social coordination. In the social act of economic exachange, for example, both buyer and seller must take each other's perspectives towards the object being exchanged. The seller must recognize the value for the buyer, while the buyer must recognize the desirability of money for the seller. Only with this mutual perspective taking can the economic exchange occur. Everyday life is the sum total of every aspect of common human life as it is routinely lived. ...

Mead also rooted the self’s “perception and meaning” deeply and sociologically in "a common praxis of subjects" (Joas 1985: 166) found specifically in social encounters. Understood as a combination of the 'I' and the 'me', Mead’s self proves to be noticeably entwined within a sociological existence: For Mead, existence in community comes before individual consciousness. First one must participate in the different social positions within society and only subsequently can one use that experience to take the perspective of others and thus become self-conscious. In psychology and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and organizing sensory information. ... The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ... As a word, praxis can mean: Praxis is a Latinate English noun, referring to the process of putting theoretical knowledge into practice. ... The I and the me are terms central to the social philosophy of George Herbert Mead, one of the biggest influences on the development of the branch of sociology called symbolic-interactionism. ...

Mead writes in Mind, Self and Society that human beings begin their understanding of the social world through "play" and "game". "Play" comes first in the child's development. The child takes different roles he/she observes in "adult" society, and plays them out to gain an understanding of the different social roles. For instance, he first plays the role of policeman and then the role of thief. When more mature, the child can participate in the game, for instance the game of baseball. In the game he has to relate to others and understand the rules of the game. Through participating in the "game", he gains the understanding that he has to relate to norms of behaviour in order to be accepted as a player. Mead calls this the child's first encounter with "the generalized other", which is one of the main concepts Mead proposes for understanding the emergence of the (social) self in human beings. "The generalized other" can be understood as the general norm within a social group or setting. Through understanding "the generalized other" the individual understands what kind of behaviour is expected, appropriate and so on, in different social settings. The family, the baseball team, school, and society are examples of social settings through which the child develops gradual understanding of norms for behaviour. Mead distinguishes between the "I" and the "me." The "me" is the accumulated understanding of "the generalized other" i.e. norms, unconscious opinions, patterns of social response etc. The "I" is the more personal opinions, the reflecter or observer, the social struggler -- it is what creates the individual's individuality. It is important when reading Mead to remember that he sees the human mind as something that can arise solely through social experience. The thinking process, for instance, is for Mead nothing but internalized communication.

Philosophers whose inspiration is more metaphysical and ontological, e.g. Heidegger, emphasize the development of Being from the perspective of the experiencing human being, and how the world is revealed to this experiencing entity within a realm of things. Pragmatic philosophers like Mead focus on the development of the self and the objectivity of the world within the social realm: that "the individual mind can exist only in relation to other minds with shared meanings" (Mead 1982: 5). Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (September 26, 1889 – May 26, 1976) was a German philosopher. ... Pragmatism is a school of epistemology that originated with Charles Sanders Peirce (who first stated the pragmatic maxim) and came to fruition in the early twentieth-century philosophies of William James and John Dewey. ...

In his lifetime, Mead published about 100 scholarly articles, reviews, and incidental pieces. At the moment of death, he was correcting the galleys to what would have been his first book Essays in Social Psychology, published only in 2001. His students and colleagues, especially Charles W. Morris, subsequently put together five books from his unpublished manuscripts and from stenographic records of his lectures. The Mead Project at Brock University in Ontario intends to publish eventually all of Mead's 80-odd remaining unpublished mss. Charles W. Morris (1901-1979) was an American semiotician and philosopher. ...

See also

• James Mark Baldwin
• Lev Vygotsky

James Mark Baldwin (Columbia, South Carolina, 1861—1934) was an American philosopher, educated at Princeton and several German universities. ... Lev Vygotsky Lev Semenovich Vygotsky (Лев Семенович Выготский) (November 17 (November 5 Old Style), 1896 – June 11, 1934) was a Soviet developmental psychologist and the founder of the Cultural-historical psychology. ...

References

• Mead, G.H. 1964. Selected Writings. Ed. by A. J. Reck. University Chicago Press. (This out-of-print volume is significant as it is the only volume to feature articles Mead himself prepared for publication).

• Mead, G.H. 1934. Mind, Self, and Society. Ed. by C. W. Morris. University of Chicago Press.

• Mead, G.H. 1932. The Philosophy of the Present. Prometheus Books.

• Mead, G.H. 1936. Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century. Ed. by C. W. Morris. University of Chicago Press.

• Mead, G.H. 1938. The Philosophy of the Act. Ed. by C.W. Morris et al. University of Chicago Press.

• Mead, G.H. 1982. The Individual and the Social Self: Unpublished Essays by G. H. Mead. Ed. by David L. Miller. University of Chicago Press.

• Mead, G.H. 2001. Essays in Social Psychology. Ed. by M. J. Deegan. Transaction Books.

• Blumer, H. & Morrione, T.J. (2004). George Herbert Mead and human conduct. New York: Altamira Press

• Cook, Gary A. 1993. G.H. Mead: The Making of a Social Pragmatist. University of Illinois Press.

• Gillespie, A. 2005. G.H. Mead: Theorist of the social act. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 35, 19-39.

• Joas, Hans 1985. G.H. Mead: A Contemporary Re-examination of His Thought. MIT Press.

• Lewis, J.D. (1979). A social behaviorist interpretation of the Meadian 'I'. American Journal of Sociology, 84, 261-287.

• Lundgren, D.C. (2004). Social feedback and self-appreaisals: Current status of the Mead-Cooley hypothesis. Symbolic Interaction, 27, 267-286.

• Miller, David L. 1973. G.H. Mead: Self, Language and the World. University of Chicago Press.

External links

• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Home page of the Mead Project at Brock University, Ontario.
• Home page of the Mead Project at Brock University, Ontario. (in archive.org)
• A bibliography of Mead's published and unpublished writings, most of which are available online.
• The Social Self - by George Herbert Mead (1913)