John Dewey

The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology

That the greater demand for a unifying principle and controlling working hypothesis in psychology should come at just the time when all generalizations and classifications are most questioned and questionable is natural enough. It is the very cumulation of discrete facts creating the demand for unification that also breaks down previous lines of classification. The material is too great in mass and too varied in style to fit into existing pigeonholes , and the cabinets of science break of their own dead weight. The idea of the reflex arc has upon the whole come nearer to meeting this demand for a general working hypothesis than any other single concept. It being admitted that the sensori-motor apparatus represents both the unit of nerve structure and the type of nerve function, the image of this relationship passed over into psychology, and became an organizing principle to hold together the multiplicity of fact. In criticising this conception it is not intended to make a plea for the principles of explanation and classification which the reflex arc idea has replaced; but, on the contrary, to urge that they are not sufficiently displaced, and that in the idea of the sensori-motor circuit, conceptions of the nature of sensation and of action derived from the nominally displaced psychology are still in control. The older dualism between sensation and idea is repeated in the current dualism of peripheral and central structures and functions; the older dualism of body and soul finds a distinct

The quest for certainty : a study of the relation of knowledge and action

Find loads of the quest for certainty the a study of the relation of knowledge and action book catalogues in this site as the choice of you visiting this page. You can also join to the website book library that will show you numerous books from any types. Literature, science, politics, and many more catalogues are presented to offer you the best book to find. The book that really makes you feels satisfied. Or thats the book that will save you from your job deadline.

Democracy in Education

MODERN life means democracy, democracy means freeing intelligence for independent effectiveness-the emancipation of mind as an individual organ to do its own work. We naturally associate democracy, to be sure, with freedom of action, but freedom of action without freed capacity of thought behind it is only chaos. If external authority in action is given up, it must be because internal authority of truth, discovered and known to reason, is substituted. How does the school stand with reference to this matter? Does the school as an accredited representative exhibit this trait of democracy as a spiritual force? Does it lead and direct the movement? Does it lag behind and work at cross-purpose? I find the fundamental need of the school today dependent upon its limited recognition of the principle of freedom of intelligence. This limitation appears to me to affect both of the elements of school life: teacher and pupil. As to both, the school has lagged behind the general contemporary social movement; and much that is unsatisfactory, much of conflict and of defect, comes from the discrepancy between the relatively undemocratic organization of the school, as it affects the mind of both teacher and pupil, and the growth and extension of the democratic principle in life beyond school doors. The effort of the last two-thirds of a century has been successful in building up the machinery of a democracy of mind. It has provided the ways and means for housing and equipping

Education as engineering

John Deweys short essay, ‘Education as engineering’ was first published in 1922. It is followed here by four commentaries discussing the contemporary relevance of its argument that a science of education cannot advance education in the absence of pioneering developments on the ground of the schools.

Mediocrity and Individuality.

Originally published in The New Republic, December 6, 1922, pp. 35–37, under the title, “Mediocrity and Individuality.”

On Industrial Education

The habitual American attitude towards public education is, to say the least, paradoxical. Belief in publicly supported education is the most vital article of the average citizens creed. Money devoted to educational purposes makes the largest item in the budget, and payment of taxes for school purposes is accompanied with the least amount of grumbling. The man who ridicules his legislature, who is suspicious of his judiciary and openly flouts his police system, is enthusiastic about public education. But the connection of the public with its schools ends for the most part with their support. There is next to no provision for public control, and that little is generally felt to be a nuisance when it extends its activities beyond the financial support of the schools under its nominal charge. The direction of educational policy is no part of statesmanship; the divorce of school from politics-which presumably means matters of public policy-is thought to represent the ideal state of things. Educators have reciprocated by taking an astonishingly slight interest in the public functions attached to their own work. Social settlements, amateur philanthropists and voluntary associations, rather than professional educators, have agitated the questions of child labor and juvenile crime, of adequate recreative facilities and the wider use of the school plant, and even of preparation for making a livelihood. That our laissez passer methods have worked as well as they have indicates a certain soundness in our social life, as well as at least a temporary adaptation to our needs. That these methods will work as well in the future may be doubted. The formation by Congress of a Commission on National Aid to Vocational Education, composed of two Senators, two

Force and Coercion

THE empirical perplexities which attend the question of the relationship of force and law are many and genuine. The war brings home to us the question not only of the relation of force to international law, but the place of force in the economy of human life and progress. To what extent is organization of force in the multitude of ways required for the successful conduct of modern war a fair test of the work of a social organization? From another angle, the reform of our criminal law and our penal methods compels us to consider the significance of force. Are the Tolstoians right in holding that the state itself sets the great example of violence and furnishes the proof of the evils which result from violence? Or, from the other side, is not the essence of all law coercion? In the industrial domain, direct actionists lead us to inquire whether manifestation of force, threatening and veiled if not overt, is not, after all, the only efficacious method of bringing about any social change which is of serious import. Do not the usual phenomena attending strikes show us that the ordinary legal forms are just a kind of curtain drawn politely over the conflicts of force which alone are decisive? Are our effective legislative enactments anything more than registrations of results of battles previously fought out on the field of human endurance? In many social fields, reformers are now struggling for an extension of governmental activity by way of supervision and regulation. Does not such action always amount to an effort to extend the exercise of force on the part of some section of society, with a corresponding restriction of the forces employed by others? In spite of the fact that the political thinking of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is out of date, were not the thinkers of that period clearer headed than we are in acknowledging that all

Austin's Theory of Sovereignty

Austin: “ If a determinate human superior, not the habit of obedience a like superior, receives habitual obedience from the bulk of the society, the determinate superior is sovereign in that society and the society, includes the superior, is a society political and independent. To that determinant superior, the other members of the society are dependent. The position of its other members towards the determinate superior is a state of subjection and dependence. The mutual relation which subsists between them and superior may be styled the relation of sovereign and subject or the relation of sovereignty and subjection”.

Significance of the School of Education

It may be a cause of surprise to say that the School of Education is just coming of age--that it is now just twenty-one years old. You may, some of you, have thought of it as coming into existence as we took possession of these buildings; while others would think themselves certainly justified by the facts in saying that it is now in its third year of existence. But I date its origin from the year 1883. It was in that year, by a coincidence which I think also is an omen of good, that Colonel Parker came to the Cook County Normal School, and that the Chicago Manual Training School was opened under the direction of Mr. Belfield. It is pleasing to recall that Colonel Jacobson and Mr. Ham, who took so active a part in promoting the Chicago Manual Training School, also encouraged and assisted in every way in their power Colonel Parker in introducing manual-training work into the Cook County Normal School, where it was found from the very opening of Colonel Parkers work.

International Encyclopedia of Unified Science.

One can say that, from the point of view of scientific empiricism, it is not the notion of ’system’, but that of ‘encyclopedia’ that offers us the true model of science taken as a whole. In the spirit of scientific empiricism, the Mundaneum Institute in The Hague is preparing an International Encyclopedia of Unified Science destined to serve as a complement to existing encyclopedias.