Becoming John Dewey: Dilemmas of a Philosopher and Naturalist (review)

Thomas Dalton's intellectual biography of John Dewey is the product of detailed and careful scholarship into the transactions that Dewey had with scientists and intellectuals of his time. Dalton argues that "[w]e rarely learn how Dewey's personal acquaintances contributed to the further elaboration of themes central to his conception of mind and experience and the role of science in society" (1). To rectify this deficiency Dalton takes the reader from Dewey's Calvinist roots and his Hegelianism, through the laboratory school, and on to his later relations with intellectuals as varied as F. M. Alexander, Albert Barnes, Sigmund Freud, Randolph Bourne, Niels Bohr, Lawrence Frank, and Myrtle McGraw. He makes a convincing case that Dewey's ideas were under constant development and that Dewey "engaged in a continual process of becoming someone whose horizons never ended" (6).

Unfortunately, this description also accurately describes Dalton's current work. In presenting a chronological description of Dewey's intellectual acquaintances, Dalton progresses in fits and starts, failing to construct an integrated account of these varied influences. On page 184, for example, Dalton introduces the reader to Watson's behaviorism, Freudian psychoanalysis, and Gesell's maturationist theory of development. However, he then immediately drops any reference to these thinkers in discussing Dewey's association with Lawrence Frank. While Dewey's ideas undoubtedly progressed sporadically, a biographer has an obligation to develop a coherent narrative out of these haphazard perchings and flights. In addition, Dalton's discussion of these influences is often insufficient. For example, he writes, "[w]hat Dewey admired most about Hegel was his capacity to maintain silence in the presence of nature" (41). He elucidates this quasi-mystical claim with a couple of lines about the importance of suppressing belief to facilitate scientific discovery. However, as in many other places, Dalton leaves the reader scratching her head as to the relevance of these intellectual influences.

Yet in such a diffuse and lengthy biography, any reader with even a passing interest in Dewey will find something to hold her attention. I was particularly interested in Dalton's chapter titled "The Function of Judgment in Inquiry." Here, Dalton examines Dewey's relationship with Myrtle McGraw, her experiments with young children, and their relevance to Dewey's theory of inquiry. Dalton characterizes Dewey's model as neuroembryological, that is, focused on how "early metabolic processes of neuromuscular growth contribute to the differentiation and integration of behavior" (201). He distinguishes this approach from both a neurodynamic model, which explains such processes in reductionist terms based on the patterned discharge of nervous energy, and the genetically controlled developmental models of Arnold Gesell. McGraw's studies emphasized the processes of neuromuscular growth, illustrating that stimulation in early childhood development, including putting toddlers on roller skates, significantly changed their patterns of growth as well as their "awareness, poise and self-confidence" (225). The central role of doubt and inquiry in early childhood development is reflected in Dewey's emphasis on the problematic situation in Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. Dalton claims, "McGraw's experimental research supported Dewey's fundamental conviction that the human capacity for inquiry is formed through natural processes whereby individual bodies, brains, and behavior are structurally and functionally integrated" (226). Dalton draws interesting connections here between McGraw's research and Dewey's logic.

In the final section, Dalton enters the debate between what he calls cultural pragmatism and scientific pragmatism. Here he attempts to restore a naturalistic emphasis on scientific discovery to pragmatism. This attitude, he claims, has been undermined by the work of Richard Rorty and others, who stress linguistic and cultural interpretations of pragmatism. As Dalton puts it, "[t]he scientific promise of Dewey's pragmatism remains unfulfilled because scholars who wish to defend Dewey's aesthetics or his experiential, democratic conception of community life...