Bruner Describes Four Main Ideas Within Cognition

"In order to know anything, one must be absolutely sure of the point from which one is looking at it," Jerome Bruner, professor of Psychology, declared last night in a lecture sponsored by the Social Relations Society.

From this principle, Bruner discussed the "Critical Issues in the Nature of Knowing" and certain trends in modern psychology.

Pointing out that a cycle in psychology is reversing the imbalance caused by the ideas of such men as Freud and Darwin about the uncertainty of learning. "A certain pragmatism has prevailed. We are now concerning ourselves." Bruner said, "not so much with ultimate realities, but with the regularity of experience."

Bruner explained that the issues in the nature of learning today are structure, economy, the intrinsic function, and the function as it serves society.

"Spin a Little Faster"

Defining structure as the model each of us builds of our knowledge, Bruner said, "We put together everything we know in the way that we think the world operates. Then we spin it just a little faster than the world goes and we can make predictions. The purpose of education is to teach a person the techniques of building and using these models."

To emphasize the issue of economy, Bruner used a statement of the noted physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, "All of modern physics has shown that to know anything, you must realize that you can't know everything." Bruner added that the amount of things we can handle at any one time is sharply limited.

The third issue is intrinsic function. "Needs and motives have means of determining the model." Bruner declared.

"The thought patterns of a person developed outside any society are inconceivable." Bruner stated and pointed out the particularly important effect of language and the myths a culture uses in shaping the individual.