ABSTRACT
In most countries of the world, Darwin's ideas remained scientific and few dreamed of applying them to social thought. But to a certain extent in England and to a far greater extent in America, Darwinism seemed to have an immediate applicability to social and political life. Progressivism became a third Great Awakening, with Theodore Roosevelt himself exhorting delegates to two national conventions in 1912 to stand at Armageddon and battle for the Lord, a rhetorically effective way of demanding progressive reforms. By the turn of the twentieth century, John Dewey and George Herbert Mead were working out important applications for these ideas in both city governments and schools, and in 1907 William James published the most important theoretical discussion in Pragmatism. By 1917, progressivism and pragmatism had come to complement each other, so much so that John Dewey came to symbolize for many people what it meant to be a democratic American.
