Chapter - THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL ( §4. _The Influence of Current Aims and Ideals_ ) [DEWEY]In this sense, the word _logical_ is synonymous with wide-awake, thorough, and careful reflection--thought in its best sense (_ante_, p. 5). Reflection is turning a topic over in various aspects and in various lights so that nothing significant about it shall be overlooked--almost as one might turn a stone over to see what its hidden side is like or what is covered by it. _Thoughtfulness_ means, practically, the same thing as careful attention; to give our mind to a subject is to give heed to it, to take pains with it. In speaking of reflection, we naturally use the words _weigh_, _ponder_, _deliberate_--terms implying a certain delicate and scrupulous balancing of things against one another. Closely related names are _scrutiny_, _examination_, _consideration_, _inspection_--terms which imply close and careful vision. Again, to think is to relate things to one another definitely, to "put two and two together" as we say. Analogy with the accuracy and definiteness of mathematical combinations gives us such expressions as _calculate_, _reckon_, _account for_; and even _reason_ itself--_ratio_. Caution, carefulness, thoroughness, definiteness, exactness, orderliness, methodic arrangement, are, then, the traits by which we mark off the logical from what is random and casual on one side, and from what is academic and formal on the other. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL ( §4. _The Influence of Current Aims and Ideals_ ) [DEWEY]No argument is needed to point out that the educator is concerned with the logical in its practical and vital sense. Argument is perhaps needed to show that the _intellectual_ (as distinct from the _moral_) _end of education is entirely and only the logical in this sense_; _namely, the formation of careful, alert, and thorough habits of thinking_. The chief difficulty in the way of recognition of this principle is a false conception of the relation between the psychological tendencies of an individual and his logical achievements. If it be assumed--as it is so frequently--that these have, intrinsically, nothing to do with each other, then logical training is inevitably regarded as something foreign and extraneous, something to be ingrafted upon the individual from without, so that it is absurd to identify the object of education with the development of logical power. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL ( §4. _The Influence of Current Aims and Ideals_ ) [DEWEY]The conception that the psychology of individuals has no intrinsic connections with logical methods and results is held, curiously enough, by two opposing schools of educational theory. To one school, the _natural_[12] is primary and fundamental; and its tendency is to make little of distinctly intellectual nurture. Its mottoes are freedom, self-expression, individuality, spontaneity, play, interest, natural unfolding, and so on. In its emphasis upon individual attitude and activity, it sets slight store upon organized subject-matter, or the material of study, and conceives _method_ to consist of various devices for stimulating and evoking, in their natural order of growth, the native potentialities of individuals. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL ( §4. _The Influence of Current Aims and Ideals_ ) [DEWEY]    [12] Denoting whatever has to do with the natural constitution and     functions of an individual. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL ( §4. _The Influence of Current Aims and Ideals_ ) [DEWEY]The other school estimates highly the value of the logical, but conceives the natural tendency of individuals to be averse, or at least indifferent, to logical achievement. It relies upon _subject-matter_--upon matter already defined and classified. Method, then, has to do with the devices by which these characteristics may be imported into a mind naturally reluctant and rebellious. Hence its mottoes are discipline, instruction, restraint, voluntary or conscious effort, the necessity of tasks, and so on. From this point of view studies, rather than attitudes and habits, embody the logical factor in education. The mind becomes logical only by learning to conform to an external subject-matter. To produce this conformity, the study should first be analyzed (by text-book or teacher) into its logical elements; then each of these elements should be defined; finally, all of the elements should be arranged in series or classes according to logical formulæ or general principles. Then the pupil learns the definitions one by one; and progressively adding one to another builds up the logical system, and thereby is himself gradually imbued, from without, with logical quality. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL ( §4. _The Influence of Current Aims and Ideals_ ) [DEWEY]This description will gain meaning through an illustration. Suppose the subject is geography. The first thing is to give its definition, marking it off from every other subject. Then the various abstract terms upon which depends the scientific development of the science are stated and defined one by one--pole, equator, ecliptic, zone,--from the simpler units to the more complex which are formed out of them; then the more concrete elements are taken in similar series: continent, island, coast, promontory, cape, isthmus, peninsula, ocean, lake, coast, gulf, bay, and so on. In acquiring this material, the mind is supposed not only to gain important information, but, by accommodating itself to ready-made logical definitions, generalizations, and classifications, gradually to acquire logical habits. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL ( §4. _The Influence of Current Aims and Ideals_ ) [DEWEY]This type of method has been applied to every subject taught in the schools--reading, writing, music, physics, grammar, arithmetic. Drawings for example, has been taught on the theory that since all pictorial representation is a matter of combining straight and curved lines, the simplest procedure is to have the pupil acquire the ability first to draw straight lines in various positions (horizontal, perpendicular, diagonals at various angles), then typical curves; and finally, to combine straight and curved lines in various permutations to construct actual pictures. This seemed to give the ideal "logical" method, beginning with analysis into elements, and then proceeding in regular order to more and more complex syntheses, each element being defined when used, and thereby clearly understood. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL ( §4. _The Influence of Current Aims and Ideals_ ) [DEWEY]Even when this method in its extreme form is not followed, few schools (especially of the middle or upper elementary grades) are free from an exaggerated attention to forms supposedly employed by the pupil if he gets his result logically. It is thought that there are certain steps arranged in a certain order, which express preëminently an understanding of the subject, and the pupil is made to "analyze" his procedure into these steps, _i.e._ to learn a certain routine formula of statement. While this method is usually at its height in grammar and arithmetic, it invades also history and even literature, which are then reduced, under plea of intellectual training, to "outlines," diagrams, and schemes of division and subdivision. In memorizing this simulated cut and dried copy of the logic of an adult, the child generally is induced to stultify his own subtle and vital logical movement. The adoption by teachers of this misconception of logical method has probably done more than anything else to bring pedagogy into disrepute; for to many persons "pedagogy" means precisely a set of mechanical, self-conscious devices for replacing by some cast-iron external scheme the personal mental movement of the individual. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL ( §4. _The Influence of Current Aims and Ideals_ ) [DEWEY]A reaction inevitably occurs from the poor results that accrue from these professedly "logical" methods. Lack of interest in study, habits of inattention and procrastination, positive aversion to intellectual application, dependence upon sheer memorizing and mechanical routine with only a modicum of understanding by the pupil of what he is about, show that the theory of logical definition, division, gradation, and system does not work out practically as it is theoretically supposed to work. The consequent disposition--as in every reaction--is to go to the opposite extreme. The "logical" is thought to be wholly artificial and extraneous; teacher and pupil alike are to turn their backs upon it, and to work toward the expression of existing aptitudes and tastes. Emphasis upon natural tendencies and powers as the only possible starting-point of development is indeed wholesome. But the reaction is false, and hence misleading, in what it ignores and denies: the presence of genuinely intellectual factors in existing powers and interests. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL ( §4. _The Influence of Current Aims and Ideals_ ) [DEWEY]What is conventionally termed logical (namely, the logical from the standpoint of subject-matter) represents in truth the logic of the trained adult mind. Ability to divide a subject, to define its elements, and to group them into classes according to general principles represents logical capacity at its best point reached _after_ thorough training. The mind that habitually exhibits skill in divisions, definitions, generalizations, and systematic recapitulations no longer needs training in logical methods. But it is absurd to suppose that a mind which needs training because it cannot perform these operations can begin where the expert mind stops. _The logical from the standpoint of subject-matter represents the goal, the last term of training, not the point of departure._ [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL ( §4. _The Influence of Current Aims and Ideals_ ) [DEWEY]In truth, the mind at every stage of development has its own logic. The error of the notion that by appeal to spontaneous tendencies and by multiplication of materials we may completely dismiss logical considerations, lies in overlooking how large a part curiosity, inference, experimenting, and testing already play in the pupil's life. Therefore it underestimates the _intellectual_ factor in the more spontaneous play and work of individuals--the factor that alone is truly educative. Any teacher who is alive to the modes of thought naturally operative in the experience of the normal child will have no difficulty in avoiding the identification of the logical with a ready-made organization of subject-matter, as well as the notion that the only way to escape this error is to pay no attention to logical considerations. Such a teacher will have no difficulty in seeing that the real problem of intellectual education is the transformation of natural powers into expert, tested powers: the transformation of more or less casual curiosity and sporadic suggestion into attitudes of alert, cautious, and thorough inquiry. He will see that the _psychological_ and the _logical_, instead of being opposed to each other (or even independent of each other), are connected _as the earlier and the later stages in one continuous process of normal growth_. The natural or psychological activities, even when not consciously controlled by logical considerations, have their own intellectual function and integrity; conscious and deliberate skill in thinking, when it is achieved, makes habitual or second nature. The first is already logical in spirit; the last, in presenting an ingrained disposition and attitude, is then as _psychological_ (as personal) as any caprice or chance impulse could be. