ABSTRACT
Peter J. Nelsen describes intelligent dispositions as flexible, in the sense that "they retain their plasticity," grounded "within the context of doubt and inquiry," and focused on "how an action relates to a student's dispositions." Several important points follow from discovery of a structural connection between John Dewey's law and Alfred Schutz' phenomenological account of the life world. First, the resonance of Dewey's law with Schutz's eidetic description of the life world solves a philosophical problem facing the creation of a science of teaching. Second, a shared concern with the life world provides another critical point of conceptual contact between Dewey and phenomenology: a central concern with habits. Third, because Dewey's law, even though abstract in expression, is concerned primarily with the practical matter of improving the effectiveness of instruction, the science of teaching described by the universal law of educational energy is a science in Pasteur's Quadrant.
