ABSTRACT
Throughout this book, I have sought to show that Dewey’s vision of philosophy, science, psychology, ethics, and education has much to offer present-day readers. We now live in a world that is even more subject to changeability and contingency than in Dewey’s time. One of Dewey’s primary messages is that changeability should not give us reason to mistrust the ideas, sciences, and technologies that humanity has developed. Just because we have realized that our ideas are not eternal and universally valid does not mean that we should discard or deconstruct them without first examining them carefully. We would only have an urge to do this if our level of ambition were too high—as high as the gods’—and if we believed that we could somehow step outside of the human world and observe it from above to compare scientific theories with the world as it is or the good as it is, independent of human activity. This kind of elevated perspective, a view from nowhere, does not exist. Every perspective on the world is itself part of the world, and one can only gain a perspective of the world by participating in its processes. Participating in the world is a precondition for—rather than an obstacle to—gaining knowledge of the world.