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]Discipline of mind is thus, in truth, a result rather than a cause. Any mind is disciplined in a subject in which independent intellectual initiative and control have been achieved. Discipline represents original native endowment turned, through gradual exercise, into effective power. So far as a mind is disciplined, control of method in a given subject has been attained so that the mind is able to manage itself independently without external tutelage. The aim of education is precisely to develop intelligence of this independent and effective type--a _disciplined mind_. Discipline is positive and constructive. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]Discipline, however, is frequently regarded as something negative--as a painfully disagreeable forcing of mind away from channels congenial to it into channels of constraint, a process grievous at the time but necessary as preparation for a more or less remote future. Discipline is then generally identified with drill; and drill is conceived after the mechanical analogy of driving, by unremitting blows, a foreign substance into a resistant material; or is imaged after the analogy of the mechanical routine by which raw recruits are trained to a soldierly bearing and habits that are naturally wholly foreign to their possessors. Training of this latter sort, whether it be called discipline or not, is not mental discipline. Its aim and result are not _habits of thinking_, but uniform _external modes of action_. By failing to ask what he means by discipline, many a teacher is misled into supposing that he is developing mental force and efficiency by methods which in fact restrict and deaden intellectual activity, and which tend to create mechanical routine, or mental passivity and servility. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]When discipline is conceived in intellectual terms (as the habitual power of effective mental attack), it is identified with freedom in its true sense. For freedom of mind means mental power capable of independent exercise, emancipated from the leading strings of others, not mere unhindered external operation. When spontaneity or naturalness is identified with more or less casual discharge of transitory impulses, the tendency of the educator is to supply a multitude of stimuli in order that spontaneous activity may be kept up. All sorts of interesting materials, equipments, tools, modes of activity, are provided in order that there may be no flagging of free self-expression. This method overlooks some of the essential conditions of the attainment of genuine freedom. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY](_a_) Direct immediate discharge or expression of an impulsive tendency is fatal to thinking. Only when the impulse is to some extent checked and thrown back upon itself does reflection ensue. It is, indeed, a stupid error to suppose that arbitrary tasks must be imposed from without in order to furnish the factor of perplexity and difficulty which is the necessary cue to thought. Every vital activity of any depth and range inevitably meets obstacles in the course of its effort to realize itself--a fact that renders the search for artificial or external 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. Freedom does not consist in keeping up uninterrupted and unimpeded external activity, but is something achieved through conquering, by personal reflection, a way out of the difficulties that prevent an immediate overflow and a spontaneous success. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY](_b_) The method that emphasizes the psychological and natural, but yet fails to see what an important part of the natural tendencies is constituted at every period of growth by curiosity, inference, and the desire to test, cannot secure a _natural development_. In natural growth each successive stage of activity prepares unconsciously, but thoroughly, the conditions for the manifestation of the next stage--as in the cycle of a plant's growth. There is no ground for assuming that "thinking" is a special, isolated natural tendency that will bloom inevitably in due season simply because various sense and motor activities have been freely manifested before; or because observation, memory, imagination, and manual skill have been previously exercised without thought. Only when thinking is constantly employed in using the senses and muscles for the guidance and application of observations and movements, is the way prepared for subsequent higher types of thinking. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]At present, the notion is current that childhood is almost entirely unreflective--a period of mere sensory, motor, and memory development, while adolescence suddenly brings the manifestation of thought and reason. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]Adolescence is not, however, a synonym for magic. Doubtless youth should bring with it an enlargement of the horizon of childhood, a susceptibility to larger concerns and issues, a more generous and a more general standpoint toward nature and social life. This development affords an opportunity for thinking of a more comprehensive and abstract type than has previously obtained. But thinking itself remains just what it has been all the time: a matter of following up and testing the conclusions suggested by the facts and events of life. Thinking begins as soon as the baby who has lost the ball that he is playing with begins to foresee the possibility of something not yet existing--its recovery; and begins to forecast steps toward the realization of this possibility, and, by experimentation, to guide his acts by his ideas and thereby also test the ideas. Only by making the most of the thought-factor, already active in the experiences of childhood, is there any promise or warrant for the emergence of superior reflective power at adolescence, or at any later period. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY](_c_) In any case _positive habits are being formed_: if not habits of careful looking into things, then habits of hasty, heedless, impatient glancing over the surface; if not habits of consecutively following up the suggestions that occur, then habits of haphazard, grasshopper-like guessing; if not habits of suspending judgment till inferences have been tested by the examination of evidence, then habits of credulity alternating with flippant incredulity, belief or unbelief being based, in either case, upon whim, emotion, or accidental circumstances. The only way to achieve traits of carefulness, thoroughness, and continuity (traits that are, as we have seen, the elements of the "logical") is by exercising these traits from the beginning, and by seeing to it that conditions call for their exercise. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]Genuine freedom, in short, is intellectual; it rests in the trained _power of thought_, in ability to "turn things over," to look at matters deliberately, to judge whether the amount and kind of evidence requisite for decision is at hand, and if not, to tell where and how to seek such evidence. If a man's actions are not guided by thoughtful conclusions, then they are guided by inconsiderate impulse, unbalanced appetite, caprice, or the circumstances of the moment. To cultivate unhindered, unreflective external activity is to foster enslavement, for it leaves the person at the mercy of appetite, sense, and circumstance. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY] PART TWO: LOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]After a brief consideration in the first chapter of the nature of reflective thinking, we turned, in the second, to the need for its training. Then we took up the resources, the difficulties, and the aim of its training. The purpose of this discussion was to set before the student the general problem of the training of mind. The purport of the second part, upon which we are now entering, is giving a fuller statement of the nature and normal growth of thinking, preparatory to considering in the concluding part the special problems that arise in connection with its education. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]In this chapter we shall make an analysis of the process of thinking into its steps or elementary constituents, basing the analysis upon descriptions of a number of extremely simple, but genuine, cases of reflective experience.[13] [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]    [13] These are taken, almost verbatim, from the class papers of     students. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]1. "The other day when I was down town on 16th Street a clock caught my eye. I saw that the hands pointed to 12.20. This suggested that I had an engagement at 124th Street, at one o'clock. I reasoned that as it had taken me an hour to come down on a surface car, I should probably be twenty minutes late if I returned the same way. I might save twenty minutes by a subway express. But was there a station near? If not, I might lose more than twenty minutes in looking for one. Then I thought of the elevated, and I saw there was such a line within two blocks. But where was the station? If it were several blocks above or below the street I was on, I should lose time instead of gaining it. My mind went back to the subway express as quicker than the elevated; furthermore, I remembered that it went nearer than the elevated to the part of 124th Street I wished to reach, so that time would be saved at the end of the journey. I concluded in favor of the subway, and reached my destination by one o'clock." [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]2. "Projecting nearly horizontally from the upper deck of the ferryboat on which I daily cross the river, is a long white pole, bearing a gilded ball at its tip. It suggested a flagpole when I first saw it; its color, shape, and gilded ball agreed with this idea, and these reasons seemed to justify me in this belief. But soon difficulties presented themselves. The pole was nearly horizontal, an unusual position for a flagpole; in the next place, there was no pulley, ring, or cord by which to attach a flag; finally, there were elsewhere two vertical staffs from which flags were occasionally flown. It seemed probable that the pole was not there for flag-flying. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]"I then tried to imagine all possible purposes of such a pole, and to consider for which of these it was best suited: (_a_) Possibly it was an ornament. But as all the ferryboats and even the tugboats carried like poles, this hypothesis was rejected. (_b_) Possibly it was the terminal of a wireless telegraph. But the same considerations made this improbable. Besides, the more natural place for such a terminal would be the highest part of the boat, on top of the pilot house. (_c_) Its purpose might be to point out the direction in which the boat is moving. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]"In support of this conclusion, I discovered that the pole was lower than the pilot house, so that the steersman could easily see it. Moreover, the tip was enough higher than the base, so that, from the pilot's position, it must appear to project far out in front of the boat. Moreover, the pilot being near the front of the boat, he would need some such guide as to its direction. Tugboats would also need poles for such a purpose. This hypothesis was so much more probable than the others that I accepted it. I formed the conclusion that the pole was set up for the purpose of showing the pilot the direction in which the boat pointed, to enable him to steer correctly." [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]3. "In washing tumblers in hot soapsuds and placing them mouth downward on a plate, bubbles appeared on the outside of the mouth of the tumblers and then went inside. Why? The presence of bubbles suggests air, which I note must come from inside the tumbler. I see that the soapy water on the plate prevents escape of the air save as it may be caught in bubbles. But why should air leave the tumbler? There was no substance entering to force it out. It must have expanded. It expands by increase of heat or by decrease of pressure, or by both. Could the air have become heated after the tumbler was taken from the hot suds? Clearly not the air that was already entangled in the water. If heated air was the cause, cold air must have entered in transferring the tumblers from the suds to the plate. I test to see if this supposition is true by taking several more tumblers out. Some I shake so as to make sure of entrapping cold air in them. Some I take out holding mouth downward in order to prevent cold air from entering. Bubbles appear on the outside of every one of the former and on none of the latter. I must be right in my inference. Air from the outside must have been expanded by the heat of the tumbler, which explains the appearance of the bubbles on the outside. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]"But why do they then go inside? Cold contracts. The tumbler cooled and also the air inside it. Tension was removed, and hence bubbles appeared inside. To be sure of this, I test by placing a cup of ice on the tumbler while the bubbles are still forming outside. They soon reverse." [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]These three cases have been purposely selected so as to form a series from the more rudimentary to more complicated cases of reflection. The first illustrates the kind of thinking done by every one during the day's business, in which neither the data, nor the ways of dealing with them, take one outside the limits of everyday experience. The last furnishes a case in which neither problem nor mode of solution would have been likely to occur except to one with some prior scientific training. The second case forms a natural transition; its materials lie well within the bounds of everyday, unspecialized experience; but the problem, instead of being directly involved in the person's business, arises indirectly out of his activity, and accordingly appeals to a somewhat theoretic and impartial interest. We shall deal, in a later chapter, with the evolution of abstract thinking out of that which is relatively practical and direct; here we are concerned only with the common elements found in all the types. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]Upon examination, each instance reveals, more or less clearly, five logically distinct steps: (_i_) a felt difficulty; (_ii_) its location and definition; (_iii_) suggestion of possible solution; (_iv_) development by reasoning of the bearings of the suggestion; (_v_) further observation and experiment leading to its acceptance or rejection; that is, the conclusion of belief or disbelief. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]1. The first and second steps frequently fuse into one. The difficulty may be felt with sufficient definiteness as to set the mind at once speculating upon its probable solution, or an undefined uneasiness and shock may come first, leading only later to definite attempt to find out what is the matter. Whether the two steps are distinct or blended, there is the factor emphasized in our original account of reflection--_viz._ the perplexity or problem. In the first of the three cases cited, the difficulty resides in the conflict between conditions at hand and a desired and intended result, between an end and the means for reaching it. The purpose of keeping an engagement at a certain time, and the existing hour taken in connection with the location, are not congruous. The object of thinking is to introduce congruity between the two. The given conditions cannot themselves be altered; time will not go backward nor will the distance between 16th Street and 124th Street shorten itself. The problem is _the discovery of intervening terms which when inserted between the remoter end and the given means will harmonize them with each other_. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]In the second case, the difficulty experienced is the incompatibility of a suggested and (temporarily) accepted belief that the pole is a flagpole, with certain other facts. Suppose we symbolize the qualities that suggest _flagpole_ by the letters _a_, _b_, _c_; those that oppose this suggestion by the letters _p_, _q_, _r_. There is, of course, nothing inconsistent in the qualities themselves; but in pulling the mind to different and incongruous conclusions they conflict--hence the problem. Here the object is the discovery of some object (_O_), of which _a_, _b_, _c_, and _p_, _q_, _r_, may all be appropriate traits--just as, in our first case, it is to discover a course of action which will combine existing conditions and a remoter result in a single whole. The method of solution is also the same: discovery of intermediate qualities (the position of the pilot house, of the pole, the need of an index to the boat's direction) symbolized by _d_, _g_, _l_, _o_, which bind together otherwise incompatible traits. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]In the third case, an observer trained to the idea of natural laws or uniformities finds something odd or exceptional in the behavior of the bubbles. The problem is to reduce the apparent anomalies to instances of well-established laws. Here the method of solution is also to seek for intermediary terms which will connect, by regular linkage, the seemingly extraordinary movements of the bubbles with the conditions known to follow from processes supposed to be operative. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]2. As already noted, the first two steps, the feeling of a discrepancy, or difficulty, and the acts of observation that serve to define the character of the difficulty may, in a given instance, telescope together. In cases of striking novelty or unusual perplexity, the difficulty, however, is likely to present itself at first as a shock, as emotional disturbance, as a more or less vague feeling of the unexpected, of something queer, strange, funny, or disconcerting. In such instances, there are necessary observations deliberately calculated to bring to light just what is the trouble, or to make clear the specific character of the problem. In large measure, the existence or non-existence of this step makes the difference between reflection proper, or safeguarded _critical_ inference and uncontrolled thinking. Where sufficient pains to locate the difficulty are not taken, suggestions for its resolution must be more or less random. Imagine a doctor called in to prescribe for a patient. The patient tells him some things that are wrong; his experienced eye, at a glance, takes in other signs of a certain disease. But if he permits the suggestion of this special disease to take possession prematurely of his mind, to become an accepted conclusion, his scientific thinking is by that much cut short. A large part of his technique, as a skilled practitioner, is to prevent the acceptance of the first suggestions that arise; even, indeed, to postpone the occurrence of any very definite suggestion till the trouble--the nature of the problem--has been thoroughly explored. In the case of a physician this proceeding is known as diagnosis, but a similar inspection is required in every novel and complicated situation to prevent rushing to a conclusion. The essence of critical thinking is suspended judgment; and the essence of this suspense is inquiry to determine the nature of the problem before proceeding to attempts at its solution. This, more than any other thing, transforms mere inference into tested inference, suggested conclusions into proof. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]3. The third factor is suggestion. The situation in which the perplexity occurs calls up something not present to the senses: the present location, the thought of subway or elevated train; the stick before the eyes, the idea of a flagpole, an ornament, an apparatus for wireless telegraphy; the soap bubbles, the law of expansion of bodies through heat and of their contraction through cold. (_a_) Suggestion is the very heart of inference; it involves going from what is present to something absent. Hence, it is more or less speculative, adventurous. Since inference goes beyond what is actually present, it involves a leap, a jump, the propriety of which cannot be absolutely warranted in advance, no matter what precautions be taken. Its control is indirect, on the one hand, involving the formation of habits of mind which are at once enterprising and cautious; and on the other hand, involving the selection and arrangement of the particular facts upon perception of which suggestion issues. (_b_) The suggested conclusion so far as it is not accepted but only tentatively entertained constitutes an idea. Synonyms for this are _supposition_, _conjecture_, _guess_, _hypothesis_, and (in elaborate cases) _theory_. Since suspended belief, or the postponement of a final conclusion pending further evidence, depends partly upon the presence of rival conjectures as to the best course to pursue or the probable explanation to favor, _cultivation of a variety of alternative suggestions_ is an important factor in good thinking. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]4. The process of developing the bearings--or, as they are more technically termed, the _implications_--of any idea with respect to any problem, is termed _reasoning_.[14] As an idea is inferred from given facts, so reasoning sets out from an idea. The _idea_ of elevated road is developed into the idea of difficulty of locating station, length of time occupied on the journey, distance of station at the other end from place to be reached. In the second case, the implication of a flagpole is seen to be a vertical position; of a wireless apparatus, location on a high part of the ship and, moreover, absence from every casual tugboat; while the idea of index to direction in which the boat moves, when developed, is found to cover all the details of the case. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]    [14] This term is sometimes extended to denote the entire reflective     process--just as _inference_ (which in the sense of _test_ is best     reserved for the third step) is sometimes used in the same broad     sense. But _reasoning_ (or _ratiocination_) seems to be peculiarly     adapted to express what the older writers called the "notional" or     "dialectic" process of developing the meaning of a given idea. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]Reasoning has the same effect upon a suggested solution as more intimate and extensive observation has upon the original problem. Acceptance of the suggestion in its first form is prevented by looking into it more thoroughly. Conjectures that seem plausible at first sight are often found unfit or even absurd when their full consequences are traced out. Even when reasoning out the bearings of a supposition does not lead to rejection, it develops the idea into a form in which it is more apposite to the problem. Only when, for example, the conjecture that a pole was an index-pole had been thought out into its bearings could its particular applicability to the case in hand be judged. Suggestions at first seemingly remote and wild are frequently so transformed by being elaborated into what follows from them as to become apt and fruitful. The development of an idea through reasoning helps at least to supply the intervening or intermediate terms that link together into a consistent whole apparently discrepant extremes (_ante_, p. 72). [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]5. The concluding and conclusive step is some kind of _experimental corroboration_, or verification, of the conjectural idea. Reasoning shows that _if_ the idea be adopted, certain consequences follow. So far the conclusion is hypothetical or conditional. If we look and find present all the conditions demanded by the theory, and if we find the characteristic traits called for by rival alternatives to be lacking, the tendency to believe, to accept, is almost irresistible. Sometimes direct observation furnishes corroboration, as in the case of the pole on the boat. In other cases, as in that of the bubbles, experiment is required; that is, _conditions are deliberately arranged in accord with the requirements of an idea or hypothesis to see if the results theoretically indicated by the idea actually occur_. If it is found that the experimental results agree with the theoretical, or rationally deduced, results, and if there is reason to believe that _only_ the conditions in question would yield such results, the confirmation is so strong as to induce a conclusion--at least until contrary facts shall indicate the advisability of its revision. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]Observation exists at the beginning and again at the end of the process: at the beginning, to determine more definitely and precisely the nature of the difficulty to be dealt with; at the end, to test the value of some hypothetically entertained conclusion. Between those two termini of observation, we find the more distinctively _mental_ aspects of the entire thought-cycle: (_i_) inference, the suggestion of an explanation or solution; and (_ii_) reasoning, the development of the bearings and implications of the suggestion. Reasoning requires some experimental observation to confirm it, while experiment can be economically and fruitfully conducted only on the basis of an idea that has been tentatively developed by reasoning. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]The disciplined, or logically trained, mind--the aim of the educative process--is the mind able to judge how far each of these steps needs to be carried in any particular situation. No cast-iron rules can be laid down. Each case has to be dealt with as it arises, on the basis of its importance and of the context in which it occurs. To take too much pains in one case is as foolish--as illogical--as to take too little in another. At one extreme, almost any conclusion that insures prompt and unified action may be better than any long delayed conclusion; while at the other, decision may have to be postponed for a long period--perhaps for a lifetime. The trained mind is the one that best grasps the degree of observation, forming of ideas, reasoning, and experimental testing required in any special case, and that profits the most, in future thinking, by mistakes made in the past. What is important is that the mind should be sensitive to problems and skilled in methods of attack and solution. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]The characteristic outcome of thinking we saw to be the organization of facts and conditions which, just as they stand, are isolated, fragmentary, and discrepant, the organization being effected through the introduction of connecting links, or middle terms. The facts as they stand are the data, the raw material of reflection; their lack of coherence perplexes and stimulates to reflection. There follows the suggestion of some meaning which, _if_ it can be substantiated, will give a whole in which various fragmentary and seemingly incompatible data find their proper place. The meaning suggested supplies a mental platform, an intellectual point of view, from which to note and define the data more carefully, to seek for additional observations, and to institute, experimentally, changed conditions. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]There is thus a double movement in all reflection: a movement from the given partial and confused data to a suggested comprehensive (or inclusive) entire situation; and back from this suggested whole--which as suggested is a _meaning_, an idea--to the particular facts, so as to connect these with one another and with additional facts to which the suggestion has directed attention. Roughly speaking, the first of these movements is inductive; the second deductive. A complete act of thought involves both--it involves, that is, a fruitful interaction of observed (or recollected) particular considerations and of inclusive and far-reaching (general) meanings. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]This double movement _to_ and _from_ a meaning may occur, however, in a casual, uncritical way, or in a cautious and regulated manner. To think means, in any case, to bridge a gap in experience, to bind together facts or deeds otherwise isolated. But we may make only a hurried jump from one consideration to another, allowing our aversion to mental disquietude to override the gaps; or, we may insist upon noting the road traveled in making connections. We may, in short, accept readily any suggestion that seems plausible; or we may hunt out additional factors, new difficulties, to see whether the suggested conclusion really ends the matter. The latter method involves definite formulation of the connecting links; the statement of a principle, or, in logical phrase, the use of a universal. If we thus formulate the whole situation, the original data are transformed into premises of reasoning; the final belief is a logical or _rational_ conclusion, not a mere _de facto_ termination. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]The importance of _connections binding isolated items into a coherent single whole_ is embodied in all the phrases that denote the relation of premises and conclusions to each other. (1) The premises are called grounds, foundations, bases, and are said to underlie, uphold, support the conclusion. (2) We "descend" from the premises to the conclusion, and "ascend" or "mount" in the opposite direction--as a river may be continuously traced from source to sea or vice versa. So the conclusion springs, flows, or is drawn from its premises. (3) The conclusion--as the word itself implies--closes, shuts in, locks up together the various factors stated in the premises. We say that the premises "contain" the conclusion, and that the conclusion "contains" the premises, thereby marking our sense of the inclusive and comprehensive unity in which the elements of reasoning are bound tightly together.[15] Systematic inference, in short, means the _recognition of definite relations of interdependence between considerations previously unorganized and disconnected, this recognition being brought about by the discovery and insertion of new facts and properties_. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]    [15] See Vailati, _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific     Methods_, Vol. V, No. 12. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]This more systematic thinking is, however, like the cruder forms in its double movement, the movement _toward_ the suggestion or hypothesis and the movement _back_ to facts. The difference is in the greater conscious care with which each phase of the process is performed. _The conditions under which suggestions are allowed to spring up and develop are regulated._ Hasty acceptance of any idea that is plausible, that seems to solve the difficulty, is changed into a conditional acceptance pending further inquiry. The idea is accepted as a _working hypothesis_, as something to guide investigation and bring to light new facts, not as a final conclusion. When pains are taken to make each aspect of the movement as accurate as possible, the movement toward building up the idea is known as _inductive discovery_ (_induction_, for short); the movement toward developing, applying, and testing, as _deductive proof_ (_deduction_, for short). [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]While induction moves from fragmentary details (or particulars) to a connected view of a situation (universal), deduction begins with the latter and works back again to particulars, connecting them and binding them together. The inductive movement is toward _discovery_ of a binding principle; the deductive toward its _testing_--confirming, refuting, modifying it on the basis of its capacity to interpret isolated details into a unified experience. So far as we conduct each of these processes in the light of the other, we get valid discovery or verified critical thinking. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]A commonplace illustration may enforce the points of this formula. A man who has left his rooms in order finds them upon his return in a state of confusion, articles being scattered at random. Automatically, the notion comes to his mind that burglary would account for the disorder. He has not seen the burglars; their presence is not a fact of observation, but is a thought, an idea. Moreover, the man has no special burglars in mind; it is the _relation_, the meaning of burglary--something general--that comes to mind. The state of his room is perceived and is particular, definite,--exactly as it is; burglars are inferred, and have a general status. The state of the room is a _fact_, certain and speaking for itself; the presence of burglars is a possible _meaning_ which may explain the facts. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]So far there is an inductive tendency, suggested by particular and present facts. In the same inductive way, it occurs to him that his children are mischievous, and that they may have thrown the things about. This rival hypothesis (or conditional principle of explanation) prevents him from dogmatically accepting the first suggestion. Judgment is held in suspense and a positive conclusion postponed. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]Then deductive movement begins. Further observations, recollections, reasonings are conducted on the basis of a development of the ideas suggested: _if_ burglars were responsible, such and such things would have happened; articles of value would be missing. Here the man is going from a general principle or relation to special features that accompany it, to particulars,--not back, however, merely to the original particulars (which would be fruitless or take him in a circle), but to new details, the actual discovery or nondiscovery of which will test the principle. The man turns to a box of valuables; some things are gone; some, however, are still there. Perhaps he has himself removed the missing articles, but has forgotten it. His experiment is not a decisive test. He thinks of the silver in the sideboard--the children would not have taken that nor would he absent-mindedly have changed its place. He looks; all the solid ware is gone. The conception of burglars is confirmed; examination of windows and doors shows that they have been tampered with. Belief culminates; the original isolated facts have been woven into a coherent fabric. The idea first suggested (inductively) has been employed to reason out hypothetically certain additional particulars not yet experienced, that _ought_ to be there, if the suggestion is correct. Then new acts of observation have shown that the particulars theoretically called for are present, and by this process the hypothesis is strengthened, corroborated. This moving back and forth between the observed facts and the conditional idea is kept up till a coherent experience of an object is substituted for the experience of conflicting details--or else the whole matter is given up as a bad job. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 2. _Discipline and Freedom_ ) [DEWEY]Sciences exemplify similar attitudes and operations, but with a higher degree of elaboration of the instruments of caution, exactness and thoroughness. This greater elaboration brings about specialization, an accurate marking off of various types of problems from one another, and a corresponding segregation and classification of the materials of experience associated with each type of problem. We shall devote the remainder of this chapter to a consideration of the devices by which the discovery, the development, and the testing of meanings are scientifically carried on. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 2. _Guidance of the Inductive Movement_ ) [DEWEY]Control of the formation of suggestion is necessarily _indirect_, not direct; imperfect, not perfect. Just because all discovery, all apprehension involving thought of the new, goes from the known, the present, to the unknown and absent, no rules can be stated that will guarantee correct inference. Just what is suggested to a person in a given situation depends upon his native constitution (his originality, his genius), temperament, the prevalent direction of his interests, his early environment, the general tenor of his past experiences, his special training, the things that have recently occupied him continuously or vividly, and so on; to some extent even upon an accidental conjunction of present circumstances. These matters, so far as they lie in the past or in external conditions, clearly escape regulation. A suggestion simply does or does not occur; this or that suggestion just happens, occurs, springs up. If, however, prior experience and training have developed an attitude of patience in a condition of doubt, a capacity for suspended judgment, and a liking for inquiry, _indirect_ control of the course of suggestions is possible. The individual may return upon, revise, restate, enlarge, and analyze _the facts out of which suggestion springs_. Inductive methods, in the technical sense, all have to do with regulating the conditions under which _observation, memory, and the acceptance of the testimony of others_ (_the operations supplying the raw data_) proceed. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 2. _Guidance of the Inductive Movement_ ) [DEWEY]Given the facts _A B C D_ on one side and certain individual habits on the other, suggestion occurs automatically. But if the facts _A B C D_ are carefully looked into and thereby resolved into the facts _A´ B´´ R S_, a suggestion will automatically present itself different from that called up by the facts in their first form. To inventory the facts, to describe exactly and minutely their respective traits, to magnify artificially those that are obscure and feeble, to reduce artificially those that are so conspicuous and glaring as to be distracting,--these are ways of modifying the facts that exercise suggestive force, and thereby indirectly guiding the formation of suggested inferences. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 2. _Guidance of the Inductive Movement_ ) [DEWEY]Consider, for example, how a physician makes his diagnosis--his inductive interpretation. If he is scientifically trained, he suspends--postpones--reaching a conclusion in order that he may not be led by superficial occurrences into a snap judgment. Certain conspicuous phenomena may forcibly suggest typhoid, but he avoids a conclusion, or even any strong preference for this or that conclusion until he has greatly (_i_) _enlarged_ the scope of his data, and (_ii_) rendered them more _minute_. He not only questions the patient as to his feelings and as to his acts prior to the disease, but by various manipulations with his hands (and with instruments made for the purpose) brings to light a large number of facts of which the patient is quite unaware. The state of temperature, respiration, and heart-action is accurately noted, and their fluctuations from time to time are exactly recorded. Until this examination has worked _out_ toward a wider collection and _in_ toward a minuter scrutiny of details, inference is deferred. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 2. _Guidance of the Inductive Movement_ ) [DEWEY]Scientific induction means, in short, _all the processes by which the observing and amassing of data are regulated with a view to facilitating the formation of explanatory conceptions and theories_. These devices are all directed toward selecting the precise facts to which weight and significance shall attach in forming suggestions or ideas. Specifically, this selective determination involves devices of (1) elimination by analysis of what is likely to be misleading and irrelevant, (2) emphasis of the important by collection and comparison of cases, (3) deliberate construction of data by experimental variation. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 2. _Guidance of the Inductive Movement_ ) [DEWEY](1) It is a common saying that one must learn to discriminate between observed facts and judgments based upon them. Taken literally, such advice cannot be carried out; in every observed thing there is--if the thing have any meaning at all--some consolidation of meaning with what is sensibly and physically present, such that, if this were entirely excluded, what is left would have no sense. A says: "I saw my brother." The term _brother_, however, involves a relation that cannot be sensibly or physically observed; it is inferential in status. If A contents himself with saying, "I saw a man," the factor of classification, of intellectual reference, is less complex, but still exists. If, as a last resort, A were to say, "Anyway, I saw a colored object," some relationship, though more rudimentary and undefined, still subsists. Theoretically, it is possible that no object was there, only an unusual mode of nerve stimulation. None the less, the advice to discriminate what is observed from what is inferred is sound practical advice. Its working import is that one should eliminate or exclude _those_ inferences as to which experience has shown that there is greatest liability to error. This, of course, is a relative matter. Under ordinary circumstances no reasonable doubt would attach to the observation, "I see my brother"; it would be pedantic and silly to resolve this recognition back into a more elementary form. Under other circumstances it might be a perfectly genuine question as to whether A saw even a colored _thing_, or whether the color was due to a stimulation of the sensory optical apparatus (like "seeing stars" upon a blow) or to a disordered circulation. In general, the scientific man is one who knows that he is likely to be hurried to a conclusion, and that part of this precipitancy is due to certain habits which tend to make him "read" certain meanings into the situation that confronts him, so that he must be on the lookout against errors arising from his interests, habits, and current preconceptions. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 2. _Guidance of the Inductive Movement_ ) [DEWEY]The technique of scientific inquiry thus consists in various processes that tend to exclude over-hasty "reading in" of meanings; devices that aim to give a purely "objective" unbiased rendering of the data to be interpreted. Flushed cheeks usually mean heightened temperature; paleness means lowered temperature. The clinical thermometer records automatically the actual temperature and hence checks up the habitual associations that might lead to error in a given case. All the instrumentalities of observation--the various -meters and -graphs and -scopes--fill a part of their scientific rôle in helping to eliminate meanings supplied because of habit, prejudice, the strong momentary preoccupation of excitement and anticipation, and by the vogue of existing theories. Photographs, phonographs, kymographs, actinographs, seismographs, plethysmographs, and the like, moreover, give records that are permanent, so that they can be employed by different persons, and by the same person in different states of mind, _i.e._ under the influence of varying expectations and dominant beliefs. Thus purely personal prepossessions (due to habit, to desire, to after-effects of recent experience) may be largely eliminated. In ordinary language, the facts are _objectively_, rather than _subjectively_, determined. In this way tendencies to premature interpretation are held in check. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 2. _Guidance of the Inductive Movement_ ) [DEWEY](2) Another important method of control consists in the multiplication of cases or instances. If I doubt whether a certain handful gives a fair sample, or representative, for purposes of judging value, of a whole carload of grain, I take a number of handfuls from various parts of the car and compare them. If they agree in quality, well and good; if they disagree, we try to get enough samples so that when they are thoroughly mixed the result will be a fair basis for an evaluation. This illustration represents roughly the value of that aspect of scientific control in induction which insists upon multiplying observations instead of basing the conclusion upon one or a few cases. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 2. _Guidance of the Inductive Movement_ ) [DEWEY]So prominent, indeed, is this aspect of inductive method that it is frequently treated as the whole of induction. It is supposed that all inductive inference is based upon collecting and comparing a number of like cases. But in fact such comparison and collection is a secondary development within the process of securing a correct conclusion in some single case. If a man infers from a single sample of grain as to the grade of wheat of the car as a whole, it is induction and, under certain circumstances, a _sound_ induction; other cases are resorted to simply for the sake of rendering that induction more guarded, and more probably correct. In like fashion, the reasoning that led up to the burglary idea in the instance already cited (p. 83) was inductive, though there was but one single case examined. The particulars upon which the general meaning (or relation) of burglary was grounded were simply the sum total of the unlike items and qualities that made up the one case examined. Had this case presented very great obscurities and difficulties, recourse might _then_ have been had to examination of a number of similar cases. But this comparison would not make inductive a process which was not previously of that character; it would only render induction more wary and adequate. _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._ [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 2. _Guidance of the Inductive Movement_ ) [DEWEY]Accordingly, points of _unlikeness_ are as important as points of _likeness_ among the cases examined. _Comparison_, without _contrast_, does not amount to anything logically. In the degree in which other cases observed or remembered merely duplicate the case in question, we are no better off for purposes of inference than if we had permitted our single original fact to dictate a conclusion. In the case of the various samples of grain, it is the fact that the samples are unlike, at least in the part of the carload from which they are taken, that is important. Were it not for this unlikeness, their likeness in quality would be of no avail in assisting inference.