Abstract

Pragmatism was born and has grown up in the shadow of the extraordinary success of modern science, and has had an ambivalent relationship with it since its origin. Each of the major founding pragmatists (Charles S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey) was at some time during their career directly engaged with experimental science. All three wrote about the nature of scientific inquiry and the status of scientific theories, and reflected on the ways in which the methods of science differ from or...