ConceptsinInquiryandLearning
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3-2-05
Selections on Research and Inquiry from John Dewey's (1933) How We Think From The Later Works 1925-1953, Volume 8: 1933/1989. Essays and How We Think. Southern Illinois University Press: Carbondale, IL.
The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882-1953, edited by Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969-1991), published in three series as The Early Works (EW), The Middle Works MW) and The Later Works (LW). In order to insure uniform citations of the critical edition, the pagination of the print edition has been peserved in The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882-1953: The Electronic Edition, edited by Larry A. Hickman (Charlottesville, Virginia: InteLex Corp., 1996).
Permission graciously granted by the Center for Dewey Studies http://www.siu.edu/~deweyctr/
Selected Passages on Inquiry and Learning from Dewey's How We Think
Passage One
The successive portions of a reflective thought grow out of one another and support one another; they do not come and go in a medley. Each phase is a step from something to something—technically speaking, it is a term of thought. Each term leaves a deposit that is utilized in the next term. The stream or flow becomes a train or chain. There are in any reflective thought definite units that are linked together so that there is sustained movement to a common end (p. 113).
Commentary
Passage Two
Active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends constitutes reflective thought (p. 118).
Commentary
Passage Three
Demand for the solution of perplexity is the steadying and guiding factor in the entire process of reflection….A question to be answered, an ambiguity to be resolved, sets up an end and holds the current of ideas to a definite channel. Every suggested conclusion is tested by its reference to this regulating end, by its pertinence to the problem at hand (p. 122).
Commentary
Passage Four
The nature of the problem fixes the end of thought, and the end controls the process of thinking (p. 123).
Commentary
Passage Five
Given a difficulty, the next step is suggestion of some way out—the formation of a tentative plan or project, the entertaining of some theory that will account for the peculiarities in question, the consideration of some solution for the problem (p. 123).
Commentary
Passage Six
One can think reflectively only when one is willing to endure suspense and to undergo the trouble of searching….To be genuinely thoughtful, we must be willing to sustain and protract that state of doubt which is the stimulus to inquiry, so as not to accept an idea or make a positive assertion of belief until justifying reasons have been found (p. 124).
Commentary
Passage Seven
Only systematic regulations of the conditions under which observations are made and severe discipline of the habits of entertaining suggestions can secure a decision that one type of belief is vicious and the other sound (131).
Commentary
Passage Eight
There is no greater enemy of effective thinking than divided interest (p. 137).
Commentary
Passage Nine
Partial conclusions emerge during the course of reflection. There are temporary stopping places, landings of past thought that are also stations of departure for subsequent thought. We do not reach the conclusion at a single jump. At every such landing stage it is useful to retrace the processes gone through and to state to oneself how much or how little of the material previously thought about really bears on the conclusion reached and how it bears (p. 174).
Commentary
Passage Ten
"Loose thoughts leave the result hanging in the air, with only a vague sense of just what has been proved or arrived at. A genuinely reflective activity terminates in declaring just what the outcome is. By formulating that outcome as definitely as possible, it is converted into a true conclusion. Reflective activity also makes a survey, a review of the material on which it alone this conclusion rests, and thus formulates the premises upon which it rests….[I]f the reasoning is understood and not merely memorized, the mind grasps the demonstrated proposition as a conclusion; it is aware of the prior points that prove it" (p. 176).
Commentary
Pasage Eleven
Information is an undigested burden unless it is understood. It is knowledge only as its material is comprehended. And understanding, comprehension means that the various parts of the information are grasped in their relations to one another—a result that is attained only when acquisition is accompanied by constant reflection upon the meaning of what is studied (p. 177).
Commentary
Passage Twelve
The mind at every stage of growth has its own logic. It entertains suggestions, tests them by observations of objects and events, reaches conclusions, tries them in action, finds them confirmed or in need of correction or rejection (p. 181).