[16] If we are endeavoring to get a child to regulate his conclusions about the germination of a seed by taking into account a number of instances, very little is gained if the conditions in all these instances closely approximate one another. But if one seed is placed in pure sand, another in loam, and another on blotting-paper, and if in each case there are two conditions, one with and another without moisture, the unlike factors tend to throw into relief the factors that are significant (or "essential") for reaching a conclusion. Unless, in short, the observer takes care to have the differences in the observed cases as extreme as conditions allow, and unless he notes unlikenesses as carefully as likenesses, he has no way of determining the evidential force of the data that confront him. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 2. _Guidance of the Inductive Movement_ ) [DEWEY]    [16] In terms of the phrases used in logical treatises, the     so-called "methods of agreement" (comparison) and "difference"     (contrast) must accompany each other or constitute a "joint method"     in order to be of logical use. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 2. _Guidance of the Inductive Movement_ ) [DEWEY]Another way of bringing out this importance of unlikeness is the emphasis put by the scientist upon _negative_ cases--upon instances which it would seem ought to fall into line but which as matter of fact do not. Anomalies, exceptions, things which agree in most respects but disagree in some crucial point, are so important that many of the devices of scientific technique are designed purely to detect, record, and impress upon memory contrasting cases. Darwin remarked that so easy is it to pass over cases that oppose a favorite generalization, that he had made it a habit not merely to hunt for contrary instances, but also to write down any exception he noted or thought of--as otherwise it was almost sure to be forgotten. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 3. _Experimental Variation of Conditions_ ) [DEWEY]We have already trenched upon this factor of inductive method, the one that is the most important of all wherever it is feasible. Theoretically, one sample case _of the right kind_ will be as good a basis for an inference as a thousand cases; but cases of the "right kind" rarely turn up spontaneously. We have to search for them, and we may 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. All inductive methods rest (as already stated, p. 85) upon regulation of the conditions of observation and memory; experiment is simply the most adequate regulation possible of these conditions. We try to make the observation such that every factor entering into it, together with the mode and the amount of its operation, may be open to recognition. Such making of observations constitutes experiment. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 3. _Experimental Variation of Conditions_ ) [DEWEY]Such observations have many and obvious advantages over observations--no matter how extensive--with respect to which we simply wait for an event to happen or an object to present itself. Experiment overcomes the defects due to (_a_) the _rarity_, (_b_) the _subtlety_ and minuteness (or the violence), and (_c_) the rigid _fixity_ of facts as we ordinarily experience them. The following quotations from Jevons's _Elementary Lessons in Logic_ bring out all these points: [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 3. _Experimental Variation of Conditions_ ) [DEWEY](_i_) "We might have to wait years or centuries to meet accidentally with facts which we can readily produce at any moment in a laboratory; and it is probable that most of the chemical substances now known, and many excessively useful products would never have been discovered at all by waiting till nature presented them spontaneously to our observation." [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 3. _Experimental Variation of Conditions_ ) [DEWEY]This quotation refers to the infrequency or rarity of certain facts of nature, even very important ones. The passage then goes on to speak of the minuteness of many phenomena which makes them escape ordinary experience: [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 3. _Experimental Variation of Conditions_ ) [DEWEY](_ii_) "Electricity doubtless operates in every particle of matter, perhaps at every moment of time; and even the ancients could not but notice its action in the loadstone, in lightning, in the Aurora Borealis, or in a piece of rubbed amber. But in lightning electricity was too intense and dangerous; in the other cases it was too feeble to be properly understood. The science of electricity and magnetism could only advance by getting regular supplies of electricity from the common electric machine or the galvanic battery and by making powerful electromagnets. Most, if not all, the effects which electricity produces must go on in nature, but altogether too obscurely for observation." [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 3. _Experimental Variation of Conditions_ ) [DEWEY]Jevons then deals with the fact that, under ordinary conditions of experience, phenomena which can be understood only by seeing them under varying conditions are presented in a fixed and uniform way. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 3. _Experimental Variation of Conditions_ ) [DEWEY](_iii_) "Thus carbonic acid is only met in the form of a gas, proceeding from the combustion of carbon; but when exposed to extreme pressure and cold, it is condensed into a liquid, and may even be converted into a snowlike solid substance. Many other gases have in like manner been liquefied or solidified, and there is reason to believe that every substance is capable of taking all three forms of solid, liquid, and gas, if only the conditions of temperature and pressure can be sufficiently varied. Mere observation of nature would have led us, on the contrary, to suppose that nearly all substances were fixed in one condition only, and could not be converted from solid into liquid and from liquid into gas." [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 3. _Experimental Variation of Conditions_ ) [DEWEY]Many volumes would be required to describe in detail all the methods that investigators have developed in various subjects for analyzing and restating the facts of ordinary experience so that we may escape from capricious and routine suggestions, and may get the facts in such a form and in such a light (or context) that exact and far-reaching explanations may be suggested in place of vague and limited ones. But these various devices of inductive inquiry all have one goal in view: the indirect regulation of the function of suggestion, or formation of ideas; and, in the main, they will be found to reduce to some combination of the three types of selecting and arranging subject-matter just described. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 4. _Guidance of the Deductive Movement_ ) [DEWEY]Before dealing directly with this topic, we must note that systematic regulation of induction depends upon the possession of a body of general principles that may be applied deductively to the examination or construction of particular cases as they come up. If the physician does not know the general laws of the physiology of the human body, he has little way of telling what is either peculiarly significant or peculiarly exceptional in any particular case that he is called upon to treat. If he knows the laws of circulation, digestion, and respiration, he can deduce the conditions that should normally be found in a given case. These considerations give a base line from which the deviations and abnormalities of a particular case may be measured. In this way, _the nature of the problem at hand is located and defined_. Attention is not wasted upon features which though conspicuous have nothing to do with the case; it is concentrated upon just those traits which are out of the way and hence require explanation. A question well put is half answered; _i.e._ a difficulty clearly apprehended is likely to suggest its own solution,--while a vague and miscellaneous perception of the problem leads to groping and fumbling. Deductive systems are necessary in order to put the question in a fruitful form. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 4. _Guidance of the Deductive Movement_ ) [DEWEY]The control of the origin and development of hypotheses by deduction does not cease, however, with locating the problem. Ideas as they first present themselves are inchoate and incomplete. _Deduction is their elaboration into fullness and completeness of meaning_ (see p. 76). The phenomena which the physician isolates from the total mass of facts that exist in front of him suggest, we will say, typhoid fever. Now this conception of typhoid fever is one that is capable of development. _If_ there is typhoid, _wherever_ there is typhoid, there are certain results, certain characteristic symptoms. By going over mentally the full bearing of the concept of typhoid, the scientist is instructed as to further phenomena to be found. Its development gives him an instrument of inquiry, of observation and experimentation. He can go to work deliberately to see whether the case presents those features that it should have if the supposition is valid. The deduced results form a basis for comparison with observed results. Except where there is a system of principles capable of being elaborated by theoretical reasoning, the process of testing (or proof) of a hypothesis is incomplete and haphazard. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 4. _Guidance of the Deductive Movement_ ) [DEWEY]These considerations indicate the method by which the deductive movement is guided. Deduction requires a system of allied ideas which may be translated into one another by regular or graded steps. The question is whether the facts that confront us can be identified as typhoid fever. To all appearances, there is a great gap between them and typhoid. But if we can, by some method of substitutions, go through a series of intermediary terms (see p. 72), the gap may, after all, be easily bridged. Typhoid may mean _p_ which in turn means _o_, which means _n_ which means _m_, which is very similar to the data selected as the key to the problem. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 4. _Guidance of the Deductive Movement_ ) [DEWEY]One of the chief objects of science is to provide for every typical branch of subject-matter a set of meanings and principles so closely interknit that any one implies some other according to definite conditions, which under certain other conditions implies another, and so on. In this way, various substitutions of equivalents are possible, and reasoning can trace out, without having recourse to specific observations, very remote consequences of any suggested principle. Definition, general formulæ, and classification are the devices by which the fixation and elaboration of a meaning into its detailed ramifications are carried on. They are not ends in themselves--as they are frequently regarded even in elementary education--but instrumentalities for facilitating the development of a conception into the form where its applicability to given facts may best be tested.[17] [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 4. _Guidance of the Deductive Movement_ ) [DEWEY]    [17] These processes are further discussed in Chapter IX. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 4. _Guidance of the Deductive Movement_ ) [DEWEY]The final test of deduction lies in experimental observation. Elaboration by reasoning may make a suggested idea very rich and very plausible, but it will not settle the validity of that idea. Only if facts can be observed (by methods either of collection or of experimentation), that agree in detail and without exception with the deduced results, are we justified in accepting the deduction as giving a valid conclusion. Thinking, in short, must end as well as begin in the domain of concrete observations, if it is to be complete thinking. And the ultimate educative value of all deductive processes is measured by the degree to which they become working tools in the creation and development of new experiences. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 5. _Some Educational Bearings of the Discussion_ ) [DEWEY]Some of the points of the foregoing logical analysis may be clinched by a consideration of their educational implications, especially with reference to certain practices that grow out of a false separation by which each is thought to be independent of the other and complete in itself. (_i_) In some school subjects, or at all events in some topics or in some lessons, the pupils are immersed in details; their minds are loaded with disconnected items (whether gleaned by observation and memory, or accepted on hearsay and authority). Induction is treated as beginning and ending with the amassing of facts, of particular isolated pieces of information. That these items are educative only as suggesting a view of some larger situation in which the particulars are included and thereby accounted for, is ignored. In object lessons in elementary education and in laboratory instruction in higher education, the subject is often so treated that the student fails to "see the forest on account of the trees." Things and their qualities are retailed and detailed, without reference to a more general character which they stand for and mean. Or, in the laboratory, the student becomes engrossed in the processes of manipulation,--irrespective of the reason for their performance, without recognizing a typical problem for the solution of which they afford the appropriate method. Only deduction brings out and emphasizes consecutive relationships, and only when _relationships_ are held in view does learning become more than a miscellaneous scrap-bag. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 5. _Some Educational Bearings of the Discussion_ ) [DEWEY](_ii_) Again, the mind is allowed to hurry on to a vague notion of the whole of which the fragmentary facts are portions, without any attempt to become conscious of _how_ they are bound together as parts of this whole. The student feels that "in a general way," as we say, the facts of the history or geography lesson are related thus and so; but "in a general way" here stands only for "in a vague way," somehow or other, with no clear recognition of just how. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 5. _Some Educational Bearings of the Discussion_ ) [DEWEY]The pupil is encouraged to form, on the basis of the particular facts, a general notion, a conception of how they stand related; but no pains are taken to make the student follow up the notion, to elaborate it and see just what its bearings are upon the case in hand and upon similar cases. The inductive inference, the guess, is formed by the student; if it happens to be correct, it is at once accepted by the teacher; or if it is false, it is rejected. If any amplification of the idea occurs, it is quite likely carried through by the teacher, who thereby assumes the responsibility for its intellectual development. But a complete, an integral, act of thought requires that the person making the suggestion (the guess) be responsible also for reasoning out its bearings upon the problem in hand; that he develop the suggestion at least enough to indicate the ways in which it applies to and accounts for the specific data of the case. Too often when a recitation does not consist in simply testing the ability of the student to display some form of technical skill, or to repeat facts and principles accepted on the authority of text-book or lecturer, the teacher goes to the opposite extreme; and after calling out the spontaneous reflections of the pupils, their guesses or ideas about the matter, merely accepts or rejects them, assuming himself the responsibility for their elaboration. In this way, the function of suggestion and of interpretation is excited, but it is not directed and trained. Induction is stimulated but is not carried over into the _reasoning_ phase necessary to complete it. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 5. _Some Educational Bearings of the Discussion_ ) [DEWEY]In other subjects and topics, the deductive phase is isolated, and is treated as if it were complete in itself. This false isolation may show itself in either (and both) of two points; namely, at the beginning or at the end of the resort to general intellectual procedure. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 5. _Some Educational Bearings of the Discussion_ ) [DEWEY](_iii_) Beginning with definitions, rules, general principles, classifications, and the like, is a common form of the first error. This method has been such a uniform object of attack on the part of all educational reformers that it is not necessary to dwell upon it further than to note that the mistake is, logically, due to the attempt to introduce deductive considerations without first making acquaintance with the particular facts that create a need for the generalizing rational devices. Unfortunately, the reformer sometimes carries his objection too far, or rather locates it in the wrong place. He is led into a tirade against _all_ definition, all systematization, all use of general principles, instead of confining himself to pointing out their futility and their deadness when not properly motivated by familiarity with concrete experiences. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 5. _Some Educational Bearings of the Discussion_ ) [DEWEY](_iv_) The isolation of deduction is seen, at the other end, wherever there is failure to clinch and test the results of the general reasoning processes by application to new concrete cases. The final point of the deductive devices lies in their use in assimilating and comprehending individual cases. No one understands a general principle fully--no matter how adequately he can demonstrate it, to say nothing of repeating it--till he can employ it in the mastery of new situations, which, if they _are_ new, differ in manifestation from the cases used in reaching the generalization. Too often the text-book or teacher is contented with a series of somewhat perfunctory examples and illustrations, and the student is not forced to carry the principle that he has formulated over into further cases of his own experience. In so far, the principle is inert and dead. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION ( § 5. _Some Educational Bearings of the Discussion_ ) [DEWEY](_v_) It is only a variation upon this same theme to say that every complete act of reflective inquiry makes provision for experimentation--for testing suggested and accepted principles by employing them for the active construction of new cases, in which new qualities emerge. Only slowly do our schools accommodate themselves to the general advance of scientific method. From the scientific side, it is demonstrated that effective and integral thinking is possible only where the experimental method in some form is used. Some recognition of this principle is evinced in higher institutions of learning, colleges and high schools. But in elementary education, it is still assumed, for the most part, that the pupil's natural range of observations, supplemented by what he accepts on hearsay, is adequate for intellectual growth. Of course it is not necessary that laboratories shall be introduced under that name, much less that elaborate apparatus be secured; but the entire scientific history of humanity demonstrates that the conditions for complete mental activity will not be obtained till adequate provision is made for the carrying on of activities that actually modify physical conditions, and that books, pictures, and even objects that are passively observed but not manipulated do not furnish the provision required. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - JUDGMENT: THE INTERPRETATION OF FACTS ( § 5. _Some Educational Bearings of the Discussion_ ) [DEWEY]A man of good judgment in a given set of affairs is a man in so far educated, trained, whatever may be his literacy. And if our schools turn out their pupils in that attitude of mind which is conducive to good judgment in any department of affairs in which the pupils are placed, they have done more than if they sent out their pupils merely possessed of vast stores of information, or high degrees of skill in specialized branches. To know what is _good_ judgment we need first to know what judgment is. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - JUDGMENT: THE INTERPRETATION OF FACTS ( § 5. _Some Educational Bearings of the Discussion_ ) [DEWEY]That there is an intimate connection between judgment and inference is obvious enough. The aim of inference is to terminate itself in an adequate judgment of a situation, and the course of inference goes on through a series of partial and tentative judgments. What are these units, these terms of inference when we examine them on their own account? Their significant traits may be readily gathered from a consideration of the operations to which the word _judgment_ was originally applied: namely, the authoritative decision of matters in legal controversy--the procedure of the _judge on the bench_. There are three such features: (1) a controversy, consisting of opposite claims regarding the same objective situation; (2) a process of defining and elaborating these claims and of sifting the facts adduced to support them; (3) a final decision, or sentence, closing the particular matter in dispute and also serving as a rule or principle for deciding future cases. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - JUDGMENT: THE INTERPRETATION OF FACTS ( § 5. _Some Educational Bearings of the Discussion_ ) [DEWEY]1. Unless there is something doubtful, the situation is read off at a glance; it is taken in on sight, _i.e._ there is merely apprehension, perception, recognition, not judgment. If the matter is wholly doubtful, if it is dark and obscure throughout, there is a blind mystery and again no judgment occurs. But if it suggests, however vaguely, different meanings, rival possible interpretations, there is some _point at issue_, some _matter at stake_. Doubt takes the form of dispute, controversy; different sides compete for a conclusion in their favor. Cases brought to trial before a judge illustrate neatly and unambiguously this strife of alternative interpretations; but any case of trying to clear up intellectually a doubtful situation exemplifies the same traits. A moving blur catches our eye in the distance; we ask ourselves: "What is it? Is it a cloud of whirling dust? a tree waving its branches? a man signaling to us?" Something in the total situation suggests each of these possible meanings. Only one of them can possibly be sound; perhaps none of them is appropriate; yet _some_ meaning the thing in question surely has. Which of the alternative suggested meanings has the rightful claim? What does the perception really mean? How is it to be interpreted, estimated, appraised, placed? Every judgment proceeds from some such situation. