Dewey

OrmerrodHistoryandIdeasofPragmatism.pdf

The history and ideas of pragmatism R Ormerod*

University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

This paper examines the origins of philosophical pragmatism in the USA in the second half of the 19th-century and its development and use up to the Second World War. The story is told through the lives and ideas of some of the main originators, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, Charles Saunders Peirce, William James and John Dewey. The core idea of pragmatism, that beliefs are guides to actions and should be judged against the outcomes rather than abstract principles, dominated American thinking during the period of economic and political growth from which the USA emerged as a world power. The paper suggests that the practical, commonsense, scientific approach embedded in pragmatism resonates with OR as practised and that much of pragmatism could be attractive to practitioners and academics alike. Journal of the Operational Research Society (2006) 57, 892–909. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jors.2602065 Published online 14 September 2005

Keywords: philosophy of OR; history of ideas; pragmatism

Introduction

Researchers engaged in understanding and developing the

process of operation research (OR) in the UK have looked to

philosophy for guidance and inspiration. Inter alia Boot-

hroyd drew on Popper’s critical rationalism to develop his

articulate intervention approach (Boothroyd, 1978); Check-

land (1981) discovered in Husserl’s phenomenology under-

pinning for his soft systems methodology; Jackson (1991)

and Flood (1990) have led teams drawing on the critical

theory of Habermas and the postmodernism of Foucault;

Taket and White (1993) have espoused a postmodernist and

poststructuralist approach drawing on Lyotard and other

postmodern, literary, and feminist philosophers. Such

activity is, of course, not restricted to the UK. One example

is the work of Churchman (1970), which draws on the

German idealist philosophers and pragmatism. Another is

Ulrich’s (1983) critical heuristics of social planning.

This paper falls into the genre that can be characterized as

‘mining’ philosophy for the purpose of informing OR. In

some sense all of the above fall into this category, but my

exemplar is the work of Mingers. His early papers on critical

theory (Mingers, 1980) and more recently his paper on

critical realism (Mingers, 2000) supply clear expositions of

philosophical positions. This paper is similar in purpose: it

sets out some of the ideas contained in pragmatism to inform

those interested in the philosophy of OR and points to those

areas that might be of interest to researchers and practi-

tioners alike. I have, however, taken a more historical and

contextual approach, which I hope makes the rather diverse

and sometimes contradictory subject matter easier to under-

stand than would otherwise be the case. It also serves the

purpose of showing how American pragmatism develops out

of European philosophy and feeds back into it; to that extent

it sets pragmatism in the context of the development of

Western thought. The originators of pragmatism themselves

argued that due regard should be paid to the history and

social context (experiential conditions) of ideas.

Pragmatism is a philosophical doctrine that can be traced

back to the academic sceptics of classical antiquity who

denied the possibility of achieving authentic knowledge

regarding the real truth and taught that we must make do

with plausible information adequate to the needs of practice.

The identification of ‘pragmatic belief’ by Kant (1724–1804)

was influential as was the insistence by Schopenhauer (1788–

1860) that the intellect is universally subordinate to the will.

Utilitarianism, with its tests of rightness of modes of action

in terms of their capacity to provide the greatest good of the

greatest number was yet another step in the development of

pragmatic thought. However, pragmatism as a philosophical

doctrine descends from Charles Saunders Peirce (1839–

1914). For him, pragmatism was primarily a philosophy of

meaning, with the meaning of any concept that has

application in the real world lying in the relations that link

the experiential conditions of application with observable

results. For Peirce the meaning of a proposition is

determined by the essentially positivist criterion of its

experiential consequences in strictly observational terms.

He was concerned with scientific practice and predictive

success. Peirce developed his theories in opposition to

idealism: pragmatism provided a road to objective and

impersonal standards.

Although Peirce developed pragmatism into a substantial

philosophical theory it was William James (1842–1910) who

put it on the intellectual map in 1907 with his enormously

*Correspondence: R Ormerod, 26 Coulsdon Road, Sidmouth, Devon EX10 9JP, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

www.palgrave-journals.com/jors

influential book, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old

Ways of Thinking (James, 1907). James changed the con-

ception of pragmatism by giving a more personal and

subjective meaning to efficacy. For him pragmatic efficacy

did not relate to an abstracted community of scientists but to

a diversified plurality of flesh-and-blood individuals. Truth

for James is accordingly what reality compels human

individuals to believe: it is a matter of ‘what pays by way

of belief’ in the course of human activity in a given context,

and its acquisition is an invention rather than a revelation.

John Dewey (1859–1952) continued to develop pragma-

tism and its application to practical issues such as education

and politics, ensuring its influence in the USA up to the

Second World War. Dewey, like Peirce before him, saw

inquiry as a self-correcting process whose procedures and

norms must be evaluated and revised in the light of

subsequent experience. But Dewey regarded this reworking

as a social and communal process proceeding in the light of

values that are not connected specifically to science, but

rather values that are more broadly rooted in the psychic

disposition of ordinary people at large. Dewey regarded

knowledge as an instrument for action rather than an object

of disinterested belief. Peirce’s pragmatism is scientifically

élitist, James’s is psychologically personalistic, Dewey’s is

democratically populist.

Pragmatism is a word we commonly use to describe a

particular way of addressing and resolving issues, a way of

acting. The second section of this paper looks at the origins

of the word ‘pragmatism’, and its meaning. In order to

understand how the ideas of the originators developed it is

helpful to appreciate something of the social, political and

intellectual context of the USA during the formative period.

The third section of the paper therefore sketches out some of

these factors that have influenced the development of the

philosophy.

One way to understand pragmatism is through the lives,

interests and ideas of the philosophers themselves. In the

19th century intellectuals were not narrow specialists. Each

of the originators ranged widely across the various subject

areas of philosophy and into areas such as science,

psychology, education, law and politics. Between them they

were active from the end of the American Civil War to the

beginning of the Second World War, a period of about

three-quarters of a century. The result is a very diverse body

of literature with many themes, often not drawn together,

sometimes contradictory. The next four sections describe

some of the main characters (Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr,

Charles S Peirce, William James and John Dewey) involved

in the original development of pragmatism and outline their

approach to selected topics. The particular topics chosen are

those that various sources suggest are the most significant

aspects of each originator’s approach. They have been

selected more because they help in gaining an understanding

of the whole range and overall approach of pragmatism

rather than because they will all necessarily be of direct

relevance to OR researchers and practitioners. This leaves it

open to the reader to find links in areas where I have not

noticed the connections.

Peirce and James are generally credited with developing

pragmatism. Frequently in philosophical writings Dewey, a

dominant figure in American philosophy up to the Second

World War, is added. I have also included Oliver Wendell

Holmes Jr, who was involved at the beginning and is

considered one of the great judicial figures in US history.

Holmes’s particular interest for OR is his development and

application of his philosophical ideas while working as a

professional lawyer. I have not included Chauncey White

(who, although a considerable influence on the thinking of

the others, did not publish much) nor the lawyer Nicholas St

John Green; both were members of the Metaphysical Club

(see below). I have also not included Josiah Royce of

Harvard whose views along with those of James, White and

Peirce have been called ‘Cambridge Pragmatism’. This

tradition, which through CI Lewis, Nelson Goodman, WV

Quine, Thomas Kuhn and Hilary Putman extended to the

end of the twentieth century, is represented here by Peirce

and James. The second variant of pragmatism, ‘instrument-

alism’, is represented by Dewey. Dewey’s influence con-

tinued through the universities of Chicago, Columbia and

the several universities in New York.

