Chapters 21& 22: Mind & Matter

In chapter 21, Dewey continues his discussion of the separation between language and literature and the physical sciences. He states that "Experience knows no division between human concerns and a purely mechanical physical world" (p. 231). The older view that separates one from the other is "aristocratic" and has "the aim to preserve hat has been gained [from the past] rather than widely to extend the range of culture" (p. 234), whereas the aim in a democratic society must be to overcome the separation and make the benefits of both available to all as reflected in intelligent intercourse with experience in which they are joined.


Chapter 22 really brings home the dualism or division that Dewey has been getting at in the past few chapters between...well, mind and matter (experience and philosophy, man and nature)...especially as they are manifested in school, and in this chapter between knowledge and thinking as social and individual pursuits.
    •    Knowledge: objective and impersonal, what is established and under control among us.
    •    Thinking: subjective and personal, under inquiry springing from uncertainty
Knowledge being what we think with, and thinking being what we think about.

Every individual has grown up, and always must grow up, in a social medium" (p. 239). The individual doesn't possess a mind in isolation from the world; rather "the self achieves mind in the degree in which knowledge of things is incarnate in the life about him (p. 239).

According to Dewey, schools have a particularly confused understanding of what freedom is and the role of freedom in learning. Schools tend to equate freedom with behavior--with lack of constraint in physical behavior or, at best, a lack of social direction. The result is strict governance of conduct even when the social side of learning is acknowledged in theory. Freedom, however, is a mental attitude not a physical condition. For learning to occur, inquiry generates curiosity which supports the intellectual freedom essential to a democratic society. An appropriate amount of social and physical activity is a necessary part of exploration or discovery. "A progressive society counts individual variations as precious since it finds in them the means of its own growth" (p. 247).