16 Science and Society

John Dewey (1859-1952) was one of the foremost developers of American Pragmatism. Along with Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, he took the open, experimental, and practical nature of technoscientific inquiry to be the paradigmatic example of all inquiry. For Dewey, all inquiry is similar in form to techno scientific inquiry in that it is fallibilistic, resolves in practice some initial question through an experimental method, but provides no final absolute answer. Dewey argues that humans are constantly developing through transactions with their environment, and a central aspect of that environment is technology. Thus, we are a prime source of those environments through which we develop, and either thrive or fail. In this essay, he argues that many of the problems laid at the feet of technology are actually the fault of a human failing to be sufficiently attentive and critical as we create technologies, including human social institutions. He further argues that successful technology is democratic, as both terms embody the method of intelligence and both are forms of human inquiry. He challenges us to think carefully about the relations between technology and democracy, and about our responsibilities for consciously directing technological change. Three features of Dewey's conception of inquiry are relevant: inquiry as problem-solving, as historical and progressive, and as communal. We engage in inquiry, Dewey thought, as part of a struggle with an objectively precarious but improvable environment. Inquiry is demanded by what he calls an incomplete or problematic situation, that is, one in which something must be done. The goal of inquiry is not simply a change in the beliefs of the inquirers but