The eighth section examines the impact of pragmatism,

indicating its strengths and its weaknesses. Finally pragma-

tism is discussed in relation to OR, including its use by

Churchman and Ackoff, and some pointers are given as to

how the philosophy might find application more generally

in OR.

Throughout this paper use is made of various reference

books without further citation including the Chambers

Dictionary of World History, the Oxford Dictionary of

Quotations, the Oxford English Reference Dictionary, the

Oxford Companion to English Literature and the Oxford

Companion to Philosophy. In particular, extensive use has

been made of those entries in the latter that describe the

contributions of the originators of pragmatism (CJ Hook-

way on Peirce; TLS Sprigge on James; K Hanson on

Dewey; and N Rescher on both Pragmatism and American

Philosophy). Historical accounts of philosophy in the USA

can be found in Kuklick (2003) and Menand (2001). A fuller

account of the philosophy of pragmatism can be found in

many standard philosophical texts and, of course, in the

writings of the originators of the philosophy, which are,

however, sometimes voluminous and difficult.

The word: pragmatism

As an engineer and OR practitioner the word pragmatism

has for me positive connotations. I take it to be about being

practical, getting things done, doing things a step at a time,

not allowing the best to be the enemy of the good, taking

R Ormerod—History and ideas of pragmatism 893

account of others’ views, not being hung up on unattainable

principles and yielding on some issues in order to make

progress on others. For others it means failure to adhere to

theory, sloppy thinking, trimming, lack of principles. Peirce

originally took the word pragmatic from Kant’s Kritik der

reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason). However, it was

James who introduced the term ‘pragmatism’ to the world in

1898 giving Peirce as the source of the philosophy. James

was well known at this time and his book Pragmatism: A

New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, published in

1907, led to 20 years of international discussion and debate.

The word pragmatism originally comes from the Latin

pragmaticus, and the Greek pragmatikos meaning deed, and

it is defined in the dictionary as follows:

Pragmatism: (1) A pragmatic attitude or procedure; (2) a

philosophy expounded notably by CS Peirce and William

James, that evaluates assertions solely by their practical

consequences and bearing on human interests.

The dictionary thus takes us straight into the philosophy

but in doing so uses the terms pragmatic and practical. These

are defined as follows:

Pragmatic: (1) dealing with matters with regard to their

practical requirements and consequences; (2) treating the

facts of history with reference to their practical questions; (3)

history of or relating to the affairs of state; (4a) concerning

pragmatism (b) meddlesome (c) dogmatic.

Practical: (1) Of or concerned with practice or use rather

than theory, (2) suited to use or action; designed mainly to

fulfill a function (3) (of a person) (a) inclined to action rather

than speculation: able to make things function well; (b)

skilled at manual tasks. (4a) That is such an effect, though

not nominally (to all practical purposes) (b) virtual (in

practical control). (5) Feasible, realistic: concerned with what

is actually possible (practical politics; practical solutions).

The word practical derives from the French practique or

Latin practicus, coming from the Greek word praktikos

meaning do, act. Practice and practise come from the same

root.

Other related words are found in philosophical discourse;

pragmatics is the branch of linguistics dealing with language

in use; pragmaticism is a term used by Jürgen Habermas

instead of pragmatism because he wanted a different word to

refer to the pragmatic aspect of communication theory

rather than the common understanding of American

pragmatism (Ulrich, 1983); pragmatize is to represent as

real or rationalize (a myth); and praxis is an accepted

practice or custom, or the practising of an art or skill.

Much of what I took as the meaning of pragmatic can be

found in the definitions above, but also there are the negative

connotations of meddlesome and dogmatic.

The scene: intellectual life in theUSAafter theCivilWar

American pragmatism was developed in a society that had

been traumatized by the Civil War (1861–1865), a war in

which according to Winston Churchill ‘three quarters of a

million men had fallen on the field of battle. The North was

plunged in debt; the South was ruined’ (Churchill, 1958).

The war was formally about the rights of States in relation to

the Federal Government as determined by the Constitution.

The issue that brought this to a head was slavery. Many in

the North were against slavery, but before the war

abolitionists were considered very radical (most felt that

moral suasion rather than political coercion was the proper

means to induce the South to give up slavery).

American universities had developed as theological

training colleges. In 1636 Harvard was founded at Cam-

bridge, a new town in Massachusetts, as a theological college

for training priests to support the growth of the community

(MacCulloch, 2003). In the 18th century the foremost

Puritan theologian and philosopher was Jonathan Edwards

(1703–1758). He graduated from Yale in 1720 and held a

series of pastorates and ministerial posts. This left him time

to systematize and justify the Puritan theme of utter

dependence on God. He developed an idealist position: the

world exists in the mind of God and in our minds through

God’s communicating it to us.

In the 19th century the USA was a still a deeply religious

society. The South was mainly Anglican Protestant whereas

the North contained many variants of Protestantism, mainly

of the reformed variety derived from Calvin. One of the

things that held back scientific education in American

colleges was the continuing dominance of theology. Before

the emergence of more diverse universities, private philoso-

phical and literary societies provided venues for intellectual

activities. During the second half of the 19th century the

subjects covered by universities were broadened. At the same

time money from capitalist benefactors enabled new

universities to open and existing universities to expand and

modernize. Academics were required to publish and needed

to obtain PhDs. In 1876 the Johns Hopkins University was

founded, the first modern-style graduate school in the US.

During this period trustees had to establish their indepen-

dence from Government, and academics had to fight for

their intellectual freedom. This freedom was by no means

assured as benefactors wanted some influence on whom not

to employ and trustees often shared their views. Academics

had to be careful not to upset the apple cart. It was wise to

demonstrate religious commitment particularly if engaged in

research that might seem to challenge established views.

In the 19th century, as the university system grew, academic

philosophy was imported from Europe: idealists dominated at

Harvard; Scottish thought dominated at Princeton; Kantians

were prominent at Chicago; Hegelians in St Louis; and

Thomists at the Catholic institutions. Perhaps the most

influential intellectual in the USA in the middle of the century

894 Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 57, No. 8

was Frank Waldo Emerson (1803–1882). He along with

others developed New England Transcendentalism centred on

Concorde in Massachusetts. Emerson was looking for an

alternative to the combination of the religion of Unitarianism

and the empiricist philosophy of Locke. Unitarianism was a

creed founded on a belief in the innate moral goodness of the

individual (in reaction to Calvinism, which was a creed

founded on the belief in the individual’s moral depravity). It

was a religion that led its followers to oppose slavery.

Emerson, however, was not happy with the idea that such

moral, good individuals should entirely depend on the

empirical knowledge gained from their sense experiences:

surely they were not simply created as empty pots.

In 1832 Emerson had been to Europe and met Coleridge,

Wordsworth and Carlyle, through whom he had become

acquainted with German idealism in general and the

philosophical romanticism of Kant (1724–1805) in particu-

lar. On returning to the US, he developed the concept of

transcendentalism, which relies heavily on the distinction

between true reason based on intuition and the merely

analytical understanding based on logical reasoning and

sense experience. This distinction provided the foundation

for the ‘spiritual religion’ they upheld against the natural

religion of the Enlightenment and the revealed religion of

Calvinism. The adherents of New England Transcendental-

ism took progressive positions on the emancipation of

women and the abolition of slavery. Its reverence for nature

foreshadowed the ecological movement of the twentieth

century. Emerson was an important influence on Nietzsche

(1844–1900) and on both James and Dewey.

At one of the philosophical and literary societies referred

to above, The Saturday Club, Emerson met with Nathaniel

Hawthorne (the author), Louis Agassiz (a zoologist who

opposed evolutionary theories) and Benjamin Peirce (math-

ematician and astronomer; the father of Charles S Peirce)

and others. It was a dinner club that met in restaurants. No

formal presentations were expected of its members, but it

served as a medium for intellectual exchange in a world in

which disciplines, in the modern academic sense, did not

exist. In 1868 a kind of junior edition of the Saturday Club,

known as The Club, was founded in Boston. Membership

included inter alia Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, William James

and Henry James (the author and brother of William

James). There was much sparring between Holmes and

William James. In 1872 Charles Peirce formed a conversa-

tion society in Cambridge MA that included William James

and Holmes, Chauncey Wright and a few others. It was

known as the Metaphysical Club (Menand, 2001). Peirce

described his greatest insights as the product of this group.

The ideas of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr (1841–1935)

Son of a Professor of Anatomy and Physiology who had

written a popular book on Emerson, Holmes was educated

at Harvard Law School. He joined the Army to fight for the

North in the American Civil War; he believed in abolition.

During the war he was injured three times and was deeply

influenced by his experiences. He was particularly impressed

by a successful officer and friend, Henry Abbot. What

impressed him about Abbot was not so much the out-

standing coolness and bravery that he displayed in leading

his men in the face of enemy fire, but the fact that he did so

while being contemptuous of the cause for which he fought.

Holmes practised law in Boston from 1867. He made

his reputation with a fundamental book, The Common

Law, published in 1881. The book was revolutionary in its

willingness to address the accidental and pragmatic effects of

law as opposed to its invincible logic. For a time he was close

to James, but came to see him as too soft in his thinking.

James found him too hard. Holmes became Chief Justice of

the Supreme Court of Massachusetts (1899–1902), and

Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court

(1902–1932). He earned his nickname, ‘the Great Dissenter’,

because he frequently dissented from his conservative

colleagues’ majority opinions, especially as the Court moved

to dismantle social legislation. Eschewing liberal activism,

however, he argued eloquently in favour of judicial restraint,

particularly relating to regulation of the economy.

Holmes on law

In Schenck v. United States (1919) Holmes said: ‘The most

stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man

falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing panic.’

Holmes was greatly influenced by both his father and

Emerson. The idea that disinterested inquiry is the best way

to crack the world’s nut was Holmes’s message to his

generation. He became in effect the Emerson of profession-

alism (Menand, 2001). Holmes concluded that dedicating

himself to practicing law was a suitable base in experience

from which to philosophize.

In his first law review article written in 1870 Holmes

writes; ‘It is the merit of the common law that it decides the

case first and determines the principles afterwards.’ Yet cases

get decided and opinions written and by a process that does

not seem arbitrary, or subjective by those involved. As

Menand (2001, p 338) puts it ‘ythat sentence leaves us with

the question: If principles don’t decide cases, what does?’

Holmes’s answer formed the basis of all his later jurispru-

dence. In the famous fourth sentence of the opening lecture

of The Common Law, Holmes says: ‘The life of the law has

not been logic; it has been experience.’ Jurisprudential

theories can be formalistic (stressing logical consistency),

utilitarian (emphasizing the social consequences) or histori-

cist (reflections of the circumstances in which they are

written). Holmes’s genius as a philosopher was to see the law

has no essential aspect. A case comes to court as a unique

fact situation. There are all sorts of imperatives such as

finding a just result, a result consistent with similar previous

R Ormerod—History and ideas of pragmatism 895

cases, a result beneficial to society or giving the right

behavioural message. There are also desires to punish the

wicked and excuse the good, to redistribute costs from those

who cannot afford them to those who can (like manufac-

turers and insurance companies) and to obtain results to suit

the judge’s own political leanings. Each of the imperatives is

open to interpretation. What are the ‘facts’? What counts as

a relevant analogous case? What counts as a benefit of

society? Which legal principles are generally applicable?

What counts as a ‘just result’? Holmes thought that there

were no hard-and-fast distinctions in any of these areas. He

therefore concluded that overriding all of the above is the

imperative not to let it appear as though any one of these

lesser imperatives has decided the case at the blatant expense

of the others (Menand, 2001, p 339).

Perhaps the most striking of Holmes’s beliefs about the

nature of experience was his treatment of propositions, most

prominently in his dissent in the Supreme Court case of

Lochner v. New York (1905): ‘[g]eneral propositions do not

decide concrete cases.’ A second distinctive feature of his

conception of experience is that it is not individual and

internal but collective and consensual; it is social not

psychological. This is the feature responsible for his most

important contribution to American civil law, which is the

invention of the reasonable man. The reasonable man is the

fictional protagonist of modern liability theory. In The

Common Law he says ‘Experience is the test by which it is

decided whether the degree of danger attending given

conduct under certain known circumstances is sufficient

to throw the risk upon the party pursuing it.’ Whose

experience? The experience, Holmes said, of ‘an intelligent

and prudent member of the community.’ He was referring,

of course, not to judges but to members of juries (Menand,

2001, pp 344–345).

The lesson that Holmes took away from his experience in

the Civil War is that certitude leads to violence. He was

suspicious of causes. He wrote: ‘Some kind of despotism is at

the bottom of seeking for change.’ Abolitionism came to

stand in his thought for the kind of superior certitude that

drives men to kill one another. However, he felt that

everyone held strong views about the way the world should

be and everyone felt that their opponents could do with a

little self-doubt. He believed that people are justified in

defending what they have become accustomed to. ‘Justice’

and ‘fairness’ are slogans propping up particular struggles,

not eternal principles, and reform is a zero-sum game.

However, what is true for the defenders of the status quo,

Holmes felt, should also be true for those attacking it. In

1850 the abolitionists seemed to most Northerners, danger-

ous subversives. Less than 15 years later, they were patriots.

In the USA, during the 70 years that Holmes lived after the

war, the chief struggle was between capital and labour.

Nearly every judicial opinion for which he became known

constituted an intervention in that struggle and his funda-

mental concern was almost always to permit all parties to

use democratic means to attempt to make their interests

prevail. Thus, while he himself was a conservative, many of

his judgements supported radical, often socialist, civil liberty

causes. On the other hand he did not personally believe the

notion that civil liberties were owed to people simply because

they are human. Holmes emerged as a consistent judicial

defender of economic reform and free speech. He thus came

to be fêted by supporters of causes he did not believe in.

That he could accept this with equanimity harks back to his

wartime admiration for his friend who fought with great

valour for a cause he did not believe in.

The ideas of Charles Saunders Peirce (1839–1914)

Peirce (pronounced ‘purse’) studied at Harvard and in 1861

joined the US Coast Survey, the most prestigious scientific

institution in the United States at that time. At the Coast

Survey Peirce was an energetic and formidable scientist (de

Waal, 2003). In 1879 while remaining at the Coast Survey he

joined the newly founded Johns Hopkins University as a

logic instructor. The greatest philosophical influence on

Peirce was Kant: he saw himself as constructing the

philosophical system that Kant might have developed had

he known about logic. Thomas Reid (1710–1796) (who

replaced Adam Smith as Professor of Moral Philosophy in

Glasgow and is remembered as Hume’s most famous critic)

and other common-sense philosophers became increasingly

important in Peirce’s thinking: in late writings the two

influences were combined in ‘critical common-sensism.’

His brilliant career and high scientific reputation were

ruined as a result of suspicions about his religious beliefs and

his divorce and remarriage in 1883. He lost his position at

Johns Hopkins and was finally forced to resign from the

Coast Survey in 1891. Peirce drifted into poverty. James’s

adoption of the term pragmatism, which he credited to

Peirce, was motivated by a desire to boost Peirce’s standing.

