John Dewey's Experience and Nature is the first pragmatic work I have read. Although at times difficult because of my scant background in the philosophy of knowledge, I found it illuminating and stimulating. The book is an extended critique against the artificial dualities that so extensively pervade the way we think such as the distinctions between mind and body, and experience and nature. It is an argument for understanding the relationship as one of continuity and context.
Indeed, I find it easier to believe that experience is not distinct from nature, but is a part of nature. In the course of evolution, an organism called man developed a mind and a consciousness capable of apprehending nature through the senses and then accumulating such perceptions that then constituted experience, which then influenced how he subsequently perceived nature. To claim special powers for man by saying he has a mind separate from and observing nature from the outside is more difficult to accept from a scientific and empirical perspective, but that is, of course, the Christian viewpoint.
No comments:
Post a Comment