ABSTRACT
The perception of people requires some measure of role-taking. Role-taking and self-control are greatly facilitated by the fact that men live in a common symbolic environment. Scientific knowledge represents the ultimate development in our time of the symbolic organization of human experience. Language, by limiting the meanings that can be designated and manipulated, provides the matrix within which action and thought take place. Most meanings are social in that what any man is likely to do with reference to a given object is largely circumscribed by group norms concerning its appropriate use. The substitute world consists of a set of meanings, and behavior is predicated upon all kinds of understandings about the attributes of various categories of objects. Human beings actually live simultaneously in two environments — the natural environment, which consists of all the things that are actually present, and a symbolic environment. Men live in a substitute environment, one that is largely a product of communication.