Peirce died in 1914. His papers were taken to Harvard where

100 000 pages of manuscript are now held. Currently a 30-

volume chronological edition of his papers, The Writings of

Charles S. Peirce, is underway at Indiana University.

Peirce on philosophy

As was fashionable in the 19th century, Peirce spent much

time and energy in developing a philosophical classification

of the sciences. As de Waal (2003) describes it, he defined

science broadly as the activity of a group of men and women

who have devoted themselves to inquiring into truth for

truth’s sake. He then divided science into mathematics and

what he called the ‘positive sciences’. Mathematics, for

Peirce, is the discipline that draws necessary conclusions

from ideal or purely hypothetical constructions. Within pure

mathematics, Peirce maintained, we do not care whether

these constructions, or even their conclusions, apply to

896 Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 57, No. 8

anything real. In this respect mathematics differs from the

positive sciences, which aim to gain some positive knowledge

about reality. Next Peirce divided the positive sciences into

philosophy and the ‘special sciences’. Special sciences

include, for instance, physics, neurophysiology and medieval

history. Philosophy studies the facts of everyday life in the

most general sense possible. Its purpose is to furnish us with

a general conception of the world we live in, which can act as

a basis for the special sciences. For Peirce, philosophy itself

can be divided into three areas: (i) phenomenology, (ii) the

normative sciences (aesthetics, ethics and logic dealing with

beauty, goodness and truth) and (iii) metaphysics. He

believed phenomenology to be the most basic of the three.

Peirce on phenomenology and semiotics

According to Peirce the central task of phenomenology is to

bring order to the manifold of phenomena that appear

before the mind. One way of doing this is by inquiring

whether there are certain general characteristics that can be

found in all phenomena, no matter whether they are forced

upon us by outward experience, highly abstract conclusions

of theoretical physics, or colourful products of the most

vivid nightmares. Such circumstances Peirce calls categories.

He found only three, which he calls firstness, secondness and

thirdness, defined as follows: ‘(something) is blue’ is a one-

place predicate; ‘(someone) respects (someone else)’ is a

dyadic, two-place relationship; ‘(someone) gives (something)

to (someone else)’ is a triadic, three-place relationship. Peirce

agues that language adequate for scientific descriptive

purposes must contain terms of all these three kinds, but

that there are no phenomena that can only be described in a

language which contains expressions for four-place relations.

This position aligned him with epistemological realism (the

statement ‘snow is white’ is only true if snow really is white

independent of our thought and talk) rather than with

nominalism (the truth of the statement ‘snow is white’

depends only on the word ‘white’ itself, whose existence

depends on a particular language).

According to Peirce, the most important forms of

thirdness involve meaning and representation, and all of

his works are underpinned by a sophisticated theory of

meaning, his semiotics. Peirce and the Swiss scholar

Ferdinand de Sausurre (1857–1913) are usually credited as

the (independent) initiators of semiotics as a field of study.

Peirce especially made two distinctions. First, every sign

involves the sign itself (eg a word such as ‘cat’), an object

(eg cat) and an interpretant (eg you or me). Second, he

distinguished three kinds of signs: icons, which are like the

objects signified (eg naturalistic paintings); natural signs (eg

clouds signifying rain); and conventional signs (eg red for

danger, and at least the majority of words). Iconic signs

share some feature with their object, which each would

possess if the other did not exist. Maps (for instance, survey

or road maps) are straightforward examples, the conventions

governing their use fixing how we are to interpret them as

icons. Mathematical and logical symbolisms are iconic

representations, and it was important for Peirce that

sentences of natural languages have iconic elements too.

Semiotics is usually divided into three fields: semantics, the

study of meaning; syntactics, the study of (surface ‘gram-

matical’ and also ‘deep’) structure; and pragmatics, which

deals with the extra-linguistic purposes and effects of

communications. From semiotics the schools of thought of

structuralism and poststructuralism developed in Paris in the

1950s and 1960s.

Peirce on the theory of inquiry and pragmatism

Peirce based his approach to epistemology in the 1860s and

1870s on his years of experience of scientific work in

laboratories. He believed that all scientific activity is

grounded in the hope that the universe is intelligible, and

intelligible to us: we are to take seriously no hypothesis that

‘blocks the road of inquiry’, forcing us to accept regularities

as brute or inexplicable. He rejected the approach of

Descartes (1596–1650), who suggested that a responsible

investigator should carry out a solitary investigation of his/

her cognitive standing. Peirce said investigations should be a

cooperative venture. He also said that while Descartes’s

sceptical arguments prompt philosophical doubt about what

occasions no real doubt, ordinary investigations take for

granted all the propositions we find certain as we begin the

inquiry. Ordinary inquiry is impressed by the number and

variety of the arguments supporting a conclusion, while the

Cartesian requires a single indubitable train of reasoning to

ground any belief.

Peirce believed we should adopt the ‘method of science’,

which holds that ‘there are real things, whose characters are

entirely independent of our opinions about them; those

realities affect our senses according to regular laws, and

though our sensations are as different as our relations to the

objects, yet, by taking advantage of the laws of perception,

we ascertain by reasoning how things really are’. Peirce was

a ‘contrite fallibilist’: any of our current certainties might

turn out to be mistaken, but relying upon them will not

prevent our making cognitive progress and any errors will

emerge with time. This was a Darwinian argument.

Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1892) held a particular

fascination for the members of the Metaphysical Club. He

had published The Origin of Species by Means of Natural

Selection in 1859. It was not so much the theory of evolution

(providing as it did an alternative to the design theory of

creation) that fascinated the pragmatists, but the process of

natural selection itself, a process based on chance errors.

This chimed with Peirce’s own experience with making

measurements at the Coast Survey. They concluded that

science was not just a question of resolving the uncertainties

of fixed categories and laws. Not only were observations and

measurements uncertain, but the categories and laws were

R Ormerod—History and ideas of pragmatism 897

themselves part of a dynamic process changing over time,

the laws were the result of chance, and the decision to treat a

particular law as absolute is a pragmatic one: laws are

adaptive. The resulting explanations in Peirce’s Metaphysi-

cal Club paper on Design and Chance, which are couched

in terms of ‘habits’, sound strange today: ‘Systems of

compounds which have bad habits are quickly destroyed,

those which have no habits follow the same course; only

those which have good habits tend to survive.’ The habits he

is referring to can be the long neck of a giraffe or gravity:

‘Why y do the heavenly bodies tend to attract one another?

Because in the long run bodies that repel or do not attract

will get thrown out of the region of space leaving only the

mutually attracting bodies.’ On reflection this explanation is

no stranger than those of physicists today.

Peirce’s ‘pragmatic principle’, a rule for clarifying the

content of concepts and hypotheses, forms part of his theory

of inquiry: ‘Consider what effects, that might conceivably

have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our

conception (a sign, a word, a communication) to have. Then,

our conception of these effects is the whole of our

conception of the object.’ Peirce illustrates the value of his

approach by clarifying our conception of truth and reality. If

a proposition is true, then anyone who investigated the

matter long enough and well enough would eventually

acknowledge the truth: truth is a matter of long-term

convergence of opinion. ‘The opinion which is fated to be

ultimately agreed upon by all who investigate, is what we

mean by truth, and the object represented in this opinion is

the real’ (Peirce, 1878).

Much of Peirce’s later work attempted to use his semiotics

to provide a proof of his pragmatic principle. Science, he

argued, is itself a process of sign interpretation. Peirce

models all inductive reasoning on statistical sampling:

quantitative induction involves attempting to estimate the

chance of a member of a population having a particular

property, and qualitative induction tests hypotheses by

sampling their consequences. He denies that induction ever

establishes that a conclusion is true or even probable.

