Notes and Communications

摘要

James L. Webb provided a stimulating and insightful interpretation of the ideas of John Dewey in his provocative article, "Dewey: Back to the Future" (2002). I strongly endorse his call for the "younger generations of institutionalists who have turned away or drifted away from the pragmatic roots of institutionalism" to take a more careful look at the thoughts of Dewey (981). Unfortunately, Webb combined this with what I consider an unwarranted attack on Clarence E. Ayres, whom he accused of incorrectly interpreting Dewey. Webb opened his narrative on Dewey with a long quote from Dewey's Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, which he claimed demonstrates Dewey's separation between science and technology―"functionally distinct" (982). Nowhere in that quote does Dewey use the word "technology," forcing Webb to construe Dewey's "common sense" as a surro-gate for technology. Yet in chapter 4 of the same work, Dewey attacked the artificial "division between 'lower' and 'higher' techniques" as he often did throughout his works (72; for a further cogent example, see Dewey 1938, chapter 1). Earlier in Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, Dewey maintained that the "subject matter of logic is determined operationally" and illustrated it with examples from "industrial arts" (14-15).