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Inquiry and Democracy:

John Dewey on the Experimental Method and its Implications for Political Life

Charles J. Sentell
University of Cambridge
Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine

Introduction
A central theme in John Dewey’s philosophy is that the experimental method be more fully
integrated into all forms of human inquiry. Taking modern science as the central case of this
method, Dewey generalizes its forms into a theory of inquiry, which he intends for use within
all areas of human activity. If this spread of the experimental method were to occur, Dewey
claims, it would affect an important reconstruction in the way individuals and communities
approach particular problematic situations, formulate various proposals for consideration, and
decide upon courses of action in solution to those problems. Thus, the significance of
Dewey’s theory of inquiry is that he intends it to be a description of the method by which all
problems are resolved, not just scientific, but moral, social, and political problems as well.
And through this socio-political relevance, the most important consequence of Deweyan
inquiry becomes clear, namely, that inquiry is central to the project of generating and
sustaining democracy not only at the political level, but in the interstitial spaces of everyday
life as well. In this essay I will examine Dewey’s conception of experimental inquiry in
terms of its relationship to his democratic theory. In particular, I will engage a recent
argument concerning the nature and place of pluralism within Dewey’s conception of
democracy and show that this problem emerges only by neglecting a central aspect of his
theory of inquiry.

The Experimental Method

To adequately understand the connection between Dewey’s account of experimental method
and his political philosophy, it is valuable to get a sense of his broader philosophical project.
At the beginning of his career, Dewey identified himself with the neo-Hegelian tradition of
T.H. Green in Britain and George Morris in the United States (Westbrook 1991: 13).
Although he eventually rejected the central tenets of neo-Hegelianism, these early
philosophical commitments are important because, as I will show later, some of its
underlying features never quite disappear from his thinking. As these commitments waned,
however, Dewey began to think that the problems were not just with idealism, but were
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symptoms of a larger problem within philosophy itself. In two major works, Reconstruction
in Philosophy (1920) and The Quest for Certainty (1929), Dewey presents a new meta-
philosophical position, which renders a trenchant critique on the mainstream philosophical
tradition.
According to Dewey, philosophy is just one type of thinking among many that
attempts to find varying degrees of certainty in an uncertain world. In terms of the
philosophical tradition, Dewey traces this “quest for certainty” from the Greeks, who held
that if philosophy were truly to aim at certainty, it could not be concerned with the realm of
doing or making, but must focus its efforts on the search for the eternally and necessarily
true. Dewey traces this bifurcation between knowledge and action, between theory and
practice, through the modern philosophies of Locke, Spinoza, Kant, and extrapolates its
effects for much of the epistemologically and metaphysically oriented philosophy that
follows in their wake. By maintaining this division between theory and practice, Dewey
claims, the mainstream philosophical tradition has divorced itself from the very conditions
that gave rise to it in the first place, namely, the uncertainties of everyday life.
Dewey’s account of the rise and nature of philosophy is thus genealogical,
psychological, and evolutionary in character. It is genealogical in that it traces the major
suppositions, methods, and aims of philosophy through its history to show that, while
philosophy may have once been the direct outgrowth and response to a given culture’s needs
and desires, it is now an institutionalized discipline wherein the central questions have
become obscure reifications with little bearing to everyday life. It is psychological in that it
claims there is a cognitive need for philosophy within individuals and cultures: philosophy
constructs systems of thought that give certainty to our actions and meaning to our lives.
And it is evolutionary in that the urge to philosophize, to seek adequate answers to the
complex range of problematic phenomena, is itself simple and basic to the continuation of
life. For Dewey, philosophy grows out of the problems of life, it does not stand over and
against an independent reality that is beyond normal reach; it emerges organically from our
fumbling about the world, rather than being handed down through transcendent rationality.
This view is meant to release philosophy from the quagmire of “timeless” questions and call
it back to cultural relevancy by addressing the concerns and problems that face communities
in the present. When philosophy accomplishes this, it “ceases to be a device for dealing with
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the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing
with the problems of men [and women].” (MW 10: 46).
Philosophy can best achieve this by taking its cue from modern science. For Dewey,
the most significant contribution of science to culture was not any specific discovery or
invention, but the formulation and refinement of the experimental method. The development