Rather, the practice of inductive testing is justified because

continued use of it will eventually lead us to converge on the

correct value for the chance of a member of the population

having the property in question.

Menand summarizes Peirce’s life work as follows: ‘What

does it mean to say we ‘know’ something in a world in which

things happen higgledy-pigglety? Virtually all of Charles

Peirce’s work—an enormous body of writing on logic,

semiotics, mathematics, astronomy, metrology, physics,

psychology, and philosophy, large parts of it unpublished

or unfinished—was devoted to this question. His answer had

many parts, and fitting them all together—in a form

consistent with his belief in the existence of a personal

God—became the burden of his life. But one part of his

answer was that in a universe in which events are uncertain

and perception is fallible, knowing cannot be a matter

of individual mind ‘mirroring’ reality. Each mind reflects

differently—even the same mind reflects differently at

different moments—and in any case reality doesn’t

stand still long enough to be accurately mirrored. Peirce’s

conclusion was that knowledge must therefore be social.

It was his most important contribution to American

thoughty’ (Menand, 2001, pp 199–200).

The ideas of William James (1842–1910)

William James and Henry James, the author, were sons of

Henry James, a Swedenborgian religious thinker. Henry

James Sr did not believe in the formal education of the day.

He moved William from school to school. William later

declared that he lacked formal education and felt a bit of a

sham as a professor. The openness that characterizes both

the style and the import of his writings on pragmatism

seemed to some of his followers to have been specifically a

consequence of his disorganized schooling. His lack of

school or academic tradition meant that James could

honestly feel that he was responsible for his beliefs to no-

one but himself.

In 1861 James went to Harvard to study first chemistry,

then natural history and finally medicine. He came to admire

Louis Agassiz (a member of the Saturday Club), whose

expedition to Brazil he joined in 1865. Agassiz intended to

gather evidence to refute the evolutionary theories of Charles

Darwin. In 1869 James obtained his MD from Harvard,

where he taught anatomy from 1872 and philosophy from

1882. A professor from 1885, he changed his professorial

title in 1889 from philosophy to psychology.

James transformed the complex and obscurely expressed

opinions of Peirce into the popular philosophy of pragma-

tism. He also described himself as a radical empiricist. He

influenced both the behaviouristic and the introspective

branches of psychology. In his Principles of Psychology

(1890) he places psychology firmly on a physiological basis

and represents the mind as an instrument for coping with the

world. He exercised great influence on politicians, who like

Mussolini often misunderstood him, and on writers, such as

his pupil Gertrude Stein.

James on psychology

James’s famous book, The Principles ofPsychology (1890), is

committed to the scientific study of mind, conceived as the

ascertainment of the ‘empirical correlation of the various

sorts of thought or feeling with definite conditions of the

brain.’ For these purposes he assumes the existence of a

physical world independent of mind. For James, mind is

identified with consciousness, known primarily through

introspection. Scientific psychology explores the physical

basis and biological function of consciousness; this is

evidently to assist an organism to cope with its environment

898 Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 57, No. 8

more flexibly than can inherited behavioural patterns. The

criterion for the presence of mind is, therefore, the

occurrence of behaviour, which reaches the same goal, as

circumstances alter, through different means. The most

famous theme in the Principles is the notion of a ‘stream of

conscience’ (or thought) which is generated afresh each

moment by the current state of the whole brain and reacts

back on to it, and hence on behaviour, with a modicum of

free spontaneity.

James distinguishes between the I and the Me. The I is the

ultimate thinker. The Me divides into the material Me, the

social Me (the images I present to the various communities

to which I belong) and the spiritual Me. The ultimate I is the

momentary thinker of the total present thought. Personal

identity through time consists in the fact that I of one

moment adopts the Mes and Is of earlier times by the

peculiarly warm and intimate way in which it recollects them

(James plays particular attention to the case of multiple

personality in developing his account).

Schopenhauer, a German philosopher inspired by Kant, is

associated with the notion that the will is more basic than

thought in both man and nature, a line of thought that was

elaborated by several neo-Kantian thinkers who stressed the

controlling dominance of practical over theoretical reason.

James’s approach to the problem of free will dates from 1879

when he went through a period of serious psychological

depression. He was rescued from his depression partly by

discovering Charles Renouvier’s defence of free will as ‘the

sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might

have other thoughts.’ James believed that the old argument

as to whether we have free will or whether all our actions are

determined by what has gone before cannot be resolved

analytically or empirically. However, by choosing to believe

that we do have free will and acting accordingly we do

indeed seem to enjoy free will: the outcome is better. ‘My

first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.’ He

believed we should exercise ‘the will to believe’, it must

become a habit. ‘Life shall be built in doing and suffering

and creating.’ This method of breaking free from endless

debilitating introspection by doing is typical of James’s

pragmatism.

James on religion

James was a religious thinker. He believed that life is and has

to be a moral struggle if we are not to collapse into the

passivity of defeat; and this struggle in turn must reach out

towards some religious aspirations of faith to sustain it. His

classic book The Varieties of Religious Experience (published

in 1902) studies the phenomena of mysticism and religious

experience with a view to an eventual empirical assessment

of their validity. Despite his interest in religion James never

speaks from within faith. He remarks in one of his letters

‘Although religion is the greatest interest of my life, I am

rather hopelessly nonevangelical, and take the whole thing

too impersonally’ (Barrett, 1978, p 273). However, he has

been criticized by secular-minded pragmatists for leaning too

far in the direction of religion.

William Barrett suggests that as a philosopher James gets

too caught up in questions of the status of beliefs and would

have been better to follow a more pragmatic line: ‘But as a

pragmatist he should have held fast to the fact that doing is

more basic than belief, and that in the domain of religion the

doing that is fundamental is the act of prayer’ (Barrett, 1978,

p 257).

James on pragmatism

The best known of James’s purely philosophical works is

Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking

(James, 1907), which he dedicated to John Stuart Mill (1806–

1873). James takes over from Peirce the idea that the

meaning of a concept lies in its practical bearings but puts it

to different uses. Truth, for James’s pragmatism, consists in

useful ideas. Their utility may lie in the power they confer to

predict experience or their encouragement of valuable

emotion and behaviour. James’s other chief philosophical

doctrine is radical empiricism, the view that the ultimate

stuff of reality (or at least all knowable reality) is pure

experience.

In Pragmatism James defines pragmatism as follows: ‘[a

pragmatist] turns away from abstractions and insufficiency,

from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed

principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and

origins. He turns towards concreteness and adequacy,

towards facts, towards action and towards power’ (James,

1907, p 28). Pragmatism, he says, is a ‘method only’, an

‘attitude of orientation.’ ‘The attitude of looking away from

the first things, principles, ‘categories’, supposed necessities;

and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences,

facts’ (James, 1907, p 29).

Further, James suggests that pragmatism has come to be

used in a still wider sense as a theory of truth. He cites

Dewey and FCS Schiller (the Oxford 20th-century British

philosopher) as the sources of the pragmatist view of truth.

‘Everywhere, these teachers say ‘truth’ in our ideas and

beliefs means the same thing that it means in science. It

means, they say, nothing but this, that ideas (which

themselves are but part of our experience) become true just

in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relation with

other parts of our experience, to summarize them and get

about among them by conceptual short-cuts instead of

following the interminable succession of particular phenom-

ena’ (James, 1907, p 30; italics in original).