Commentary
Passage Thirteen
In truth, discipline is positive and constructive. It is power, power of control of the means necessary to achieve ends and also power to value and test ends….Discipline is a product, an outcome, an achievement, not something applied from without. All genuine education terminates in discipline, but it proceeds by engaging the mind in activities worth while for their own sake (p. 183).
Commentary
Pasage Fourteen
Every vital act of any depth or range inevitably meets obstacles in the course of its effort to realize itself—a fact that renders the search for artificial or superficial problems quite superfluous. The difficulties that present themselves within the development of an experience are, however, to be cherished by the educator, not minimized, for they are the natural stimuli to reflective inquiry (p. 184).
Commentary
Passage Fifteen
In every case of reflective activity, a person finds himself confronted with a given, present situation from which he has to arrive at, or conclude, to something else that is not present. The process of arriving at an idea of what is absent on the basis of what is at hand is an inference. What is present carriers or bears the mind over to the idea and ultimately the acceptance of something else (p. 190).
Commentary
Passage Sixteen
Every inference, just because it goes beyond ascertained and known facts, which are given either by observation or by recollection of prior knowledge, involves a jump from the known to the unknown. It involves a leap beyond what is given and already established….[T]he inference occurs via or through the suggestion that is aroused by what is seen and remembered. Now, while the suggestion pops into the mind, just what suggestion occurs depends first upon the experience of the person. This in turn is dependent upon the general state of culture of the time….Second, suggestions depend upon the person’s own preferences, desires, interests, or even his immediate state of passion. The inevitableness of suggestion, the lively force with which it springs before the mind, the natural tendency to accept it if it is plausible or not obviously contradicted by the facts, indicate the necessity of controlling the suggestion which made the basis of the inference that is to be believed (p. 191).
Commentary
Passage seventeen
To prove a thing means primarily to test it (p. 191).
Commentary
Passage Eighteen
Suggested inferences are tested in thought to see whether different elements in the suggestion are coherent with one another. They are also tested, after one has been adopted, by action, to see whether the consequences that are anticipated in thought occur in fact (p. 192).
Commentary
Passage Nineteen
Testing in thought for consistency involves acting in imagination. The other mode carries the imagined act out overtly. True inference is defined first as involving a leap to a suggested conclusion, and second, as trying the suggestion to determine its agreement with the requirements of the situation (p. 193).
Commentary
Passage FTwenty
Go through your own experience and you will not find a case where thinking started out of nothing. Sometimes the trains of thoughts will have taken you so far away from the starting point that you will have difficulty in getting back to that prior something out of which the thinking arose, but follow the thread far enough and you will find some situation that is directly experienced, something undergone, done, enjoyed, or suffered and not just thought of (p. 194).
Commentary
Passage Twenty-One
The function of reflection is to bring about a new situation in which the difficulty is resolved, the confusion cleared away, the trouble smoothed out, the question it puts answered….The function of reflective thought is, therefore, to transform a situation in which there is experienced obscurity, doubt, conflict, disturbance of some sort, into a situation that is clear, coherent, settled, harmonious (p. 195).
Commentary"
Passage Twenty-Two
“Vital inference always leaves one who thinks with a world that is experienced as different in some respect, for some object in it has gained in clarity and orderly arrangement. Genuine thinking winds up, in short, with an appreciation of new values (p. 195).
Commentary
Passage Twenty-Three
The continuous interaction of the facts disclosed by observation and of the suggested proposals of solution and the suggested method of dealing with conditions goes on till some suggested solution meets all the conditions of the case and does not run counter to any discoverable features in it (p. 197).
Commentary
Passage Twenty-Four
The suggested solutions for the difficulties disclosed by observation form ideas. Data (facts) and ideas (suggestions, possible solutions) thus form the two indispensable and correlative factors of all reflective activity. The two factors are carried on by means respectively of observation…and inference. The latter runs beyond what is actually noted, beyond what is found, upon careful examination, to be actually present. It relates, therefore, to what is possible, rather than to what is actual. It proceeds by anticipation, supposition, conjecture, and imagination (p. 198).
