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About Dr. John Dewey
John Dewey was born on October 20, 1859, to Archibald Dewey and Lucina Artemisia Rich in Burlington, Vermont. He taught at universities from 1884 to 1930. An academic philosopher and proponent of educational reform, in 1894 Dewey started an experimental elementary school. In 1919 he cofounded The New School for Social Research. Dewey published over 1,000 pieces of writings during his lifetime. He died June 1, 1952, in New York, New York. -
Dewey's contribution to philosophy
Dewey believed that human beings learn through a 'hands-on' approach. This places Dewey in the educational philosophy of pragmatism. Pragmatists believe that reality must be experienced. From Dewey's educational point of view, this means that students must interact with their environment in order to adapt and learn. -
Dewey's contribution to philosophy cont.
The pragmatic theory of truth met with strong opposition among its critics, perhaps most notably from the British logician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. Dewey later began to suspect that the issues surrounding the conditions of truth, as well as knowledge, were hopelessly obscured by the accretion of traditional, and in his view misguided, meanings to the terms, resulting in confusing ambiguity. -
Dewey's contribution to philosophy cont.
His view on pragmatism a view that rejected the dualistic epistemology and metaphysics of modern philosophy in favor of a naturalistic approach that viewed knowledge as arising from an active adaptation of the human organism to its environment. On this view, inquiry should not be understood as consisting of a mind passively observing the world and drawing from this ideas that if true correspond to reality but rather as a process which initiates with a check or obstacle to successful human action -
Dewey’s Pragmatic Theory of Truth
Dewey has an expansive understanding of “science”. For Dewey, science emerges from and is continuous with everyday processes of trial and error cooking and small-engine repair count as “scientific” on his account which means he should not be taken too strictly when he equates truth with scientific verification.Rather, Dewey’s point is that true propositions, when acted on, lead to the sort of predictable and dependable outcomes that are hallmarks of scientific verification, broadly construed. -
Dewey’s Pragmatic Theory of Truth cont.
Dewey eventually came to believe that conventional philosophical terms such as “truth” and “knowledge” were burdened with so much baggage, and had become so fossilized, that it was difficult to grasp the practical role these terms had originally served. As a result, in his later writings Dewey largely avoids speaking of “truth” or “knowledge” while focusing instead on the functions played by these concepts. -
Dewey's Major Works
Dewey wrote his first two books, Psychology (1887) and Leibniz’s New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding (1888), when he was working at the University of Michigan. Over the course of his lifetime, Dewey published more than 1,000 works, including essays, articles and books. His writing covered a broad range of topics: psychology, philosophy, educational theory, culture, religion and politics. -