James also attributes to Dewey and Schiller his description

of the way that new opinions (beliefs) are adopted. Accor-

ding to this view, individuals hold stocks of opinions until

they hear of a fact that is incompatible with those opinions.

They try to hold on to their original opinions until a new

idea is discovered which can be ‘graft[ed] upon the ancient

R Ormerod—History and ideas of pragmatism 899

stock with a minimum of disturbance of the latter, some idea

that mediates between the stock and the new experience and

runs them into one another most felicitously and expedi-

ently’ (James, 1907, p 31). This anticipates the line taken by

Thomas Kuhn in his influential book published in 1962,

The Structure of Scientific Revolution (Kuhn, 1962).

William Barrett, an existentialist, observes: ‘James is

considered to be wooly minded, intellectually impressionis-

tic, too subjective and emotional in his approach to qualify

as a really rigorous thinker. This was a prevalent attitude

during the decades when Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) and

Russellian logic dominated philosophy. Russell himself, as

one of the sharpest critics of pragmatism, has helped to

propagate a general disdain to what appeared to be sloppy

thinking generally y..Two changes in the philosophical

climate during recent decades [Barrett was writing in 1978]

combine to alter this disparaging judgement of James. First

is the widespread influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s [1889–

1951] later thought which considerably undermines the

imperial claims of Russellian logic. Wittgenstein in fact

pursues a fundamentally pragmatic analysis of language to

far more drastic lengths than any of the pragmatistsyy.

The second change in the intellectual climate has been the

advent of existentialism as a major movement of con-

temporary thought [originated by Martin Heidegger (1889–

1976)]. In the wake of the existentialist thinkers we are much

less disposed to find fault with James for philosophizing in a

personal and emotional modeyy. He isy.. a thinker of

very great force’ (Barrett, 1978, pp 255–256).

The ideas of John Dewey (1859–1952)

Dewey was born in Burlington Vermont and was educated

at the University there. For more than 40 years students

at the University of Vermont were trained in what was

known as the Burlington Philosophy, a transcendentalist

philosophy based on the superiority of ‘free intuition’. The

initiator of the philosophy, James Marsh, wanted to resist

the divorce between matters of philosophy and matters of

faith. He thought he had found the solution in the writings

of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (the poet and philosopher)

whose approach was based on his understanding of Kant. In

the Emersonian New England Transcendentalism intuition

meant feelings, feelings that could be taken to obviate the

need for systematic thinking according to its critics; in

contrast, in Vermont Transcendentalism intuition meant

introspection and analysis, resulting in a much tighter

approach. Marsh later realized that Coleridge’s writings

had misled him and that Kant provided an inadequate

foundation for the integration of knowledge. He turned to

the work of Hegel (1770–1831), who completed the revision

of Kant that Fichte (1762–1814) and Friedrich Wilhelm

Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854) had begun. According to

Hegel reality is an idea in the mind of the absolute (Menand,

2001, p 263). Marsh died in 1842.

When Dewey moved from the University of Vermont to

continue his studies at Johns Hopkins he chose to work with

George Sylvester Morris, a fellow Vermonter and a Hegelian

with an antipathy to British empiricism. Hegel turned out to

be just what Dewey was looking for in his search for a

philosophy that gave a guide to living. Many years later he

reflected: ‘Hegel’s synthesis of subject and object, matter and

spirit, the divine and the human, was y. no mere intellectual

formula; it operated as an immense release, a liberation.

Hegel’s treatment of human culture, of institutions and the

arts, involved the same dissolution of hard-and-fast dividing

walls, and had a special attraction for me.’ One of the

set texts at Hopkins was Grundzüge des Physiologischen

Psychologie by Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920). This set out a

science-based approach to psychology referred to as the new

psychology. Dewey determined to integrate this new

psychology, evolutionary theory, hegelianism and christian-

ity. He later abandoned hegelian idealism, developing a

biologically based evolutionary philosophy and becoming

committed to experimentation.

Dewey was the leading exponent of pragmatism in

succession to Peirce and James. He did not like the term

pragmatism but he was flattered by James, who credited him

with founding a school of thought at Chicago. James at that

time was something of a celebrity and his opinion mattered.

Dewey developed a systematic pragmatism addressing the

central questions of epistemology, metaphysics, ethics and

aesthetics.

While at the University of Chicago Dewey was deeply

affected by his first hand observation of the famous 1894

Pullman strike, the violence and the subsequent court cases.

As Menand puts it: ‘For the strike showed what a tangle of

contradictions and anachronisms lay in the accumulated

mixture of Christian piety, laissez-faire economics, natural

law doctrine, scientific determinism, and popular Darwinism

that characterized many people’s attitude in the decades

after the Civil War’ (Menand, 2001, p 299). In accord with

his philosophical views, Dewey became deeply involved in

the social issues of the day, especially with the reform of

American schools, but also with matters of national and

international politics. Modern philosophers who acknowl-

edge a debt to Dewey include Hilary Putman (1926–), Jürgen

Habermas (1929–) and Richard Rorty (1931–) (Festenstein,

1997).

Dewey on inquiry

Dewey’s theory of inquiry is a general account of how

thought functions, not in an abstract or purely formal mode,

but in the inquiries of successful science and in the problem-

solving of ordinary daily life. Dewey defined inquiry as the

transformation of a puzzling indeterminate situation into

one that is sufficiently unified to warranted assertion or

900 Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 57, No. 8

coherent action. What is required is the application of

intelligent inquiry, the self-correcting method of experimen-

tally testing hypotheses created and refined from our

previous experience. The approach can be applied as much

to morals and politics as physics and chemistry. Testing may

be in the laboratory or it could be legislation that changes

some function of government. In all cases there is a social

context mediating both the terms of the initial problem and

its solution. The social context is in turn changed by the

inquiry.

Dewey asserts that no knowledge claim, no moral rule,

principle, or ideal is ever certain, immune from all possible

criticism and revision (epistemological and moral fallibi-

lism). However, he believed that progress can be made by the

cultivation of intelligent habits in individuals and the

maintenance of social structures that encourage continuous

inquiry.

Dewey on education

Dewey argued that children should not be understood as

empty vessels passively waiting for knowledge to be poured

in. Rather they should be seen as active centres of impulse,

shaped by but also shaping their environment. Children will

develop habits of one sort or another in the course of their

interactions with their social and physical surroundings. So,

if we want those habits to be flexible and intelligent, then we

must do our best to structure an environment that will allow

and provoke the operations of intelligent inquiry. Rather

than studying theory, pupils should engage in practical

activities with theory being drawn in as necessary. Dewey

sought to apply his theories in a school, which he established

at the University of Chicago.

In 1896, The University Elementary School of the

University of Chicago opened with 16 children, all under

12, and two teachers. By 1902 there were 140 students, 23

teachers and 10 graduate students working as assistants. It

had become an international sensation and was known as

the Dewey School. Its official name became the Laboratory

School; it was a philosophy laboratory, a place where the

new pychology and Dewey himself could find legitimacy.

As Dewey later put it: it was a place ‘to work out in the

concrete, instead of merely in the head or on paper, a theory

of the unity of knowledge.’

Dewey’s goal for children, and indeed for adults, was

growth, growth in powers, in capacities for experience.

Growth was both an end and a means. Knowledge is

inseparable from doing. At the Laboratory School therefore

the children were involved in workshop-type projects in

which learning was accomplished in a manner that simulated

the way Dewey thought it was accomplished in real life:

through group activity. For instance, one such activity was

the children cooking lunch once a week. Preparing a meal is

a goal-directed activity, it is a social activity, and it is an

activity continuous with life outside school. Incorporated

into the practical business of making lunch were arithmetic,

chemistry, physics, geography and so on. Cooking became

the basis for most of the science taught in the school. As

cooking established the link with home, other activities

established the link with industry and business. There was

much work, for example, with iron: the children built their

own tiny smelters.

