Supplementary Essay
THE PRAGMATISM OF PEIRCE
BY
John Dewey
The term pragmatism was introduced into literature in the
opening sentences of Professor James's California Union address
in 1898. The sentences run as follows: "The principle of
pragmatism, as we may call it, may be expressed in a variety
of ways, all of them very simple. In the Popular Science Monthly for January, 1878, Mr. Charles S. Peirce introduces it
as follows:" etc. The readers who have turned to the volume
referred to have not, however, found the word there. From
other sources we know that the name as well as the idea was
furnished by Mr. Peirce. The latter has told us that both the
word and the idea were suggested to him by a reading of Kant,
the idea by the Critique of Pure Reason, the term by the
"Critique of Practical Reason."[1] The article in the Monist
gives such a good statement of both the idea and the reason for
selecting the term that it may be quoted in extenso. Peirce sets
out by saying that with men who work in laboratories, the habit
of mind is molded by experimental work much more than they
are themselves aware. "Whatever statement you may make to
him, he [the experimentalist] will either understand as meaning
that if a given prescription for an experiment ever can be and
ever is carried out in act, an experience of a given description
will result, or else he will see no sense at all in what you say."
Having himself the experimental mind and being interested in
methods of thinking, "he framed the theory that a conception,
that is, the rational purport of a word or other expression, lies
- ↑ See article on "Pragmatism," in Baldwin's Dictionary, Vol. 2., p. 322, and the Monist, Vol. 15, p. 162.