of this method is so significant that Dewey advocates the range of its application be extended
well beyond the scope of scientific inquiry. By “experimental method,” Dewey does not
denote a method in the strict sense; it is not a codified method, applied in a uniform manner,
across a range of contexts. It refers, rather, to the general methodological comportment that
has been at the heart of modern science since Bacon. This method consists of taking ideas,
utilizing them in actual contexts, and evaluating their efficacy based upon consequences.
Dewey characterizes it as a “method of knowing that is self-corrective in operation; that
learns from failures as from successes” (MW 12: 259). It is a method wherein “discovery and
inquiry are synonymous as an occupation. Science is a pursuit, not a coming into possession
of the immutable…”(MW 12: 263). In other words, the goal of inquiry is not to find a final
solution, but to find a solution that satisfies a particular problematic situation and thereby
allows the inquirer to move on to other problems. Dewey notes that “[t]heory in fact – that
is, in the conduct of scientific inquiry – has lost ultimacy. Theories have passed into
hypotheses” (MW 12: 276). So Dewey holds scientific inquiry to be a hypothetical, ongoing
process that orients itself to human needs and interests.
In his last major work, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1939), Dewey presents his most
systematic account of the nature and structure of the experimental method, or simply, inquiry.
It is important to note that this is the work he considered most important to his overall
philosophy. The basic idea in Logic is that all inquiry arises within the context of a
problematic situation and aims to resolve that situation by transforming it into an
unproblematic one. Dewey defines inquiry as “the controlled or directed transformation of
an indeterminate situation into one that is so determinate in its constituent distinctions and
relations as to convert the elements of the original situation into a unified whole.” (LW 12:
109) Within this framework, all inquiry has an existential basis; all genuine problems have
their source in actual problematic experiences. Dewey identifies two “existential matrices of
inquiry” – the biological and the cultural – that form the necessary background conditions
from which all inquiry arises. Inquiry, then, is not a free-floating process that rational beings
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engage in when and whence they choose, but is a direct consequence of an organism’s
general interaction with its environment.
Dewey presents his theory of inquiry in terms of a reconstruction of Aristotelian
logic. In the same manner that he critiqued the mainstream philosophical tradition, Dewey
claims that Aristotelian logic has outlived its concomitant worldview and must be revised in
terms of the modern scientific understanding of the world. Again, a central element of
Dewey’s thought is that all forms of thinking are ideational constructs that arise within a
given culture so as to deal with a particular set of problems and concerns. Logic is no
exception to this, and Aristotle’s logic should be understood in a historical context that
enabled a particular culture to deal with problematic situations in a manner congruent to their
overall view of the nature of reality. It is not the case, Dewey claims, that Aristotle’s logic
embodies the necessary and fixed logical forms of reality that timelessly obtain; rather,
Aristotelian logic was “relevant, and grounded in, the subject-matter of natural science as
that subject-matter, the structure of nature, was then understood.” (LW 12: 416).
The problem with the current conception of logic and inquiry is that it retains an old
logical structure in the face of a new understanding of the world. Dewey points out that
modern science has dramatically changed our view of the nature of the world: no longer is
the world considered to consist of fixed essences moving toward their predetermined end.
Rather, the world is now generally conceived to be in flux, in movement not toward some
pre-given end, but developing from where it currently is. The consequences of this viewpoint
call for a complete reconstruction of logical concepts, and throughout Logic Dewey expands
upon the specific ways in which logical theory is changed by it. But for present purposes, it
suffices to note that within Deweyan inquiry, logic is simply another conceptual apparatus
deployed for the purpose of dealing with problematic situations; it is not an exemplification
of the forms of Reality apprehended through Reason. To consider logic otherwise constitutes
what Dewey called “the hypostatization of an instrument,” and is a common feature of the
types of inquiry he was arguing against (LW 12: 155).
Since the forms of inquiry originate directly from existentially based problematic
situations, the material (i.e. the contents) of inquiry gain added significance. Dewey claims
that the logical structure of inquiry is based upon, and transformed by, the existential material
being inquired about. He says that “formal [logical] conceptions arise out of the ordinary
transactions; they are not imposed upon them from on high or from any external and a priori
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source. But when they are formed they are also formative; they regulate the proper conduct
of the activities out of which they develop.” (LW 12: 106) Dewey illustrates this by using
the example of our common sense notions of legality and how, once these notions are put
