How We Think — Reading Notes

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In Category - Educational Theory

Authors: Dewey, John, 1859-1952 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2011 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Educational psychology; Thought and thinking Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 67,772

Reading time 295 min

Text sections 11

The catalog record for How We Think — Reading Notes provides practical reading context through 67,772 words, 4 hr 55 min estimated reading time, and 11 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 25.1 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Educational psychology,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #37423

An analysis of John Dewey's 'How We Think' focusing on its structural rhythm of direct and mediated understanding, recurring images of confusion and familiarity, and movement between concrete examples and abstract principles.

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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Minor inconsistencies in hyphenated words have been adjusted to correspond with the author's most frequent usage.

On page 60 a printer error from the original text was corrected: the word "drawings" has been changed to "drawing" in the phrase, "... drawing has been taught...."

BY JOHN DEWEY PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO

COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY D. C. HEATH & CO.

Our schools are troubled with a multiplication of studies, each in turn having its own multiplication of materials and principles. Our teachers find their tasks made heavier in that they have come to deal with pupils individually and not merely in mass. Unless these steps in advance are to end in distraction, some clew of unity, some principle that makes for simplification, must be found. This book represents the conviction that the needed steadying and centralizing factor is found in adopting as the end of endeavor that attitude of mind, that habit of thought, which we call scientific. This scientific attitude of mind might, conceivably, be quite irrelevant to teaching children and youth. But this book also represents the conviction that such is not the case; that the native and unspoiled attitude of childhood, marked by ardent curiosity, fertile imagination, and love of experimental inquiry, is near, very near, to the attitude of the scientific mind. If these pages assist any to appreciate this kinship and to consider seriously how its recognition in educational practice would make for individual happiness and the reduction of social waste, the book will amply have served its purpose.

It is hardly necessary to enumerate the authors to whom I am indebted. My fundamental indebtedness is to my wife, by whom the ideas of this book were inspired, and through whose work in connection with the Laboratory School, existing in Chicago between 1896 and 1903, the ideas attained such concreteness as comes from embodiment and testing in practice. It is a pleasure, also, to acknowledge indebtedness to the intelligence and sympathy of those who cooeperated as teachers and supervisors in the conduct of that school, and especially to Mrs. Ella Flagg Young, then a colleague in the University, and now Superintendent of the Schools of Chicago.

NEW YORK CITY, December, 1909.

THE PROBLEM OF TRAINING THOUGHT

I. WHAT IS THOUGHT? 1

II. THE NEED FOR TRAINING THOUGHT 14

III. NATURAL RESOURCES IN THE TRAINING OF THOUGHT 29

IV. SCHOOL CONDITIONS AND THE TRAINING OF THOUGHT 45

V. THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL 56

LOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

VI. THE ANALYSIS OF A COMPLETE ACT OF THOUGHT 68

VII. SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE: INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION 79

VIII. JUDGMENT: THE INTERPRETATION OF FACTS 101

IX. MEANING: OR CONCEPTIONS AND UNDERSTANDING 116

X. CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT THINKING 135

XI. EMPIRICAL AND SCIENTIFIC THINKING 145

THE TRAINING OF THOUGHT

XII. ACTIVITY AND THE TRAINING OF THOUGHT 157

XIII. LANGUAGE AND THE TRAINING OF THOUGHT 170

XIV. OBSERVATION AND INFORMATION IN THE TRAINING OF MIND 188

XV. THE RECITATION AND THE TRAINING OF THOUGHT 201

XVI. SOME GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 214

PART ONE: THE PROBLEM OF TRAINING THOUGHT

Sec. 1. _Varied Senses of the Term_

[Sidenote: Four senses of thought, from the wider to the limited]

No words are oftener on our lips than _thinking_ and _thought_. So profuse and varied, indeed, is our use of these words that it is not easy to define just what we mean by them. The aim of this chapter is to find a single consistent meaning. Assistance may be had by considering some typical ways in which the terms are employed. In the first place _thought_ is used broadly, not to say loosely. Everything that comes to mind, that "goes through our heads," is called a thought. To think of a thing is just to be conscious of it in any way whatsoever. Second, the term is restricted by excluding whatever is directly presented; we think (or think of) only such things as we do not directly see, hear, smell, or taste. Then, third, the meaning is further limited to beliefs that rest upon some kind of evidence or testimony. Of this third type, two kinds--or, rather, two degrees--must be discriminated. In some cases, a belief is accepted with slight or almost no attempt to state the grounds that support it. In other cases, the ground or basis for a belief is deliberately sought and its adequacy to support the belief examined. This process is called reflective thought; it alone is truly educative in value, and it forms, accordingly, the principal subject of this volume. We shall now briefly describe each of the four senses.

