ABSTRACT
The significant point is that organisms are always actively (but not necessarily consciously) involved in exploring their environment, seeking information from it, and attempting to solve the problems it throws up. This is a quite different position from that of empirical psychology, which implicitly supposes that organisms wait passively for information to stream in from the environment. The individual's solution follows, as a matter of logic, the principle of trial and error-elimination (Popper, 1983). The human being, for example, puts forward tentative behavioural trials, 'spearheads' in adaptation, in an attempt to overcome problems presented by the environment. These trials, which could be beliefs, new reactions, or new movement patterns, are put forward and controlled by errorelimination: those trials not 'to the point' are eliminated.