through legislative processes and formally codified, they become the structures by which
further notions of legality (typically) develop. In this way, logical forms are taken to be both
the products of inquiry, as well as its constitutive forms. They are products, which, when
taken and re-integrated within inquiry, become part of the very structure of future inquiry.
Inquiry is thus formative and trans-formative: it is formative in that, through its very
processes, it determines a scheme for ordering further discourse, and trans-formative in that it
reconditions experience such that the problematic situation is transformed through its
solution, i.e. it is no longer problematic.
Given these characteristics, the contours of Deweyan inquiry can be summarized as
follows: 1) Inquiry is an ongoing, hypothetical process, which is guided by the experimental
attitude to the extent that it takes various hypotheses and judges their validity according to
applied consequences. While the short-term goal of inquiry is the resolution of immediate
problematic situations, the nature of inquiry necessitates that inquiry itself remain dynamic
and ongoing in the search for new ways of understanding and explanation. 2) The
problematic contents of inquiry originate from our immediate interactions with the
surrounding environment, as well as from the cultural milieu into which we are thrown. The
objects and substances that form the content of inquiry are themselves hypothetical in nature
and modified according to the degree to which they fit into, and function within, a
problematic situation, or system of such situations. They are not based upon essences or
intrinsic natures, but are the operational correlatives of the structural forms of inquiry. 3) The
structure of inquiry is formed in conjunction with the contents of inquiry, thus placing
structural and material elements in a reciprocal relationship that shapes the way inquiry is
conducted in the future. This makes logical forms functional and instrumental, rather than
structural and a priori. When all these features are taken together and utilized within an
actual nexus of inquiry, they comprise what Dewey referred to simply as “active
intelligence.”
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Democracy
With these characteristics in mind, it is appropriate to understand Dewey’s philosophy of
science as a type of naturalism wherein rational inquiry emerges organically from our
experiences of problematic situations. As I mentioned earlier, one of Dewey’s early
philosophical influences was Hegel and the neo-Hegelianism of the late nineteenth-century. I
also indicated that some aspects of this influence carry over into his mature pragmatic
philosophy. I think a clear example of this influence is found in Dewey’s conception of
inquiry. This conception, I propose, can be thought of as a type of secularized Hegelianism,
with a dose of Darwinism added as the catalyst for change. Dewey gives up the Geist in
exchange for a conception of inquiry that is an autonomous, self-perpetuating system wherein
progress is defined in evolutionary terms. In place of the Hegelian eschatology, Dewey
establishes the dialectic of hypothetical inquiry as the process out of which all knowledge
develops. Nothing is outside inquiry; the methods and contents of inquiry are produced
internally through a type of hermeneutic circle wherein the content becomes the justification
for the method, and the method becomes the justification for the content.
Progress within inquiry, then, is not teleological; it is an evolutionary, problem-
oriented development that depends upon the ability to adapt current ways of thinking to new
problematic situations. This account makes Dewey’s notion of progress strikingly similar to
Thomas Kuhn’s idea of progress, which holds that progress is properly understood as
progress-from, rather than progress-to some given end (1996: 162). It also grounds Dewey’s
conception of inquiry within a particular tradition. While there may be an end-in-view
directing inquiry to solve a specific set of problems, future inquiries are always dependent
upon what is secured through prior inquiry. The contents and methods of previous inquiries,
in other words, are the necessary materials out of which new ideas are made.
For Dewey there is no dualism of scheme and content; indeed, there is no dualism at
all. The bifurcations between knowledge and action, theory and practice, and appearance and
reality all collapse within the Deweyan conception of inquiry. And because Dewey grounds
all inquiry within actual existential situations, it is correct to say that the unity of method is
grounded in the unity of nature. Nature itself develops through experimentation, and by
consciously employing this method in the service of more humane problems and inquiries we
are to some extent able to control our own evolution.
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I belabour these points precisely because the nature and structure of experimental
inquiry is the model upon which Dewey bases his conception of democracy. Deweyan
inquiry, in other words, is the larger concept, and Deweyan democracy is situated under its
aegis. And while inquiry and democracy are analogous in a number of ways, it is crucial to
get clearer on just how they are analogous so that a proper understanding of each is reached.
One thing that is clear it that Dewey’s entire project rejects views which take as their
starting point antecedently given conditions or essential natures. Against essentializing any
object of inquiry, Dewey eschews the antecedently given and the predetermined end of
