Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic AttitudeDewey, John
Philosophy
Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude
Dewey, John
Philosophy; Pragmatism
The individual in his experiences is continually creating a world which
becomes real through his discovery. In so far as new conduct arises
under the conditions made possible by his experience and his hypothesis
the world, which may be made the test of reality, has been modified and
enlarged.
I have endeavored to present the world which is an implication of the
scientific method of discovery with entire abstraction from any
epistemological or metaphysical presuppositions or complications.
Scientific method is indifferent to a world of things-in-themselves, or
to the previous condition of philosophic servitude of those to whom its
teachings are addressed. It is a method not of knowing the unchangeable
but of determining the form of the world within which we live as it
changes from moment to moment. It undertakes to tell us what we may
expect to happen when we act in such or such a fashion. It has become a
matter of serious consideration for a philosophy which is interested in
a world of things-in-themselves, and the epistemological problem. For
the cherished structures of the metaphysical world, having ceased to
house the values of mankind, provide good working materials in the
hypothetical structures of science, on condition of surrendering their
metaphysical reality; and the epistemological problem, having seemingly
died of inanition, has been found to be at bottom a problem of method or
logic. My attempt has been to present what seems to me to be two capital
instances of these transformations. Science always has a world of
reality by which to test its hypotheses, but this world is not a world
independent of scientific experience, but the immediate world
surrounding us within which we must act. Our next action may find these
conditions seriously changed, and then science will formulate this world
so that in view of this problem we may logically construct our next plan
of action. The plan of action should be made self-consistent and
universal in its form, not that we may thus approach nearer to a
self-consistent and universal reality which is independent of our
conduct, but because our plan of action needs to be intelligent and
generally applicable. Again science advances by the experiences of
individuals, experiences which are different from the world in which
they have arisen and which refer to a world which is not yet in
existence, so far as scientific experience is concerned. But this
relation to the old and new is not that of a subjective world to an
objective universe, but is a process of logical reconstruction by which
out of exceptions the new law arises to replace a structure that has
become inadequate.
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