Dewey on politics, justice and democracy

Dewey was a tireless critic of economic injustice and

oligarchy. He was sympathetic to American socialism

(Decker, 2003). Along with Aristotle (384–322 BC) and

Hume (1711–1776) Dewey was in today’s terms a ‘political

naturalist’. Political naturalism starts from the argument

that ideas in the natural sciences can contribute to a

philosophical point of view of politics and society: the fact of

humans as living, embodied ‘political animals’ is crucial in

understanding the processes of justification and criticism in

political theory. For instance, the biological activity of social

interactions both preserves and furthers shared meanings.

Thus meaning emerges out our biological activity, emer-

gence that cannot be reduced to its component units of

biological acts. The coupling of meaningfulness and the

organism–environment relationship is a distinctive pragma-

tist contribution to all areas of philosophy (Decker, 2003).

Dewey also holds a distinctive view about how the basic

objects of political life are to be justified when challenged.

He rejects the attempts of Hobbes (1588–1679), Locke

(1632–1704) and others to provide a justification for the state

or natural rights as demands of reason or self-interest.

Rather he thought that there are certain basic facts about the

nature of humans as a certain kind of evolved organism

interacting with both an unpredictable and constantly

changing physical environment and a highly articulated

social environment (Decker, 2003). This led to an interest in

the anthropology of early cultures and in modern family and

community institutions as well as nation states themselves.

He saw the proper method of philosophical criticism as that

of genetic analysis, which is the tracing of the history of ideas

and institutions in order to compare the actual causes and

consequences to those they were originally intended to

produce. This is consistent with Dewey’s instrumentalist

view that, because all human action can be analysed in terms

of means and ends, concepts and theories are properly

conceived of as tools to more abstract or complicated ends.

Matters of justice preoccupied Dewey. As an empiricist he

rejected the idea that there is some ideal standard of justice.

He started, as did Socrates before him, with the notion that

we know justice by comparing acts we call just with those we

call unjust; justice comes from concrete, participative daily

life and is inevitably diluted in any abstract ideal or principle

of justice. Further, abstract principles of justice do not allow

for multiple standpoints, such as participant, critic, observer,

willing learner, in the debate over political principles and

R Ormerod—History and ideas of pragmatism 901

projects. Dewey also adds an aesthetic element to justice and

politics: judgements can be made about the quality of

experience for all of us in engaging in the political process

(Decker, 2003).

For Dewey, democracy is both a goal and a means. The

continuity of change that characterizes our world and the

replacement of one generation by another implies what

Dewey understood as a ‘continual rhythm of disequilibra-

tions and recoveries of equilibrium’. We need our best

thoughts and actions of the entire community in order to

reconstruct our equilibrium, not only because the commu-

nity sets the conditions for recovery, but also because we

have no antecedent assurance of the source or nature of the

reconstruction. It is always experimental, and Dewey took

democracy both to be and to further that grand experiment.

Dewey derided ‘spectator’ theories of knowledge, suggest-

ing that they are supported by a self-aggrandizing view of

philosophy, philosophy as priesthood (Festenstein, 1997). In

contrast he insisted on the centrality of practical problem-

solving to inquiry: all ‘controlled inquiry and all institution

of grounded assertion necessarily contains a practical factor,

an activity of doing and making which reshapes antecedent

intellectual material which sets the problem of inquiry’

(Dewey, 1937). Dewey shifted the emphasis on philosophy

from the big ‘wholesale’ questions of metaphysics and

epistemology to the empirically specific ‘retail’ problems of

specific individuals and groups. Political philosophy is not

about discovering truths that rationally persuade diverse

people nor is it about binding principles that can be used to

coerce. Political philosophy is more about method; it is a

messy retail business of clarification, criticism and adjudica-

tion. Dewey called his philosophy ‘instrumentalism’ (Decker,

2003).

The impact of pragmatism: adherents and critics

Pragmatism had a mixed reception in Europe. In Britain

FCS Schiller was an enthusiastic follower of James and FP

Ramsey and AJ Ayer endorsed pivotal aspects of Peirce’s

thought. However, FH Bradley objected to the subordina-

tion of cognition to practice because of the inherent

incompleteness of all merely practical interests. GE Moore

(1873–1958) criticized James’s identification of true beliefs

with useful ones, among other reasons because utility is

changeable over time. Bertrand Russell objected that beliefs

can be useful but plainly false. On the continent, despite

some Italian enthusiasm, various philosophers have dis-

approvingly seen in pragmatism’s concern for practical

efficacy the expression of characteristically American social

attitudes: crass materialism and naı̈ve democratism. Prag-

matism was thus looked down upon as a quintessentially

American philosophy, a philosophical expression of Amer-

ican go-getter spirit with its success-orientated ideology and

a manifestation of a populist repugnance to the long-

established ideological tendencies of European philosophy.

Dewey’s argument was that abstract principles cannot

determine actions because ends cannot be separated from

means. Thus, we might support overthrowing tyrannies in

principle, but, if the means of ridding a people of tyranny

involves many of them dying, we might have second

thoughts. Or again, the strength of our opposition to global

warming might be tested if nuclear power turns out to be the

only feasible option for significantly reducing carbon

monoxide emissions in time. Once the means are examined,

empirical questions are raised. How many people might die

in overthrowing the tyranny? Is nuclear the only feasible

option? Is the global warming problem urgent or can longer-

term options be developed? Thus, Dewey argues that

political questions cannot be resolved by arguments about

abstract principles; it is not ends (however admirable) that

should determine what to do but the outcomes of the means

adopted. What the outcomes are likely to be is an empirical

question on which factual evidence and scientific analysis

can be brought to bear. Each issue has to be argued through

on the merits of the case against the background of a

particular history and context. The answers might be

different at different times and in different contexts.

In the USA pragmatism was met with a widely favourable

response and has it adherents to this day. However, as

philosophy grew and became more professional, individual

philosophers became much more narrowly focussed in areas

such as logical positivism, symbolic logic and rigorous

language analysis, and became more specialized in different

areas of application. As Festenstein explains, ‘On the one

front Dewey’s meliorist [meliorism is a doctrine that the

world may be made better by human effort] vision of the

person and ethics was eclipsed by more turbulent concep-

tions of the human condition, to be found in Jean-Paul

Sartre, Herbert Marcuse, psychoanalysis and other sources.

At the same time, the philosophical ground was shifting.

Under the influence of the logical empiricism espoused with

notable force by émigré philosophers such as Rudolph

Carnap, Alfred Tarski and Hans Reichenbach a technical

conception of philosophy for which formal logic was central

came to dominate mainstream professional philosophy in

the United States. Underpinning this was a view of

philosophy as concerned with what could be known with

certaintyy.Dewey’s more contextual conception of philo-

sophy seemed to muddy the clear waters of epistemology

and logical analysis with contingent historical facts and

seemed too diffuse y. in the new intellectual climate,’

(Festenstein, 1997, p 103). American Universities came to

cover all aspects of philosophy and adherents of all schools

of thought are to be found. Even in the USA therefore

pragmatism lost its special place. After the Second World

War, the recognition of uncertainty that Dewey’s approach

to politics and democracy entailed fell out of favour in the

902 Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 57, No. 8

years of the Cold War. Today enthusiasm for Dewey’s

political views lies largely outside philosophy.