inquiry in scientific as well as political inquiry. He says that “it is not the business of
political philosophy and science to determine what the state in general should or must be.
What they may do is to aid in creation of methods such that experimentation may go on less
blindly, less at the mercy of accident, more intelligently, so that men [and women] may learn
from their errors and profit by their successes.” (LW 2: 257) Dewey’s proposal for
implementing the experimental attitude within the socio-political sphere can thus be thought
of as a type of “political experimentalism.”
This political experimentalism is structurally analogous to inquiry in that it is an on-
going process whose main aim is not final completion, but continual development. In The
Public and its Problems (1926), Dewey claims that, “regarded as an idea, democracy is not
an alternative to other principles of associated life. It is the idea of community life itself. It
is an ideal in the only intelligible sense of an ideal: namely, the tendency and movement of
some thing which exists carried to its final limit, viewed as completed, perfected. Since
things do not attain such fulfilment but are in actuality distracted and interfered with,
democracy in this sense is not a fact and never will be.” (LW 2: 328) The idea of
democracy, then, is a regulative ideal: it is not something that will ever be fully consummated
in practice, but a goal toward which we are continually striving.
But democracy, for Dewey, entails more than simply a democratic form of
government. It is above all a “way of life,” which is essentially the idea that democracy is a
substantive social ideal rather than just a procedural, and thus merely political, form of
government. He says, “the trouble…is that we have taken democracy for granted; we have
thought and acted as if our forefathers had founded it once and for all. We have forgotten
that it has to be enacted anew every generation, in every year and day, in the living relations
of person to person in all social forms and institutions” (LW 11: 416). In this way,
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democracy is a way of shared social inquiry toward the resolution of common social
problems that requires a reflective and engaged citizenry so as to be effective. To get a better
idea of just how far this expands typical conceptions of democracy, I think it is helpful to
compare the notions of procedural and substantive democracy to the methods and content of
inquiry.
A procedural conception of democracy places the onus of democratic work on formal
governmental structures, which are constructed to mitigate disputes and manage social
differences. These governmental institutions – precisely the features so often identified with
being the essence of democracy – are for Dewey only means. He says, “[u]niversal suffrage,
recurring elections, responsibility of those who are in political power to the voters, and the
other factors of democratic government are means that have been found expedient for
realizing democracy as the truly human way of living. They are not a final end and a final
value. They are to be judged on the basis of their contribution to end” (LW 11: 218). In this
way, the procedural aspects of democracy are analogous to the methods of inquiry: they are
the evolving means through which democratic ends are realized. The substantive aspects of
democracy, on the other hand, are analogous to the contents of inquiry; they are the
problematic social situations that call for amelioration through “cooperative inquiry”
(Campbell 1993: 17). Just as within the structure of inquiry, where the methods and contents
develop and are justified in reciprocal relation, so too do the procedural and substantive
aspects of democracy develop in a mutually dependent way. Thus, it is clear that Dewey is
not opposed to a formal conception of democracy, but just that his substantive view of
democracy includes and goes beyond it.
As already shown, the correlative dependence of method and content within inquiry
shapes the way inquiry is conducted in the future. In this way, the process of inquiry
produces its own regulative norms, which, in turn, define the proper ends of inquiry.
Analogously, the conjunctive development of the procedural and substantive aspects of
democracy establishes the ideal ends of democracy. Thus, both Deweyan inquiry and
democracy are normative in nature: they establish internally, through their very processes, the
regulative norms that direct future activity toward a given end. The regulative norms of
inquiry establish both the primary aim of inquiry (i.e. the resolution of problematic
situations) and the proper means by which that end can be achieved, namely through a
hypothetical, experimental approach to inquiry itself. As democracy is a form of shared
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social inquiry, the regulative norms of inquiry establish the ideal end of democracy, which
Dewey identifies as “the necessity of participation of every mature human being in formation
of the values that regulate the living of men [and women] together,” as well as the proper
means by which that end is realized (LW 11: 217). So just as Dewey collapses the dualism
of scheme and content within inquiry, he also collapses the dualism between the procedural
means and substantive ends of democracy. Both are correlative aspects of an ongoing
process whereby the regulative norms of inquiry (which are themselves in process) guide the
identification of effective means to achieve the given end.

