former experience of things. Let us go back to things.—William I. Crane, "Journal of the National Education Association," 1905.
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Things versus Men—See Forgiveness.
Thinkers—See Character.
THINKING DEFINED
Thinking is specific, not a machine-like,
ready-made apparatus to be turned indifferently
and at will upon all subjects, as a
lantern may throw its light as it happens
upon horses, streets, gardens, trees or river.
Thinking is specific in that different things
suggest their own appropriate meanings, tell
their own unique stories and in that they
do this in very different ways with different
persons. As the growth of the body is
through the assimilation of food, so the
growth of mind is through the logical organization
of subject-matter. Thinking is
not like a sausage machine which reduces
all materials indifferently to one marketable
commodity, but is a power of following up
and linking together the specific suggestions
that specific things arouse. Accordingly, any
subject, from Greek to cooking, and from
drawing to mathematics, is intellectual, if
intellectual at all, not in its fixt inner structure,
but in its function—in its power to
start and direct significant inquiry and
reflection.—John Dewey, "How we Think."
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THINKING EMPIRICAL OR SCIENTIFIC
Apart from the development of scientific
method, inferences depend upon habits that
have been built up under the influence of a
number of particular experiences not themselves
arranged for logical purposes. A
says, "It will probably rain to-morrow."
B asks, "Why do you think so?" and A replies,
"Because the sky was lowering at
sunset." When B asks, "What has that to
do with it?" A responds, "I do not know,
but it generally does rain after such a sunset."
He does not perceive any connection
between the appearance of the sky and coming
rain; he is not aware of any continuity
in the facts themselves—any law or principle,
as we usually say. He simply, from frequently
recurring conjunctions of the events,
has associated them so that when he sees
one he thinks of the other. One suggests
the other, or is associated with it. A man
may believe it will rain to-morrow because
he has consulted the barometer; but if he
has no conception how the height of the
mercury column (or the position of an index
moved by its rise and fall) is connected with
variations of atmospheric pressure, and how
these in turn are connected with the amount
of moisture in the air, his belief in the likelihood
of rain is purely empirical. When men
lived in the open and got their living by
hunting, fishing, or pasturing flocks, the detection
of the signs and indications of
weather changes was a matter of great importance.
A body of proverbs and maxims,
forming an extensive section of traditionary
folklore, was developed. But as long as
there was no understanding why or how
certain events were signs, as long as foresight
and weather shrewdness rested simply
upon repeated conjunction among facts, beliefs
about the weather were thoroughly
empirical.—John Dewey, "How we Think."
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While many empirical conclusions are, roughly speaking, correct; while they are exact enough to be of great help in practical life; while the presages of a weatherwise sailor or hunter may be more accurate, within a certain restricted range, than those of a scientist who relies wholly upon scientific observations and tests; while, indeed, empirical observations and records furnish the raw or crude material of scientific knowledge, yet the empirical method affords no way of discriminating between right and wrong conclusions. Hence it is responsible for a multitude of false beliefs. The technical designation for one of the commonest fallacies is post hoc, ergo propter hoc; the belief that because one thing comes after another, it comes because of the other. Now this fallacy of method is the animating principle of empirical conclusions, even when correct—the correctness being almost as much a matter of good luck as of method. That potatoes should be planted only during the crescent moon, that near the sea people are born at high-tide and die at low-tide, that a comet is an omen of danger, that bad luck follows the cracking of a mirror, that a patent medicine cures a disease—these and a thousand like notions are asseverated on the basis of empirical coincidence and conjunction. Moreover, habits of expectation and belief are formed otherwise than by a number of repeated similar cases.—John Dewey, "How We Think."
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