The Nature of Science

What is “science”? And why would Dewey consider science to have such central importance for education that it is an essential study, for all students, at every level, starting with the earliest childhood education, and continuing right on up through college?

Many of Dewey’s ideas about the nature of science, and the role of science education in schools, may seem counterintuitive. In Dewey’s view, the processes of scientific inquiry, generalized, are essential in developing a person’s ability to think intelligently, and to act intelligently in solving problems of all sorts. Even moral questions, for example, how should I act toward others, under certain conditions? or what ends ought I to pursue?, are best approached by the sort of inquiry processes that constitute scientific inquiry.

Dewey writes that “[s]cience is the perfecting of knowing, its last stage.” Dewey often refers to scientific method as “the method of intelligence.” Dewey is explicit: Science “is the sole instrumentality of conscious, as distinct from accidental, progress” (MW 9: 236). Both technical progress and moral progress are advanced through scientific inquiry and the growth of scientific knowledge, and through the wide social distribution of scientific dispositions.Footnote ¹

The growth of science is the process of “experience becoming rational” (MW 9: 233). In modern science, reason is understood as belonging to, and serving in, the practical world of experience, as “the factor by which past experiences are purified and rendered into tools for discovery and advance” (MW 9: 233). Reason is conceptually linked to the practical activities of scientific inquiry.

Dewey holds that “the end of science teaching is to make us aware what constitutes the most effective use of mind, of intelligence; to give us a working sense of the real nature of knowledge, of sound knowledge as distinct from mere guess work, opinion, dogmatic belief or whatever” (MW 10: 130). He then emphasizes that, without an acquaintance with science, “with scientific ways of dealing with a subject-matter … [a person] has no sure way of knowing how, or when, he is using his mental powers most capably and fruitfully” (MW 10: 131).

The term “science” has two meanings. It is used to refer either to (a) the body of scientific knowledge, the product of scientific inquiry, or to (b) the method of scientific inquiry. Scientific knowledge is a complex and logically ordered system of well-warranted statements and theories that are intended to specify the dynamic natural interrelationships that constitute the world. Human beings, being fully natural thing/events, are fully implicated in that dynamic system. This is clearly revealed whenever one acts, which is to say, at every moment. Scientific inquiry provides persons with strong reasons to believe the achieved statements are true. The process of scientific inquiry provides all the “warrant” one can have to believe that the statements are true. “Warranted assertability,” for Dewey, is exactly the same thing as knowledge.

Scientific method is a process of experimental inquiry into the dynamic natural processes of change. An experimental method requires the making of hypotheses, the continual, open, and public testing of the hypotheses through action, and the widespread communication of the findings. This communication is important – it is intended to draw critical attention to the conclusions, and thus to promote even more testing. Dewey uses the term “knowing” to refer to the process of coming to know, that is, the activities of scientific inquiry. Scientific knowing (the active process) leads to scientific knowledge (the intellectual product).

Scientific inquiry begins (or should begin) whenever one finds oneself immersed in an “indeterminate situation”: a situation in which one, quite literally, doesn’t know what to do. This is true for all genuine inquiry. We only begin to think reflectively when we are forced to “stop, and think,” when a situation that is doubtful, or uncertain, impedes an ongoing course of action (see chapter 11 of DE).

What does Dewey mean by the key terms “indeterminate” and “determinate”? A situation is “indeterminate” when its critical features, those dynamic factors that operate for weal or woe as one attempts to act in the situation to pursue a goal, are unknown. The dynamic factors are there, in the situation, and they are operative, but they are not understood, and perhaps not even noticed. Indeterminate situations, Dewey notes, may be described as “disturbed, troubled, ambiguous, confused, full of conflicting tendencies, obscure, etc.” (LW 12: 109). It is important to note that it is the situation itself that has this confused character.

In an indeterminate situation, attempts to act are likely to be thwarted, unless one happens to be lucky. When one is in an indeterminate situation, the first step to reliable effective action is simply to recognize that one does not know how to proceed in the situation. At this point, one might recognize the indeterminate situation as a problem-situation. This recognition that the situation is problematic is the first step in inquiry, the impetus to the subsequent activities of inquiry.Footnote ²

The problem situation may have the form of an intellectual puzzle, or a practical difficulty; it may have the scope of a drive to work, or an international crisis. In every case, the person involved finds out, through trial, that his or her current stock of knowledge has failed and that usually reliable habits are inadequate to deal with the situation.

To respond well to any problem situation, one must engage in the activity of inquiry, using, at least in rough form, the method of science. One must generate new knowledge that will allow one to effectively act to achieve one’s goals, given the existence of the problem situation. Scientific inquiry is the best approach, because it is the only effective means to “secure a settled, assured subject matter” (MW 9: 227), turning the “indeterminate” situation into a “determinate” situation, that is, a situation one understands, and in which one can act effectively.

Scientific inquiry requires active processes of observation. One uses whatever resources one has available, practical and intellectual, to try to determine the constituents of the problem situation, the current conditions that constitute the problem. One’s existing store of knowledge, though inadequate, is certainly relevant (e.g., memory, of books, or online sources, etc.) and it may give one some thoughts as to the nature of the problem. To this cognitive resource, one adds whatever information one can glean from intently examining the present conditions. Through this active examination, one begins, gradually, to determine the nature of the problem situation. One learns what conditions are present, and whether, and, if so, how those conditions are operative in creating the problem. (The air-conditioning is not working. Perhaps the fuse is blown? Observation: No, the fuse switch is in the “on” position.) Little by little, the problem situation becomes more determinate.

The next phase of scientific inquiry is the active process of reflection. Building on one’s knowledge and current observations, one tries to imagine the possible meanings of the problem situation. What do the observations point to, what do they suggest, as to the causal conditions that led to, and will lead from, the problem situation? For each interpretation that is imagined, one thinks: what would be the best way to act, to respond, if the situation actually is like this? One forms “ideas,” in Dewey’s special sense; these are plans of action that, if implemented, might resolve the problem situation. These ideas are formulated as hypotheses, which take an “if-then” form: “if the situation really is as I’ve imagined it, and if, in this situation, I act in this particular way, then I should see certain specific changes occur, and a new situation emerge.”

Testing the hypothesis is next. One actually takes the actions that are stated in the hypothesis, and observes the resulting situation. If the resulting situation is as was predicted in the hypothesis, the hypothesis has passed the test. Simultaneously, the problem situation is resolved. One is now able to act effectively, and one has also acquired new knowledge about the kind of situation one has just been in. This new knowledge becomes a resource for guiding action in future similar situations.

Teaching Science

Given the nature of science as both a process of inquiry and a body of knowledge, Dewey concludes that “the rightful place of science in education is a fundamental one” (MW 10: 131). Science, as a system of knowledge, is, not surprisingly, hard to learn. Scientific knowledge has a highly elaborated logical form, including as it does definite mathematical formulations of the dynamic causal connections holding between and among events in the world. Helping students develop a rich and accurate understanding of scientific knowledge, with its complex logical order, is one of the aims of science education.

Because of this complexity, it is essential that science education proceed in a chronological, or psychological, order, rather than in the logical order inherent in the body of scientific knowledge. The psychological order takes into account the conditions that actually promote the psychological development of understanding of systems of scientific knowledge. An approach that emphasizes the logical order of the body of current scientific knowledge in biology, for example, might focus the students’ attention on the taxonomic classification system. Study might then proceed from the simplest organisms, and finish with the principles of ecology. But this logical approach ignores, and fails to use, the intense interest that the students might have in the dynamics of the local ecology happening right outside the school door. Studying the local stream ecology may begin with fish, frogs, and insects, but eventually, of necessity, will include the study of microbiology and water chemistry – indeed, the whole systematic body of biological knowledge. Acquiring this systematic knowledge is commonly taken to be the principal goal of science education.

But, this is not the most important goal of science education, in Dewey’s view. The value of acquiring a body of scientific knowledge, while great, is far less than the value of developing the scientific attitude. The most important aim of science teaching, in Dewey’s view, is to develop the disposition to approach indeterminate situations, all of them, with the scientific attitude. Developing the scientific attitude is profoundly important, since this attitude leads to reflective inquiry when one is faced with social, political, economic, and moral issues, as well as scientific problems. Unfortunately, it is easier to devise testing systems for evaluation of cut and dried knowledge than to measure the development of the scientific attitude.