Pluralism
With these similarities in mind, I would now like to turn and highlight a significant problem,
which manifests itself in various ways through the problem of pluralism (Talisse, 2003; Cf.
Capps, 2002; Stuhr, 1993, 2002; West, 1998). The formulation of this problem is interesting
precisely because it applies equally to Deweyan inquiry and Deweyan democracy. Let me
expand upon this a bit.
Within the frameworks of Deweyan inquiry and democracy, one is compelled to ask
two questions: First, for who exactly is a problematic situation actually a problem? And,
second, what constitutes an adequate solution to such a problem? In The Public and its
Problems Dewey identifies the “public” in a distinct, abstract sense, namely, as a group of
individuals that are directly or indirectly affected by a certain transaction such that they are
joined by the need to have that effect systematically attended to (LW 2: 245-6). For example,
individuals living adjacent to a toxic waste disposal plant form “a public” to the extent that
leakage from the plant is seeping into their ground water, causing various birth defects
among the unborn, etc. These people are joined by the need to have these effects attended to
by local officials and the administrators of the plant.
So the key feature of Dewey’s formulation is that a public is defined by a given set of
effects. Dewey recognizes, however, that this broad definition merely resituates the problem:
“It is not that there is no public, no large body of persons having a common interest in the
consequences of social transactions. There is too much public, a public too diffused and
scattered and too intricate in composition…with little to hold these different publics together
in an integrated whole” (LW 2: 320). This diversity of publics leads to the second, more
important, question: if there are too many publics, how are they supposed to coordinate
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activities and interests in ways that allow for effective resolution? If interests and
consequences are so diverse, how can any solution satisfy the myriad interests of different,
and indeed disparate, publics? Dewey recognizes that this problem is dialogical when he
says, “the essential need…is the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate,
discussion and persuasion. That is the problem of the public.” (LW 2: 365) This is the basic
problem of pluralism: how are various groups, with various and oftentimes mutually
exclusive interests, supposed to coordinate so as to resolve fundamental differences?
In this regard, Robert Talisse makes the striking argument that Deweyan democracy
is not open to pluralism. The type of pluralism he has in mind “implies that there is no
substantive and basic value that could win the consensus of an entire population of rational
persons” (2003: 4). This type of pluralism commits us to accepting that various groups can
(and often do) formulate different, mutually exclusive solutions to the basic problems
affecting human life. Given the problem of pluralism, then, democracy is limited to its
procedural aspects, which are to ensure that various incommensurable viewpoints peacefully
coexist. If Deweyan democrats are to retain the substantive aspect of democracy, Talisse
argues, they are forced to reject pluralism precisely on the grounds that it is out of step with
the notion of democracy as cooperative social inquiry. And this is where the problem of
pluralism connects to Dewey’s conception of inquiry.
Throughout the Logic, Dewey refers to the methods of inquiry he describes as the
methods of inquiry, not simply as a valid method of inquiry among others. Take, for
example, Dewey’s claim that “[w]e know that some methods of inquiry are better than others
in just the same way we know that some methods of surgery, farming, road-making,
navigating, or what-not are better than others” (LW 12: 108). Or his claim that “[i]f
inferences made and conclusions reached are to be valid, the subject-matter dealt with and
the operations employed must be such as to yield identical results for all who infer and
reason. If the same evidence leads different persons to different conclusions, then either the
evidence is only speciously the same, or one conclusion (or both) is wrong” (LW 12: 50).
These passages show Dewey’s insistence that there are better and worse methods of inquiry,
and that there are perfectly good reasons to reject certain types of inquiry. It is important to
remember, though, that the methods of inquiry are themselves undergoing constant
development, and thus the standards by which inquiry is judged “proper” are also involved in
this ongoing process. The point to notice regarding the problem of pluralism, however, is
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that Deweyan inquiry presupposes that a genuine agreement as to the best solution of any
