Dewey, John (1859-1952), was an American philosopher and educator. He helped lead a philosophical movement called Pragmatism (see Pragmatism ).
Dewey was strongly influenced by the then-new science of psychology and by the theory of evolution proposed by the British scientist Charles R. Darwin. Dewey came to regard intelligence as a power that people use when they face a conflict or challenge. He believed that people live by custom and habit. In most situations, it is sufficient to think and act as we have done in the past, but some physical and social situations present problems calling for new responses. According to Dewey, we cannot solve such problems by habitual action and thought. We must use intelligence as an instrument for overcoming any obstacles. Dewey’s philosophy is thus called instrumentalism.
Dewey believed that knowledge is a means of controlling the environment, hopefully to improve the quality of human life. He wrote widely on art, democracy, education, philosophy, and science. In his writings, Dewey always focused on the same problem—how to close the gap between thought and action. Dewey’s interpretation of science shows how thought and action are united. He considered science as a method for inquiring into the behavior of things. The results of such inquiry are the joint products of thought and activity. Dewey regarded activity as conducting experiments under controlled situations and thought as those theories that guide our experiments.
In every area of life, Dewey called for experimenting and trying out new methods. As an educator, he opposed the traditional method of learning by memory under the authority of teachers. He believed that education should not be concerned only with the mind. Students should develop manual skills. Learning must be related to the interests of students and connected with current problems. Dewey declared that education must include a student’s physical and moral well-being as well as intellectual development.
In Art as Experience (1934), Dewey connected works of art with the experiences of everyday life. He wrote that daily experience can be glorious, joyous, sad, tedious, terrifying, and tragic. These, he said, are the qualities that architects, composers, painters, and writers seek to capture and express in their works. Dewey regarded education as incomplete if it ignores these experiences.
Dewey was born on Oct. 20, 1859, in Burlington, Vermont. He had a distinguished teaching career at several universities, especially at Columbia University from 1904 until his retirement in 1930. Dewey’s works include Democracy and Education (1916), Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920), and Experience and Nature (1925). He died on June 1, 1952, in New York City.