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - JUDGMENT: THE INTERPRETATION OF FACTS ( § 5. _Some Educational Bearings of the Discussion_ ) [DEWEY]2. The hearing of the controversy, the trial, _i.e._ the weighing of alternative claims, divides into two branches, either of which, in a given case, may be more conspicuous than the other. In the consideration of a legal dispute, these two branches are sifting the evidence and selecting the rules that are applicable; they are "the facts" and "the law" of the case. In judgment they are (_a_) the determination of the data that are important in the given case (compare the inductive movement); and (_b_) the elaboration of the conceptions or meanings suggested by the crude data (compare the deductive movement). (_a_) What portions or aspects of the situation are significant in controlling the formation of the interpretation? (_b_) Just what is the full meaning and bearing of the conception that is used as a method of interpretation? These questions are strictly correlative; the answer to each depends upon the answer to the other. We may, however, for convenience, consider them separately. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - JUDGMENT: THE INTERPRETATION OF FACTS ( § 5. _Some Educational Bearings of the Discussion_ ) [DEWEY](_a_) In every actual occurrence, there are many details which are part of the total occurrence, but which nevertheless are not significant in relation to the point at issue. All parts of an experience are equally present, but they are very far from being of equal value as signs or as evidences. Nor is there any tag or label on any trait saying: "This is important," or "This is trivial." Nor is intensity, or vividness or conspicuousness, a safe measure of indicative and proving value. The glaring thing may be totally insignificant in this particular situation, and the key to the understanding of the whole matter may be modest or hidden (compare p. 74). Features that are not significant are distracting; they proffer their claims to be regarded as clues and cues to interpretation, while traits that are significant do not appear on the surface at all. Hence, judgment is required _even in reference_ to the situation or event that is present to the senses; elimination or rejection, selection, discovery, or bringing to light must take place. Till we have reached a final conclusion, rejection and selection must be tentative or conditional. We select the things that we hope or trust are cues to meaning. But if they do not suggest a situation that accepts and includes them (see p. 81), we reconstitute our data, the facts of the case; for we mean, intellectually, by the facts of the case _those traits that are used as evidence in reaching a conclusion or forming a decision_. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - JUDGMENT: THE INTERPRETATION OF FACTS ( § 5. _Some Educational Bearings of the Discussion_ ) [DEWEY]No hard and fast rules for this operation of selecting and rejecting, or fixing upon the facts, can be given. It all comes back, as we say, to the good judgment, the good sense, of the one judging. 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 outcome; what to emphasize as a clue to the difficulty.[18] This power in ordinary matters we call _knack_, _tact_, _cleverness_; in more important affairs, _insight_, _discernment_. In part it is instinctive or inborn; but it also represents the funded outcome of long familiarity with like operations in the past. 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. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - JUDGMENT: THE INTERPRETATION OF FACTS ( § 5. _Some Educational Bearings of the Discussion_ ) [DEWEY]    [18] Compare what was said about _analysis_. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - JUDGMENT: THE INTERPRETATION OF FACTS ( § 5. _Some Educational Bearings of the Discussion_ ) [DEWEY]Mill cites the following case, which is worth noting as an instance of the extreme delicacy and accuracy to which may be developed this power of sizing up the significant factors of a situation. "A Scotch manufacturer procured from England, at a high rate of wages, a working dyer, famous for producing very fine colors, with the view of teaching to his other workmen the same skill. The workman came; but his method of proportioning the ingredients, in which lay the secret of the effects he produced, was by taking them up in handfuls, while the common method was to weigh them. The manufacturer sought to make him turn his handling system into an equivalent weighing system, that the general principles of his peculiar mode of proceeding might be ascertained. This, however, the man found himself quite unable to do, and could therefore impart his own skill to nobody. He had, from individual cases of his own experience, established a connection in his mind between fine effects of color and tactual perceptions in handling his dyeing materials; and from these perceptions he could, in any particular case, _infer the means to be employed_ and the effects which would be produced." Long brooding over conditions, intimate contact associated with keen interest, thorough absorption in a multiplicity of allied experiences, tend to bring about those judgments which we then call intuitive; but they are true judgments because they are based on intelligent selection and estimation, with the solution of a problem as the controlling standard. Possession of this capacity makes the difference between the artist and the intellectual bungler. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - JUDGMENT: THE INTERPRETATION OF FACTS ( § 5. _Some Educational Bearings of the Discussion_ ) [DEWEY]Such is judging ability, in its completest form, as to the data of the decision to be reached. But in any case there is a certain feeling along for the way to be followed; a constant tentative picking out of certain qualities to see what emphasis upon them would lead to; a willingness to hold final selection in suspense; and to reject the factors entirely or relegate them to a different position in the evidential scheme if other features yield more solvent suggestions. Alertness, flexibility, curiosity are the essentials; dogmatism, rigidity, prejudice, caprice, arising from routine, passion, and flippancy are fatal. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - JUDGMENT: THE INTERPRETATION OF FACTS ( § 5. _Some Educational Bearings of the Discussion_ ) [DEWEY](_b_) This selection of data is, of course, for the sake of controlling the _development and elaboration of the suggested meaning in the light of which they are to be interpreted_ (compare p. 76). An evolution of conceptions thus goes on simultaneously with the determination of the facts; one possible meaning after another is held before the mind, considered in relation to the data to which it is applied, is developed into its more detailed bearings upon the data, is dropped or tentatively accepted and used. We do not approach any problem with a wholly naïve or virgin mind; we approach it with certain acquired habitual modes of understanding, with a certain store of previously evolved meanings, or at least of experiences from which meanings may be educed. If the circumstances are such that a habitual response is called directly into play, there is an immediate grasp of meaning. If the habit is checked, and inhibited from easy application, a possible meaning for the facts in question presents itself. No hard and fast rules decide whether a meaning suggested is the right and proper meaning to follow up. The individual's own good (or bad) judgment is the guide. There is no label on any given idea or principle which says automatically, "Use me in this situation"--as the magic cakes of Alice in Wonderland were inscribed "Eat me." The thinker has to decide, to choose; and there is always a risk, so that the prudent thinker selects warily, subject, that is, to confirmation or frustration by later events. If one is not able to estimate wisely what is relevant to the interpretation of a given perplexing or doubtful issue, it avails little that arduous learning has built up a large stock of concepts. For learning is not wisdom; information does not guarantee good judgment. Memory may provide an antiseptic refrigerator in which to store a stock of meanings for future use, but judgment selects and adopts the one used in a given emergency--and without an emergency (some crisis, slight or great) there is no call for judgment. 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 or prove it a valid idea for the given situation. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - JUDGMENT: THE INTERPRETATION OF FACTS ( § 5. _Some Educational Bearings of the Discussion_ ) [DEWEY]3. The judgment when formed is a _decision_; it closes (or concludes) the question at issue. This determination not only settles that particular case, but it 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 forms 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 (see below, p. 118). [/DEWEY]


Chapter - JUDGMENT: THE INTERPRETATION OF FACTS ( § 2. _The Origin and Nature of Ideas_ ) [DEWEY]This brings us to the question of _ideas in relation to judgments_.[19] Something in an obscure situation suggests something else as its meaning. If this meaning is at once accepted, there is no reflective thinking, no genuine judging. Thought is cut short uncritically; dogmatic belief, with all its attending risks, takes place. But if the meaning suggested is held _in suspense_, pending examination and inquiry, there is true judgment. We stop and think, we _de-fer_ conclusion in order to _in-fer_ more thoroughly. In this process of being only conditionally accepted, accepted only for examination, _meanings become ideas_. _That is to say, an idea is a meaning that is tentatively entertained, formed, and used with reference to its fitness to decide a perplexing situation,--a meaning used as a tool of judgment._ [/DEWEY]


Chapter - JUDGMENT: THE INTERPRETATION OF FACTS ( § 2. _The Origin and Nature of Ideas_ ) [DEWEY]    [19] The term _idea_ is also used popularly to denote (_a_) a mere     fancy, (_b_) an accepted belief, and also (_c_) judgment itself. But     _logically_ it denotes a certain _factor_ in judgment, as explained     in the text. [/DEWEY]


Chapter - JUDGMENT: THE INTERPRETATION OF FACTS ( § 2. _The Origin and Nature of Ideas_ ) [DEWEY]Let us recur to our instance of a blur in motion appearing at a distance. We wonder what _the thing is_, _i.e._ what the _blur means_. A man waving his arms, a friend beckoning to us, are suggested as possibilities. To accept at once either alternative is to arrest judgment. But if we treat what is suggested as only a suggestion, a supposition, a possibility, it becomes an idea, having the following traits: (_a_) As merely a suggestion, it is a conjecture, a guess, which in cases of greater dignity we call a hypothesis or a theory. That is to say, it is _a possible but as yet doubtful mode of interpretation_. (_b_) Even though doubtful, it has an office to perform; namely, that of directing inquiry and examination. If this blur means a friend beckoning, then careful observation should show certain other traits. If it is a man driving unruly cattle, certain other traits should be found. Let us look and see if these traits are found. Taken merely as a doubt, an idea would paralyze inquiry. Taken merely as a certainty, it would arrest inquiry. Taken as a doubtful possibility, it affords a standpoint, a platform, a method of inquiry. [/DEWEY]