“Savage” Culture, “Civilized” Science, and the Norms of Inquiry

• In Event: Roundtable Session 19
  In Roundtable Session: Explorations of Central Ideas in John Dewey’s Philosophy of Education

Abstract

This paper will examine the place of the contrast between primitive and civilized human cultures in John Dewey’s theory of inquiry. The contrast appears at key moments in Dewey’s work, both as a means of presenting a history of philosophy and as a means of demonstrating the difference between unsuccessful and successful inquiry. The contrast appears as a normative framework for evaluating inquiry and identifying practices as science. I will argue that there is a fundamental tension between this primitive/civilized scale of development and theory of inquiry. I will conclude that the scale is not essential to the theory and that the resulting reconsideration has implications for the theory of inquiry and Dewey’s theory of education.

Author

• Scott L. Pratt, University of Oregon