122 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



to certain of the traditional problems of philosophical inquiry. 

 Furthermore it has insisted upon the specialization of these prob- 

 lems, in order to make them amenable to empirical treatment. 

 This has involved the rejection, as illegitimately abstract, of 

 some of the most important of the traditional problems; most 

 notably, the ontological problem, What is the nature of reality? 

 and the epistemological problem, How is knowledge possible? 

 Thus Professor Dewey writes in the Studies in Logical Theory 

 (p. 8): "From its point of view [that of an instrumental logic] 

 an attempt to discuss the antecedents, data, forms, and objec- 

 tive of thought, apart from reference to particular position oc- 

 cupied, and particular part played, in the growth of experience, 

 is to reach results which are not so much either true or false as 

 they are radically meaningless because they are considered apart 

 from limits. Its results are not only abstractions (for all theoriz- 

 ing ends in abstractions), but abstractions without possible refer- 

 ence or bearing. From this point of view, the taking of some- 

 thing, whether that something be thinking activity, its empirical 

 condition, or its objective goal, apart from the limits of a historic 

 or developing situation, is the essence of metaphysical procedure 

 in the sense of metaphysics which makes a gulf between it 

 and science." A greater contrast than that between this attitude 

 and the Hegelian conception of philosophy, as the imparting of a 

 true universality to the crude results of merely empirical science, 

 can scarcely be imagined. 



Pragmatism, as a philosophical movement, is difficult to de- 

 scribe and impossible to define. We shall not attempt to do 

 either. As hitherto, we shall single out for exposition and criti- 

 cism those features which appear to us to be of central importance 

 for logical theory, paying scant attention to attendant phenom- 

 ena however interesting such, for example, as the relation of 

 pragmatism to religious faith. Even with this limitation our 

 task will be embarrassingly complex. To simplify it, we propose 

 to limit the present discussion to the closely connected theories 



