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HOW WE THINK
BY
JOHN DEWEY
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
Copyright, 1910,
By D. C. Heath & Co.
2 F 8
Printed in U. S. A.
PREFACE
Our schools are troubled with a multiplication ofstudies, each in turn having its own multiplication ofmaterials and principles. Our teachers find their tasksmade heavier in that they have come to deal withpupils individually and not merely in mass. Unlessthese steps in advance are to end in distraction, someclew of unity, some principle that makes for simplification,must be found. This book represents the convictionthat the needed steadying and centralizing factoris found in adopting as the end of endeavor that attitudeof mind, that habit of thought, which we callscientific. This scientific attitude of mind might, conceivably,be quite irrelevant to teaching children andyouth. But this book also represents the convictionthat such is not the case; that the native and unspoiledattitude of childhood, marked by ardent curiosity, fertileimagination, and love of experimental inquiry, is near,very near, to the attitude of the scientific mind. Ifthese pages assist any to appreciate this kinship and toconsider seriously how its recognition in educationalpractice would make for individual happiness and thereduction of social waste, the book will amply haveserved its purpose.
It is hardly necessary to enumerate the authors towhom I am indebted. My fundamental indebtednessis to my wife, by whom the ideas of this book wereinspired, and through whose work in connection withthe Laboratory School, existing in Chicago between1896 and 1903, the ideas attained such concretenessas comes from embodiment and testing in practice. Itis a pleasure, also, to acknowledge indebtedness to theintelligence and sympathy of those who coöperated asteachers and supervisors in the conduct of that school,and especially to Mrs. Ella Flagg Young, then a colleaguein the University, and now Superintendent ofthe Schools of Chicago.
New York City, December, 1909.
CONTENTS
| PART I | ||
| THE PROBLEM OF TRAINING THOUGHT | ||
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| I. | What is Thought? | 1 |