An understanding of science, whether as body of knowledge or as process of inquiry, cannot be achieved by mere memorization of the vocabulary and the mathematical formulations of scientific knowledge. An understanding of science is best promoted when students are genuinely and actively engaged in trying to resolve problem-situations that have arisen in the concrete familiar events of everyday life.

The teacher’s pedagogical problem, then, is to identify problem situations that are within the experience of the learner, that grip the attention of the learner, and that can be addressed by a gradual introduction and use of scientific knowledge and the use of the scientific method of inquiry. (This radio is not working. Why is that? What is wrong with it? How does a radio work? Let’s take it apart! )

Science education should begin early in the elementary grades, and continue each year, in a progressive fashion, addressing ever more complex and fundamental problem situations. The goal in early elementary school is “to give a first-hand acquaintance with a fair area of natural facts of such a kind as to arouse interest in the discovery of causes, dynamic processes, operating forces” (MW 10: 131). Dewey explicitly emphasizes the phrase “of such a kind.” This is because, too often, the “observation” that is encouraged in elementary schools is a matter of merely looking at things. This passive, “static” observation, which Dewey links to the nature-study movement, has no connection whatsoever with science. If observation is to promote the development of the scientific attitude, it must occur as part of a scientific inquiry, arising from the perception of a problem situation. (What are all these pieces? How do they connect together?)

The teacher, at all levels, must bear in mind “that there is an order of relative importance in scientific principles […] that some are more fundamental, some necessary in order to understand others, and thus more fruitful and ramifying” (MW 10: 132). The teacher begins with a familiar object, but always with the goal of leading the students into the unfamiliar realm of the fundamental physics and chemistry of nature. (What is a radio wave? What is a wave? Where do they come from?)

When educating through inquiry, mathematical formulations of dynamic relations would be learned because they are needed, as instrumentalities, to help solve pressing intellectual problems. (What is a transistor? A resistor? A capacitor? An ohm? A volt? What is electricity?) This approach follows Dewey’s conviction that “[o]ne has a knowledge of mathematical conceptions only when he sees the problems in which they function and their specific utility in dealing with these problems” (MW 9: 231). The learners themselves, as persons, are changed in the learning process, as they pass “from a cruder to a more refined intellectual quality of experience” (MW 9: 238).

Science and Intellectual Development

What are the intellectual aspects of intelligence, and how are these developed through a proper science education? Three aspects of intellectual power are inherent in the process of scientific inquiry, and thus can be developed through scientific inquiry.

The system of scientific knowledge is built up in large part by the intellectual process of abstraction. “Abstraction” is the intentional process of identifying, “pulling out,” and recording in symbols, the particular aspects of past experiences that are widely shared among problematic situations, and which may thus be important as causal factors in similar situations. Dewey writes,

In the process of abstraction, the many aspects of experience that are unique, personal, and/or subjective are generally set aside, because, being unique aspects of particular situations, they are unlikely to be useful as causal factors. Because of this, scientific abstractions are “equivalent to taking the point of view of any man, whatever his location in time and space” (MW 9: 235). Abstraction, moreover, is “an indispensible factor in social progress” (MW 9: 234). For example, the concept of “human rights” is formed by abstracting, from the broad array of situation-specific rights that have been granted or claimed, those rights, which are conceived to apply to human beings per se: to human beings in every circumstance.

“Definite formulation” is the process of developing precisely defined scientific symbols, terminology, and mathematical relationships. Without the precisely constructed vocabulary of science, the meanings and relations that constitute scientific knowledge could not be communicated with precision to all persons who make a thorough study of science. The technicality of its terms and formulations accounts for the power of scientific knowledge as a tool “for constructing new experiences with transformed meanings.” (MW 9: 236).

Generalization “is the functioning of an abstraction in its application to a new concrete experience” (MW 9: 234–5). Making use of the abstractions, applying them in the direction of one’s conduct, requires the intellectual process of generalization. Generalization “is essentially a social device” (MW 9: 235); it frees human beings from the confines of their own particular circumstances and interests, and permits them to attend to the wide application of the abstracted principles that have been discovered.

