The Later Works of John Dewey, Volume 12, 1925 1938, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry

Heralded as “the crowning work of a great career,” Logic: The Theory of Inquiry was widely reviewed. To Evander Bradley McGilvary, the work assured De­wey “a place among the world’s great logicians.”

 
William Gruen thought “No treatise on logic ever written has had as direct and vital an impact on social life as Dewey’s will have.”

Paul Weiss called it “the source and inspiration of a new and powerful movement.”

Irwin Edman said of it, “Most phi­losophers write postscripts; Dewey has made a program. His Logic is a new charter for liberal intelligence.”

Ernest Nagel called the Logic an im­pressive work. Its unique virtue is to bring fresh illumination to its subject by stressing the roles logical principles and concepts have in achieving the ob­jectives of scientific inquiry.”

John Dewey(1859 1952) was anAmerican philosopher, psychologistandeducational reformerwhose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy ofpragmatismand one of the founders offunctional psychology. He was a major representative ofprogressive educationandliberalism.In 1894 Dewey joined the newly foundedUniversity of Chicago(1894 1904) where he developed his belief in an empirically based theory of knowledge, becoming associated with the newly emerging Pragmatic philosophy. His time at the University of Chicago resulted in four essays collectively entitledThought and its Subject-Matter, which was published with collected works from his colleagues at Chicago under the collective titleStudies in Logical Theory(1903). During that time Dewey also initiated theUniversity of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where he was able to actualize the pedagogical beliefs that provided material for his first major work on education, The School and Social Progress(1899).In 1899, Dewey was elected president of theAmerican Psychological Association. From 1904 until his retirement in 1930 he was professor of philosophy at both Columbia Universityand Columbia University'sTeachers College.In 1905 he became president of theAmerican Philosophical Association. He was a longtime member of theAmerican Federation of Teachers.