The Concept of Development: An Issue in the Study of Human Behavior

One contribution to this volume refers to the protean meanings of development. Like the old Man of the Sea, development has a significant reference to the future. However, each person who laid hold on Proteus to make him yield the secret of the future found him assuming a different shape. Few were those who mastered him in his many forms. The concept of development has impressed scholars as being equally slippery, and of limited usefulness. Few are those who attempt to master it in its many aspects.

The concept of development is fundamentally biological. While a concept of development may be used in respect to physical systems, and while it may refer also to systems of ideas, the term has been most commonly associated with the organization of living structures and life process. (jacket)