Doomed in advance to defeat?

John Dewey on logical empiricism, reductionism, and values

George Reisch

pp. 241-251

in: Elisabeth Nemeth, Nicolas Roudet (eds), Paris — Wien, Berlin, Springer, 2005

Abstract

This essay describes correspondence in the late 1930s among John Dewey, Charles Morris, Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap concerning Dewey's contributions to Neurath's International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. The essay argues that Dewey especially viewed the Encyclopedia as a socially and culturally important project, even though he had reservations about logical empiricism's approach to understanding values in science and scientific method. Around Dewey's specific objections to intertheoretic reductionism, this paper argues, were clustered more general concerns about values in science, in culture, and the need to oppose the popular neo-Thomist critique of science and scientific philosophy.

Cited authors

Carnap Rudolf

Morris Charles

Dewey John

Neurath Otto