Science and Humanism

Scientific studies are often set in opposition to the traditional humanistic studies of language and literary arts. But, by 1916 science had long since become the chief factor determining the quality of human life, for better or for worse. Scientific inquiry is the only means to acquire effective control of the conditions of human life, and hence of the quality of human life that is experienced. “Man’s power of deliberate control of his own affairs depends upon ability to direct natural energies to use: an ability which is in turn dependent upon insight into nature’s processes” (MW 9: 236). Dewey argues that scientific knowledge is thus “thoroughly humanistic in quality” (MW 9: 236).

One of the responsibilities of science education is to help students see the deep connections science has to the quality of human life, individual and social. “Knowledge is humanistic in quality […] because of what it does in liberating human intelligence and human sympathy. Any subject matter which accomplishes this result is humane, and any subject-matter which does not accomplish this goal is not even educational” (MW 9: 238). Science education, in Dewey’s view, accomplishes this liberatory result, when properly conceived.

The “function which science has to perform in the curriculum” (MW 9: 238) is to “emancipate” the learner from “local and temporary incidents of [his or her personal] experience [and from] the accidents of personal habit and predilection” (MW 9: 238). Through science, with its “logical traits of abstraction, generalization and definite formulation […] the results of the experience of any individual are put at the disposal of all men. Thus ultimately and philosophically science is the organ of general social progress” (MW 9: 238–9).

A widespread social distribution of understanding, and valuing, of scientific inquiry and scientific knowledge is desperately needed, if broad social problems, such as poverty, injustice, and violence, are ever to be ameliorated. Social progress may take two different forms: the technical and the moral.

Technical progress is the development of better means to reach current social ends. Such progress clearly requires scientific knowledge and scientific inquiry. It is easily observable in history that as science advances, “new possibilities of action” are revealed, and “new means of execution” become available. Dewey cites, in evidence, “[t]he wonderful transformation of production and distribution known as the industrial revolution […] the fruit of experimental science” (MW 9: 232). The technical form of social progress achieved so far, as important as it is, is inadequate to fully address broad social problems. To do this, moral progress is required.

Moral progress is the development of new and better ends to be pursued. The new ends would be specific goals (“ends-in-view,” to use Dewey’s term) that would contribute to a more equitable, more free, more just social order. Science, Dewey writes, “makes possible the systematic pursuit of new ends” (MW 9: 231).

Dewey places on education “the responsibility of using science in a way to modify the habitual attitude of imagination and feeling” (MW 9: 232). The technical successes of science have led humans to “face the future with a firm belief that intelligence properly used can do away with evils once thought inevitable” (MW 9: 232). This is a good start. But humans must come to have the same belief with respect to the intentional and intelligent direction of all human affairs. “The problem of an educational use of science is … to create an intelligence pregnant with belief in the possibility of the direction of human affairs by itself” (MW 9: 233).

Science and Naturalism

In Democracy and Education, Dewey is brief in his treatment of “naturalism.” His later writings help to flesh out this fundamental and revolutionary aspect of his thinking.

Dewey holds that reality is a single complexly interconnected natural system of dynamic interactive events. Some of these events are relatively stable, and so are called “things,” but all of the things that we recognize are, more accurately speaking, ongoing dynamic interactions – events – occurring in nature. These “thing/events” are causally interconnected in intricate ways. Each has its conditions of occurrence (the causal interactions leading up to its occurrence) and its consequences of occurrence (the causal effects of the thing/event has in ongoing interactions (transactions).

Dewey rejects the notion that there might be extranatural or supernatural things, or beings, in addition to natural things/events. There is no “other realm of being” that is in some sense outside of the natural world. All things/events, including all human events, occur within the single unified system of interactions that is nature.

Dewey also rejects the notion that there are nonnaturalistic means to acquire knowledge about the world, that “above the inquiring, patient, ever-learning and tentative method of science there exists some organ or faculty which reveals ultimate and immutable truth” (LW 15: 58). Aside from the naturalistic method of experimental science, there are no “other ways” of knowing.

