George H. Mead

Written from the standpoint of the social behaviorist, this treatise contains the heart of Mead's position on social psychology. analysis of language is of major interest, as it supplied for the first time an adequate treatment of the language mechanism in relation to scientific and philosophical issues. If philosophical eminence be measured by the extent to which a man's writings anticipate the focal problems of a later day and contain a point of view which suggests persuasive solutions to many of them, then George Herbert Mead has justly earned the high praise bestowed upon him by Dewey and Whitehead as a 'seminal mind of the very first order.' Sidney Hook, The Nation

This classic book represents Mead's philosophy of experience, so central to his outlook. The present as unique experience is the focus of this deep analysis of the basic structure of temporality and consciousness. Mead emphasises the novel character of both the present and the past. Though science is predicated on the assumption that the present is predictable based on a thorough knowledge of the past, the experience of the present, says Mead, is an utterly unique moment comparable to no other, and when it is past the novel character of that unique experience is irrevocable. This stimulating and provocative work attests to John Dewey's praise of Mead as 'the most original mind in philosophy in America' of his generation.