Review of Experience and Nature

Abstract

Reviews the book, Experience and Nature by John Dewey (1925). This book comprises ten lectures, the first series, given upon the Paul Carus Foundation. It was especially fitting that Professor Dewey should be chosen by the American Philosophical Association to deliver these lectures, since he is the leader of that school of philosophic thought most uniquely American. The author here applies his empirico-psychological method to the task of interpreting the deeper meaning of Experience, Nature, Existence, Life, Mind, Matter, Ends, Art, and Value. The point of view is genetic, behavioristic and functional. With a positive distaste for cleavages, splits and dualisms, e.g., "between sensuous appetite and rational thought, between the particular and the universal, between the mechanical and the telic, between experience and science, between matter and mind," between means and ends, the universe with man and his achievements is viewed as of one piece, one stream, one process. Our attention is focused now upon this phase of the process, now upon that Things are what they do, they are what their histories reveal them to be. Meanings and values are instrumental always, whether in science or in art. Thus the working concepts are essentially those of biology and psychology. This approach, the author believes, is concrete and scientific, the only adequate means of resolving age-long difficulties and the conflicting theories of warring schools. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)