According to K.N. Kadam, Babasaheb Ambedkar planned a book on Philosophy of John Dewey. Babasaheb Ambedkar famously said that he owed his intellectual life to John Dewey. The Philosophy of John Dewey must be an important book for Babasaheb Ambedkar as we know that Babasaheb Ambedkar never wrote any ornamental paper or book. All his Writings had a purpose to give methods to Indians, and particularly his people, intellectual tools to dismantle the structures of oppression. That is why some introduction to the philosophy of John Dewey is important as to what value Babasaheb Ambedkar might have seen in attempting to write the philosophy of John Dewey, the book was unfortunately not written, but there is a steady and growing interest in John Dewey among the Ambedkarite people.

Before we embark on this journey into Philosophy of John Dewey, I would like to begin with some disclaimers. First of all, I am not trained in philosophy. I only dabbled in philosophy out of interest. I am not an academic philosopher but appreciated philosophy coming in contact with Will Durant’s famous book “The story of Philosophy”, which I read early on. I started reading John Dewey on Babasaheb’s reference to him and was part of Dewey online forum for a decade, where I mostly wrote on Babasaheb Ambedkar and his contribution to India and his intellectual debt to John Dewey.

John Dewey is a difficult philosopher to read and many trained philosophers have complained about his writing style, but if one gets into grip with his ideas, he yields much intellectual juice that it is worth making an effort. With these few words of disclaimer, I would like to say that I enjoy reading his books. His books such as How We Think (I recommend second revised edition), Democracy and Education, School and Society, Common Faith, the Public and its Problems, and Types of Thinking are my personal favourite along with his papers Ethics of Democracy and Empirical method to study of the mind.

The scholars have been trying to find a conclusive text which will give a summary of the philosophy of John Dewey and it seems that a jackpot was hit in the 1980s when John Dewey’s lectures in China( noted and copied by those who attended) were retranslated in English. Of course, John Dewey spoke in English when he was on a whirlwind tour in China. Mao attended some of his lectures.

In those lectures was a copy of eight lectures John Dewey gave in China and they were titled as Types of thinking and they could be very well titled as the history of western thoughts. These eight lectures, according to some Deweyan scholars, are the summary of John Dewey’s philosophy. John Dewey wrote so much that it is difficult to read all his texts. These texts are now available in the Centre for John Dewey studies in the Pune University being developed by Professor Vijay Khare and Scott Stroud. As such, there is very little Deweyan study.

In the course of subsequent notes (assisted by audio-visual aids, perhaps), we will look exclusively into Types of Thinking with some sprinkling from How We Think so that we at least touch key aspects of Philosophy of John Dewey to kindle our interest in reading John Dewey.

The scheme of the eight lectures is interesting. John Dewey describes four types of thinking and instead of going into the psychological aspect of thinking, John Dewey discusses thinking from the “logical” aspects. The eight lectures are divided into four pairs and the first lecture of each pair introduces the historical context in which that ” type” of thinking was developed and in the second lecture in the pair, he explains the method of that particular thinking. He also introduces the philosopher(s) who contributed majorly to the development of that thinking.

The four types of thinking taught by John Dewey to his Chinese audience are:

1. Systematization, analysis, classification( we can term it as taxonomic thinking)

The exponent of this method of thinking was Socrates and Aristotle.

2. Rationalistic/ Deductive thinking

The exponent of this method of thinking was Descartes and the initial foundation developed by Francis Bacon

3. Empirical/sensationalist thinking

The exponent of this type of thinking was John Locke and Francis Bacon also contributed to this.

4. Experimental Thinking

This is also called scientific thinking whose foundation was laid by people like Newton, Darwin, and William James of which John Dewey himself was a theoretician and practitioner.

These four types of thinking are not exclusive but their relationship in developing logical systems and methods are interestingly sketched by John Dewey.

The systematisation, categorisation, classification, and taxonomic thinking

According to John Dewey, the first breakthrough in thinking was made by the Greeks and the main philosophers who developed this thinking were Socrates and Aristotle. The historical context for the development of this was social and political confusion. The Sophists and the philosophers around could agree with each other. They argued they debated, they dialogued, but there was no “formal” method to conduct the debates. The word logic is derived from the word logos, which means discourse.

In this confusing world of many opinions, Socrates sought unity and Dewey terms, Socrates, as the Philosopher of unity. So, the formal logic began as a rule to discourse/debate, in fact, the words debate and battle are derived from the same root. Socratic type of thinking thus emerged in a chaotic society.

The method of thinking proposed by Socrates has two aspects:

1. that it is possible to find a common characteristic shared by a group of phenomena, which Socrates called Form

2. Since this common characteristic is selected from the several dissimilar things, it will be used to fix definition.

The concept of form is critical to understand the method of Socrates /Aristotle.

Socrates also claimed that the issue under the debate should have objective certainty without which no discussion and no agreement will be possible.

While Socrates was dealing with social and political issues, Aristotle, being a scientist and biologist focussed on biology, physics, and what can be termed natural science. Aristotle used the Socratic method and developed “Taxonomic/ Classificatory method of thinking”.

To understand this thinking, it is important to grasp the concept of species.

Concept of Species

When we look around us we perceive so many individual objects. For example, there are so many trees and varieties of tree. It is impossible for a human being to study every individual tree. Therefore, this variety of individual objects perceived by us must be brought in the manageable limits. Though there are millions of trees, we can define a ” tree” as a species, using the Socratic method of form and definition by finding common characteristics of all the trees. Thus the ” species” of the tree includes all the trees though each tree is unique.

For example, a species of stone includes all the stones, even when individual stone weather, the stone as a “species” remains. Within this species of stone, varieties such as basalt, granite, and volcanic stones can be included.

Within the species of tree, mango tree, apple, and Gulmohar tree can be included as varieties. This system of classification creates a classification based on the analysis. The species can be classified under Genus.

For example, man as an animal species falls in a variety of tool-making animal. Thus the disparate objects are brought in the manageable limits and during this process of classification, various objects can be defined.

Thus species, to quote Dewey, is the representation of the common, typical, and standard form of the individual objects which it comprises.

However, Aristotle contested that individuals may perish but the species continues. The species is permanent.

This method of thinking dominated the west for 2000 years that the species are permanent until Darwin published “Origin of Species” proving that species are not permanent, they evolve. Darwin challenged the established pattern of thinking with his theory of evolution.

Author – Mangesh Dahiwale, Human Rights Activist