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The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays in Contemporary Thought

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Presenting Dewey’s new view of philosophical inquiry

This critical edition of The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays in Contemporary Thought presents the results of John Dewey’s patient construction, throughout the previous sixteen years, of the radically new view of the methods and concerns of philosophical inquiry. It was a view that he continued to defend for the rest of his life.

In the 1910 The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays in Contemporary Thought—the first collection of Dewey’s previously published, edited essays—John Dewey provided readers with an overview of the scope and direction of his philosophical vision in one volume. The order in which the eleven essays were presented was a reverse chronology, with more recently published essays appearing first. The collection of eleven essays offered a detailed portrait of Dewey’s proposed reconstruction of the traditional concepts of knowledge and truth. It furthermore elaborated on how his new logic and his proposal regarding knowledge and truth fit comfortably together, not only with each other but also with a pragmatically proper understanding of belief, reality, and experience.

Because material in the Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882–1953 was published chronologically, however, the essays published together in the 1910 Darwin book have appeared in seven different volumes in the Collected Works. This new, critical edition restores a classic collection of essays authored and edited by John Dewey as they originally appeared in the volume. The edition is presented with ancillary materials, including responses by Dewey’s critics and an introduction by Douglas Browning.   

280 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1909

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About the author

John Dewey

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John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey, along with Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, is recognized as one of the founders of the philosophy of pragmatism and of functional psychology. He was a major representative of the progressive and progressive populist philosophies of schooling during the first half of the 20th century in the USA.

In 1859, educator and philosopher John Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont. He earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University in 1884. After teaching philosophy at the University of Michigan, he joined the University of Chicago as head of a department in philosophy, psychology and education, influenced by Darwin, Freud and a scientific outlook. He joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1904. Dewey's special concern was reform of education. He promoted learning by doing rather than learning by rote. Dewey conducted international research on education, winning many academic honors worldwide. Of more than 40 books, many of his most influential concerned education, including My Pedagogic Creed (1897), Democracy and Education (1902) and Experience and Education (1938). He was one of the founders of the philosophy of pragmatism. A humanitarian, he was a trustee of Jane Addams' Hull House, supported labor and racial equality, and was at one time active in campaigning for a third political party. He chaired a commission convened in Mexico City in 1937 inquiring into charges made against Leon Trotsky during the Moscow trials. Raised by an evangelical mother, Dewey had rejected faith by his 30s. Although he disavowed being a "militant" atheist, when his mother complained that he should be sending his children to Sunday school, he replied that he had gone to Sunday School enough to make up for any truancy by his children. As a pragmatist, he judged ideas by the results they produced. As a philosopher, he eschewed an allegiance to fixed and changeless dogma and superstition. He belonged to humanist societies, including the American Humanist Association. D. 1952.

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