About Dewey
John Dewey (1859-1952) was a thinker of significant influence in a variety of fields, including philosophy, education, political thought, psychology, aesthetic theory and art practice, and communication studies, among many others. According to Shook and Kurtz (2011), "Dewey stands out in a real sense as the philosopher of American culture; for he was able to capture and define the spirit of America. What we have in mind is the experimental, innovative, daring, and optimistic attitude that pervaded so much of the American outlook and motivated those who came to these shores to break new ground not only geographically but also in social and cultural terms" (9). This optimistic attitude was inspired by the natural sciences’ experimental method, and Dewey aimed at applying the same experimental pattern not only to philosophy per se but also to other disciplines, including the humanities. Along with an emphasis on the experimental scientific method, Dewey also emphasized the human element, connecting his work explicitly with the arts and the humanities. Dewey’s approach to the human phenomena took as its starting point the qualitative aspects of human life and experience.
Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont on October 20, 1859, the son of Archibald and Lucina Rich Dewey. He did his Ph.D. work at Johns Hopkins University (1882-1884) under Charles S. Peirce, George Sylvester Morris, and Granville Stanley Hall. His academic career was mainly spent at the University of Michigan (1886-88, 1889-1894, spending one year at the University of Minnesota), the University of Chicago (1884-1904), and Columbia University (1904-1930). He was an incredibly prodigious writer, publishing consistently for seventy years, from 1882-1952; his collected works run to 37 volumes (plus a 38th online supplement) and approximately 8 million words. He was teacher and mentor of a wide variety of philosophers, psychologists, and educators from the United States and around the globe.
David Hildebrand on John Dewey at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy