Experience and Nature

Introduction

The book grew out of the first series of Paul Carus Lectures, which Dewey gave in 1922; it appeared in 1925 and in a revised edition in 1929. Using what he calls the empirical method, Dewey describes nature as it is met in experience: a mixture of the precarious and the stable, of events with qualities of their own and not only measurable properties. Mind, meaning and language arise when living beings interact with their environment and communicate with one another. Dewey criticises philosophers for treating knowing as the only real relation to the world, an error he calls intellectualism. It is considered his main work in metaphysics; Richard Rorty, who revived interest in Dewey, criticised precisely this metaphysical project.

Connections

Builds on

• On the Origin of Species1859 · Charles Darwin

Taken up in

• Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature1979 · Richard Rorty

More works by John Dewey

• 1916Democracy and Education