[Sidenote: Chance and idle thinking]

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John Dewey's How We Think (1910) opens with a conviction that the scientific attitude of mind is akin to the native curiosity of childhood. The book's structure mirrors this kinship, moving between concrete illustrations and logical analysis. Dewey repeatedly returns to the image of a 'blooming, buzzing confusion'—borrowed from William James—to describe the initial encounter with anything new, whether a baby's world or an adult facing a strange situation. This recurring figure anchors the work's central argument: thinking progresses through a rhythm of direct apprehension and mediated comprehension.

The Rhythm of Direct and Mediated Understanding

Dewey organizes his inquiry around a fundamental distinction: we either grasp meanings directly, 'on sight without reflection,' or we reach them indirectly through a process of inquiry. He calls the first 'apprehension' and the second 'comprehension.' Intellectual progress, he argues, consists in a 'constant spiral movement' between these two modes. The book's chapters alternate between describing the natural resources of thought—curiosity, suggestion, orderliness—and the logical steps of a complete act of thought. This structural rhythm is not merely expository; it enacts the very process Dewey describes. Readers are invited to move from familiar examples (a child's questions, a farmer's observations) to abstract principles (induction, deduction, judgment) and back again.

Confusion as a Starting Point

A striking structural feature is Dewey's repeated use of the 'blooming, buzzing confusion' to characterize the initial state of any learner. This image appears in the context of acquiring meanings: the baby, the foreigner in a strange city, the novice in a factory—all experience a 'diffusive blur' before things become individualized. Dewey uses these examples not as mere illustrations but as structural anchors. Each time he returns to the image, he shifts the context: from the psychology of infancy to the pedagogy of science, from the problem of attention to the nature of judgment. The recurrence creates a thread that ties together disparate discussions, reminding readers that confusion is not an obstacle to thought but its necessary precondition.

Movement Between Concrete and Abstract

Dewey's prose moves deliberately between the concrete and the abstract. He opens with everyday scenes—a child asking 'Why?' a person puzzled by a new tool—then extracts logical principles from them. For instance, he describes how a shepherd individualizes each sheep in a flock, while an outsider sees only 'gross differences of size or color.' From this concrete observation, he derives a general point about the acquisition of meanings: familiarity comes through repeated, attentive experience. This movement is not linear but recursive; Dewey often returns to a concrete example after introducing an abstract term, grounding it anew. The structure thus mirrors the pedagogical principle he advocates: learning proceeds through a rhythm of direct encounter and reflective analysis.

The Role of Familiarity in Thought

Dewey devotes considerable attention to the paradox of familiarity. He notes that 'thought can more easily traverse an unexplored region than it can undo what has been so thoroughly done as to be ingrained in unconscious habit.' This observation shapes the book's structure: early chapters emphasize the natural resources of thought (curiosity, imagination), while later ones focus on the need for systematic training. The shift reflects Dewey's conviction that education must both cultivate native attitudes and discipline them. The structure itself enacts this dual focus, moving from description of what thinking naturally is to prescription of how it should be trained. Readers are led to see that familiarity, while essential for fluent understanding, can also become an obstacle to genuine inquiry.

Readers approaching How We Think will benefit from attending to Dewey's structural choices: the recurring image of confusion, the rhythm between direct and mediated understanding, and the movement from concrete example to abstract principle. These features are not ornamental but integral to Dewey's argument about how thinking develops. The book rewards a reading that follows these patterns, noticing how each chapter builds on and reworks earlier motifs.

There’s something about Dewey’s rhythm—being lost in the concrete, then lifted into the abstract—that stayed with me long after. I found that same quiet pull in NREN for All: Insurmountable Opportunity — Text and Context, where confusion and familiarity keep circling each other, gently. It felt less like learning, more like remembering something I never quite knew.