given problem – social or otherwise – is at least possible. Again, nothing is outside of
inquiry; the methods of experimental inquiry, Dewey held, are the tools by which all
problems could be resolved in the long run. So pluralism is incompatible with Deweyan
democracy precisely because, at a certain point, it gives up on Deweyan inquiry.
The upshot of Talisse’s argument is that Deweyan democrats must 1) affirm “the
normative priority of the values embedded within Deweyan inquiry” and 2) exclude those
who reject such norms from political discourse (2003: 12-13). While the first aspect of this
conclusion seems entirely correct, the latter aspect seems wrongheaded in that it only pushes
the problem back a level. How is one to persuade those who do not value the regulative
norms of Deweyan democracy that they should value them before they are ever engaged in
discourse? If you exclude from political discourse those who do not value the norms of
Deweyan democracy, it seems that there is no recourse to be had. And in a time when this
seems to be the problematic situation within culture (i.e. when political dialogue is
deadlocked, both domestically and internationally, by numerous forms of fundamentalism)
this is neither a viable nor an acceptable solution. So while Talisse is correct to point out that
pluralism is inconsistent within Deweyan inquiry and democracy, he misses the larger reason
why this is so, namely, in the way in which pluralism casts the nature of beliefs.
Sidney Hook once remarked regarding Dewey’s philosophy that it is not what you
believe that matters, but how you believe it (1939: 236). This is essentially the problem with
pluralism: it characterizes beliefs such that they are things to hold onto rigidly and literally,
that different beliefs are things that can be ultimately incommensurable. This is precisely
what Dewey was disputing within Logic. By conceiving of inquiry as an internally
constitutive process wherein both the form and content change in relation to the ongoing
process of engaging actual problematic situations, Dewey makes believing itself a
hypothetical activity. The regulative norms of Deweyan inquiry, in other words, define a
comportment to how we hold beliefs. In the end, Dewey’s conception of experimental
inquiry does not simply lie on the surface; it goes all the way down, so to speak, and commits
those who accept it to not only a set of regulative norms, but also to a radically new
conception of belief.
In my view, this constitutes the most important, if not also the most difficult, idea in
Dewey’s entire philosophy. The nature and possibility of living hypothetically, living with a
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recurring question mark beside your beliefs, is clearly a difficult stance to maintain. Even
within scientific inquiry, which is the system upon which Dewey bases his theory of inquiry,
we are apt to wonder whether scientists actually hold their methods and objects
hypothetically. In the abstract it seems acceptable to say they do, but when talking with
practicing scientists one gets the distinct impression that they believe in their objects and
theories just as literally as anyone. It also seems clear that most people do not come to hold
their beliefs about personal, social, and political matters in a hypothetical way either.
Tradition and authority still seem to trump experimentalism and openness. The present ways
of believing, put bluntly, are far from where Deweyan inquiry and democracy seem actual, or
even possible.
Talisse suggests that Deweyans begin to construct arguments against pluralism
(2003: 12). And while his point is taken, I think Deweyans would do much better to address
the deeper problem regarding how people hold their beliefs in the first place. Simply put,
pluralism does not seem to be the problem. If anything, pluralism seems to be a step in the
right direction for those who hold their beliefs fundamentally and are eager to impose those
beliefs upon everyone else. So rather than engaging pluralists, Deweyans ought to cut out the
theoretical middleman and initiate a public dialogue concerning the consequences that come
from how beliefs are held.
The issue, Dewey says, “is a matter of choice, and choice is always a matter of
alternatives. What the method of intelligence, thoughtful valuation will accomplish, if once it
be tried, is for the result of trial to determine” (LW 1: 437). This hypothetical comportment
to beliefs, like all ideas, must be tried in actual situations, with concrete agents and concrete
problems, and judged according to its consequences for practical life. But before this trial
can begin, a significant reconstruction in how beliefs are held remains the predominant
challenge for Deweyans today.
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Bibliography

A note on the references to Dewey’s work. Since publication of the complete scholarly
editions of John Dewey’s works (37 volumes altogether), references have been standardized
in the following form: (LW 3:75). The “LW” refers to The Later Works, with corresponding
references made to The Middle Works (MW), and The Early Works (EW). The first number
in the sequence refers to the volume within that series, while the second number is the actual
page reference.

Campbell, James. 1993. “Democracy as Cooperative Inquiry,” in John Stuhr (ed.),

Philosophy and the Reconstruction of Culture, Albany: SUNY Press.

Capps, John. 2002. “Achieving Pluralism (Why AIDS Activists are Different from
Creationists),” in Burke, Hester, and Talisse (eds.), Dewey’s Logical Theory: New Studies
and Interpretations, Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.

Dewey, John. 1976-1983. 1976-1983. “The Need for a Recovery in Philosophy,” in John
Dewey: The Middle Works, 1899-1925, Volume 10. Jo Ann Boydston (ed.). 15 vols.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

----------. 1976-1983. “Philosophy and Democracy,” in John Dewey: The Middle Works,
1899-1925, Volume 11. Jo Ann Boydston (ed.). 15 vols. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press.

----------. 1976-1983. Reconstruction in Philosophy, in John Dewey: The Middle Works,

1899-1925, Volume 12. Jo Ann Boydston (ed.). 15 vols. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
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----------. 1981-1990. Experience and Nature, in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953,
Volume 1. Jo Ann Boydston (ed.). 17 vols. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

----------. 1981-1990. The Public and its Problems, in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-
1953, Volume 2. Jo Ann Boydston (ed.). 17 vols. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University
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----------. 1981-1990. The Quest for Certainty, in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953,
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 14

----------. 1981-1990. Liberalism and Social Action, in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-
1953, Volume 11. Jo Ann Boydston (ed.). 17 vols. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University
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----------. 1981-1990. “Authority and Social Change,” in John Dewey: The Later Works,
1925-1953, Volume 11. Jo Ann Boydston (ed.). 17 vols. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press.

----------. 1981-1990. “Democracy is Radical,” in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-
1953, Volume 11. Jo Ann Boydston (ed.). 17 vols. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University
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----------. 1981-1990. Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-
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----------. 1981-1990. Freedom and Culture, in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953,
Volume 13. Jo Ann Boydston (ed.). 17 vols. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

----------. 1981-1990. “Creative Democracy – The task before us,” in John Dewey: The Later
Works, 1925-1953, Volume 14. Jo Ann Boydston (ed.). 17 vols. Carbondale: Southern
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Hook, Sidney. 1939. John Dewey: An Intellectual Portrait. New York: Prometheus Books.

Kuhn, Thomas. 1996. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press.

Stuhr, John. 1993. “Democracy as a Way of Life,” in John Stuhr (ed.), Philosophy and the
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