Commentary
Passage Twenty-Five
What is inferred demands a double test: first, the process of forming the idea or supposed solution is checked by constant cross reference to the conditions observed to be actually present; secondly, the idea, after it is formed is tested by acting upon it, overtly if possible, otherwise in imagination. The consequence of this action confirm, modify, or refute the idea (p. 198).
Commentary
Passage Twenty-Six
Ideas may be of use to a penetrating mind even when they do not find any immediate reference to actuality, provided they stay in the mind for use when new facts come to light (p. 199).
Commentary
Passage Twenty-Seven
In the degree to which we define the difficulty (which is effected by stating it in terms of objects), we get a better idea of the kind of solution that is needed. The facts or data set the problem before us, and insight into the problem corrects, modifies, expands the suggestion that originally occurred. In this fashion the suggestion becomes a definite supposition or, stated more technically, a hypothesis (p. 202).
Commentary
Passage Twenty-Eight
Each step in genuine thinking does something to perfect the formation of a suggestion and promote its change into a leading idea or directive hypothesis. It does something to promote the location and definition of a problem. Each improvement in the idea leads to new observations that yields new facts or new date and helps the mind judge more accurately the relevancy of facts already at hand (p. 206).
Commentary
Passage Twenty-Nine
To be a good judge is to have a sense of the relative indicative or signifying values of the various features of the perplexing situation; to know what to let go as of no account; what to eliminate as irrelevant; what to retain as conducive to the outcome; what to emphasize as a clew to the difficulty….Possession of this ability to seize what is evidential or significant and to let the rest go is the mark of the expert, the connoisseur, the judge, in any matter (p. 213).
Commentary
Passage Thirty
If one is not able to estimate wisely what is relevant to the interpretation of a given perplexing or doubtful situation, it avails little that arduous learning has built up a large stock of concepts (p. 215).
Commentary
Passage Thirty-One
No conception, even if it is carefully and firmly established in the abstract, can at first safely be more than a candidate for the office of interpreter. Only greater success than that of its rivals in clarifying dark spots, untying hard knots, reconciling discrepancies, can elect it and prove it to be a valid idea for the given situation. In short, thinking is a continual appraising of both data and ideas. Unless the pertinence and force of each seemingly evidential fact and seemingly explanatory ideas is judged, appraised, the mind goes on a wild-goose chase (p. 215).
Commentary
Passage ThirtyTwo
The judgment when formed is a decision; it closes or concludes, the question at issue. The determination not only settles that particular case, but it also helps fix a rule or method for deciding similar matters in the future; as the sentence of the judge on the bench both terminates that dispute and also sets a precedent for future decisions. If the interpretation settled upon is not controverted by subsequent events, a presumption is built up in favor of similar interpretation in other cases where the features are not so obviously unlike as to make it inappropriate. In this way, principles of judging are gradually built up; a certain manner of interpretation gets weight, authority. In short, meanings get standardized; they become logical concepts (pp. 215-216).
Commentary
Passage Thirty-Three
To understand is to grasp meaning. Until we understand, we are, if we have curiosity, troubled, baffled, and hence moved to inquire. After we understand, we are, comparatively, at least, intellectually at home. There is a time during our investigation when meaning is only suggested; when we hold it in suspense as a possibility rather than accept it as an actuality. Then the meaning is an idea. An idea thus stands midway between assured understanding and mental confusion and bafflement. While a meaning is conditionally accepted, accepted for use and trial, it is an idea, a supposal. When it is positively accepted, some object or event is understood (p. 221).
Commentary
Passage Thirty-Four
An idea is thus not a unity like a judgment, but rather a unit element in forming a judgment. We may compare a complete reflection to a paragraph; then the judgment is like a sentence in the structure of the paragraph, and an idea is like a word in a sentence. That ideas are necessary constituents of inference, we have already seen. Positive inference can be deferred and kept in process of development and test only while a meaning is not asserted and believed in. Moreover, ideas are indispensable to inference because they direct observations and regulate the collection and inspection of data. Without a guiding idea, facts would be heaped up like grains of sand; they would not be organized into intellectual unity. In discussing ideas we are not, accordingly, introducing a new topic, but are, as in the discussion of judgment, going into detail regarding an element in the whole already considered (p. 221-222).
Commentary
Passage Thirty-Five
Ideas… are not genuine ideas unless thy are tools with which to search for materials to solve a problem (p. 222).
Commentary
Passage Thirty-Six
The fact is that an idea, intellectually, cannot be defined by its structure, but only by its function and use. Whatever in a doubtful situation or undecided issue helps us to form a judgment and to bring inference to a conclusion by means of anticipating a possible solution is an idea, and nothing else is. It is an idea because of what it does in clearing up a perplexity or in harmonizing what is otherwise fragmentary, not because of its physical makeup (p. 224).
Commentary
Passage Thirty-Seven
As intelligent beings, we presume the existence of meaning, and its absence is an anomaly (p. 225).
Commentary
Passage Thirty-Eight
To grasp the meaning of a thing, an event, or situation is to see it in its relations to other things: to note how it operates or functions, what consequences follow from it, what causes it, what uses it can be put to (pp. 225-226).
Commentary
Passage Thirty-Nine
Since all knowing, including all scientific inquiry, aims at clothing things and events with meaning—at understanding them,—it always proceeds by taking the things inquired into out of its isolation. Search is continued until the thing is discovered to be a related part in some larger whole (p. 227).
Commentary
Passage Forty
We reflect in order that we may get hold of the full and adequate significance of what happens. Nevertheless, something must already be understood, the mind must be in possession of some meaning that it has mastered, or else thinking is impossible. We think in order to grasp meaning, but none the less every extension of knowledge makes us aware of blind and opaque spots, where with less knowledge, all had seemed obvious and natural (p. 227).
Commentary
Passage Forty-One
Our progress in genuine knowledge always consists in part in the discovery of something not understood in what had previously been taken for granted as plain, obvious, matter-of-course, and in part, using meanings that are directly grasped as instruments for getting hold of obscure and doubtful meanings (p. 227).
Commentary
Passage Forty-Two
The moment a meaning is gained, it is a working tool of further apprehensions, an instrument of understanding other things (pp. 241-242).
Commentary
Passage Forty-Three
What facts are evidence in this case? The search for evidential facts is best conducted when some suggested possible meaning is used as a guide in exploring facts, especially in instituting a hunt for some fact that would point conclusively to one explanation and exclude all others (p. 250).
Commentary
Passage Forty-Four
The object of bringing into consideration a multitude of cases is to facilitate the selection of the evidential or significant features upon which to base inference in some single case (p. 255).
Commentary
Passage Foty-Five
Theoretically, one sample case of the right kind will be as good a basis for an inference of a thousand cases; but cases of the right kind rarely turn up spontaneously, and we have to make them. If we take cases just as we find them—whether one case or many cases—they contain much that is irrelevant to the problem in hand, while much that is relevant is obscure, hidden. The object of experimentation is the construction, by regular steps taken on the basis of a plan thought out in advance, of a typical crucial case, a case formed with express reference to throwing light on the difficulty in question (p. 257).
Commentary
Passage Forty-Six
Only when facts are observed (by methods either of collection or of experimentation) that agree in detail and without exception with theoretical results, are we justified in accepting the rational conclusion as a conclusion that is valid for actual things. Thinking, in short, must end as well as begin in the domain of concrete observations if it is to be complete thinking (p. 263).
Commentary
Passage Forty-Seven
A complete, an integral, act or thought requires that the person making the suggestion (the guess) be responsible also for reasoning out its bearing on the problem at hand, for developing the suggestion enough at least to indicate the ways in which it applies to and accounts for the specific data of the case (p. 265).
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