Science and Democracy

The connection of science to democracy is lightly treated in “Science in the Course of Study.” It might seem at first that democracy is essential for science. Evaluating the quality of a scientific inquiry, which warrants claims to knowledge, requires free discourse in a community of persons competent in such assessment. This is largely the scientific community, but competent critique of scientific studies may come from the larger community as well. A social structure that enables open, free, critical discourse is thus an essential condition for the development of human knowledge of nature. This commitment to unfettered public discourse is a quintessential characteristic of a democratic society.

But it is also the case, in Dewey’s view, that democracy is made possible by science, and the scientific attitude. It is essential, in a democratic society, that controversial social, political, economic, and moral questions be approached with the same sort of inquiry that obtains in scientific inquiry into physical subject matters. If democracy is to persist, it must be possible for inquiry to lead to well-warranted judgments about common social policy decisions that permit the development of a wide social consensus. Dewey writes that:

The aim of education in, and for, a democratic society is to bring all people, in all walks of life, into the public discourse about the social ends to be pursued, and the means chosen to bring them about. In a free society “decisions and choices … are reached by the exercise of a free intelligence which is disciplined and developed by partaking actively with others in a common and cooperative quest” (LW 15: 179). This is an expansion of Dewey’s conception of democracy as “primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience” (MW 9: 93). Without the resource of a body of scientific knowledge, understood and shared widely, as a basis for evaluation, democracy must splinter, as social policies are imposed from the top on the masses and are eased into public acceptance by propaganda and coercion.

Final Words

The focus on science and science education in Democracy and Education continued to be a central focus in Dewey’s thought for the next 36 years, until Dewey’s death in 1952. In Reference Dewey and Boydston1938, Dewey remained deeply concerned about the inadequacy of science teaching in the schools. The special sciences were being taught, but merely as bodies of information, rather than “as a method of universal attack and approach” (LW 13: 278). The scientific habit of mind was not being developed, even when school science “laboratories” were incorporated into the curriculum. Dewey concluded that as long as the ideal is information, the sciences taught are still under the dominion of ideas and practices that have a pre-scientific origin and history (LW 13: 276–7). Dewey makes clear the need for a proper science education in the curriculum, and the consequences of its absence.

The development of the scientific attitude in society at large, though, is not a problem that can be solved by the schools. In Reference Dewey and Boydston1938 Dewey argues that a necessary precondition to providing a proper science education in the public schools is political activism of persons who are already committed to the value of scientific knowledge: “The first condition to be satisfied is that such persons bestir themselves to become aware of what the scientific attitude is and what it is about so as to become diligently militant in demonstrating its rightful claims” (LW 13: 279).

In 1945, Dewey writes, in some alarm, of “the present revolt against science.” This revolt, Dewey believes, goes deeper than simply blaming science for negative social technical consequences. Instead, “the attack upon science is now an attack upon the attitude, the standpoint, the methods, which are science, with especial reference to their bearing upon human institutional problems” (LW 15: 189, emphasis in original).

Dewey was well aware that the experience of two World Wars had led to a profound loss of faith in the power of scientific inquiry to change social life for the better. Dewey, however, continued to argue for the potential for modern experimental science to bring about radical reconstruction of the social, moral, political, and industrial conditions of human experience. This position seemed to some to have been unsustainably optimistic.

Writing in 1949, at the age of 90, Dewey acknowledged the dramatic ambiguity of the social results of the scientific revolution and the consequent industrial revolution for social life: evil, as well as good, had resulted. Given the state of world affairs, Dewey was not surprised by the anti-science trend in both popular and academic thought. He recognized:

Dewey’s conclusion, however, was that “the only way to reduce [science’s] destructive consequences, and to further the advantageous ones, would be to bend every effort to obtain the kind of knowledge still lacking” (LW 16: 374).

The knowledge lacking was knowledge of human social and moral problems, the only knowledge that can effectively guide humans to the selection of radically new social ends to be pursued. Genuine knowledge of human affairs, as of all natural affairs, can only be acquired through the use of intelligent inquiry. To bring the scientific attitude and scientific method to the reconstruction of morals, values, and culture is the only possible means to improvement of our local and global social problem situations. Dewey writes, “the one thing of prime importance today is development of methods of scientific inquiry to supply us with the humane or moral knowledge now conspicuously lacking” (LW 16: 375).

In 1952, Dewey sets out once again the stark alternatives:

Science education, if we do it right, can take us along the second path.