Pragmatism has not had a monopoly on common sense

thinking on practical issues. GE Moore was for a time very

influential in the English speaking world with his approach

to philosophy based on common sense. Marx and Habermas

both place praxis in an increasingly technical world at

the centre of their thinking. Today the critical theory of

Habermas and others provides an alternative, and a

generally more popular philosophy of practice in European

academic circles.

Festenstein sees the ideas of Habermas, Putman and

Rorty as alternative developments of Dewey’s approach,

(Festenstein, 1997). He suggests that ‘the view of Dewey as

concerned principally with implications of ‘scientific method’

for the treatment of ethical, social and political problems, or

as the exponent of a theory hypothesized by technological

achievement while lacking any distinctive morality, is

mistaken’ (p 12). Dewey’s empirical theory of value ‘appears

more as a criticism of instrumental rationality than a

product of naı̈ve scientism. That theory’s purpose is to

clarify how rival moral, ideological and political positions

may be subject to rational appraisal and social criticism

[and] be given a rational groundingythis account can be

properly understood only if it is seen alongside the ethical

and psychological ideas of Dewy’s ‘theory of moral life’. At

its core is a teleological conception of human self-develop-

ment as intrinsically social and cooperative which is held to

support and clarify the requirements of moralityyThrough

the conception of individuality, liberalism is linked to

democracy, the term at the centre of Dewey’s political

thought’ (pp 12–13).

Habermas’s communicative ethics attempt to make the

‘Deweyan connection between practical reason, communica-

tion and democracy’ (Festenstein, 1997, p 14). Habermas

places a view of the development of politics and modern

society (the Frankfurt School’s synthesis of the Marxist

emphasis on interest and coercion and the Freudian concept

of alienation) at the centre of his philosophizing. Ideology is

relevant to the conditions of public debate. These conditions

should involve the creation of a public ‘sphere’, in which

issues of concern to the community can (in principle) be

openly debated, and decisions arrived at that are based upon

reason rather than upon tradition or the fiat of the powerful.

Ideology should be the subject of critique to uncover modes

in which ideas are governed by forces other than conscious,

rational processes. Habermas makes the case that, in the

contemporary world, science and technology become bound

up with ideology: the dominant ideology becoming one of

‘technocratic consciousness’. His philosophy (critical theory)

supports the continual identification and rooting out

of ideologically tainted arguments and language. In this

sense it is revolutionary in intent, continuously challenging

the status quo.

Putman (a student of Quine) tries to steer a path between

objectivity linked to science and its denial, relativism. His

‘internal realism’ instead elaborates a conception of objec-

tivity which does not aspire to independence of perspective

or values. He places this conception of objectivity or

rationality as part of an overarching ‘total ideal’ of human

good. Putman has increasingly turned to pragmatist tradi-

tions of thinking, celebrating the classical pragmatists not

only as precursors of the epistemological claims of internal

realism, but for integrating these claims in an overarching

ethical project (Festenstein, 1997; Norris, 2005).

Rorty has developed a somewhat extreme position,

sometimes described as pragmatist, sometimes as postmo-

dern. Like most philosophers he does not like labels but he

accepts that he is a postmodern relativist if by that is meant

someone who does not believe there is one true description

of the way the world is (Marchetti, 2003). Rorty describes his

preferred stance of ‘irony’ as the opposite of common sense.

Ironists are people who have radical and continuing doubts

about the vocabulary they use, who can not use their own

vocabulary to get rid of these doubts, and who do not think

that their vocabulary is closer to reality than others. (Rorty,

1989). This emphasis on language, Rorty suggests, means

that you can talk about linguistic behaviour and do not

really need to talk about experience or consciousness

(Marchetti, 2003). Rorty proceeds by arguing that liberal

and democratic practices, rather than being justified by

foundations, can be justified by comparison with the

alternatives and agreed within communities using their

particular language and cultural practices (a form of

ethnocentrism). This position contrasts with that of Dewey,

who believed that epistemology was worth pursuing in order

to guide future practice.

Postmodernism, despite its designed-to-shock presenta-

tion, has a resonance with pragmatism in its rejection of

grand philosophical frameworks, meta-narratives and ideo-

logies. However, pragmatism generally resists the postmo-

dern ideas that ‘anything goes’, all truths are relative and

that science is but one among many equally valid narratives.

A greater potential conflict lies with those who advocate

realism. Pragmatism (or at least some aspects of it, for some

philosophers, for some of the time) is based on idealism, a

position under attack from, among others, the critical

realists (Bhaskar, 1989; Norris, 1997). Critical realism has,

however, yet to establish itself and may find it difficult to do

so now that its originator and inspiration, Roy Bhaskar, has

apparently turned to theology and idealism (Potter, 2003). In

fact the pragmatists are rather difficult to pin down on this

score. For instance, James seems to have concluded that the

metaphysical truth was that the physical consists of our own

inner experience of itself (an idealist position). On the other

hand for the best analysis of our ordinary conception of

things he opted for a ‘new realist’ position for which the

physical world consists in sensory vistas only some of them

in minds. Both positions were included in his account of

R Ormerod—History and ideas of pragmatism 903

‘radical empiricism’. The realism–idealism debate seems

likely to continue.

Rorty has said that what he got out of reading the

classical pragmatists is just the idea that there are no

privileged descriptions and that therefore there is not much

point in asking, ‘Is our way of talking about things objective

or subjective?’ He thinks of pragmatists as the people who

did the best job of getting rid of the subject/object distinction

(Marchetti, 2003). However, pragmatist philosophers are

sometimes depicted as falling into two groups. The

subjectivists following in the footsteps of James include

FCS Schiller and Rorty, and the objectivists following in the

footsteps of Peirce include FP Ramsey, CI Lewis and

Carnap. For the subjectivists the question ‘what works’ is

answered personally, in other words ‘what works for person

X’. For the objectivists the question ‘what works’ is

answered impersonally, in other words what works effi-

ciently and effectively for the realization of some appropriate

purpose. For Dewey the answer is given in terms of social

interpersonalism. He thus straddles the two positions.

A brief summary

Before moving on to consider where pragmatism might be

applied by OR practitioners and academics, an account of

the basic characteristics of the philosophy by Pfeiffer

provides a brief summary:

(1) Questions of the meaning of language are best resolved

by studying the practical consequences of the ideas and

statements in question.

(2) The extent to which an idea fulfills important human

goals clarifies the idea and also provides important

evidence for and against the likelihood of truth.

(3) There is no real need for and little to be gained from

pursuit of a First Philosophy in Descartes’ sense [In

Meditations on First Philosophy Descartes tries to

establish a firm basis for belief in the existence of

man and God as a foundation for philosophy], or of a

foundation of all value, or of some set of basic truths

that will answer the great philosophical questions.

(4) Sharp, fixed distinctions of thought and reality are not

reflected in nature, where one thing fades into another,

one flows into another and the complexity of our

thought is clarified only by theories that give tentative

illumination to reality.

(5) Enlightenment by some form of a priori knowledge is

illusory. Even the definitions of our terms may be

changed later, as inquiry proceeds.

(6) Whatever promotes reasoned dialogue, inquiry and

further understanding is good, and what stifles is bad.

Can one be a strict pragmatist? It seems unlikely if one is

to steer clear of dualisms, recognize the tentative nature of

concepts and theories and avoid commitment to a supposed

First Philosophy. Pragmatism does not merely reach out in

all directions to all forms of thought: it is self-conscious and

self-reflective and self-critical. That is, it is prone to examine

its own ideas as tentative. We may one day need to

reformulate parts of some of our thinking about ourselves.

And finally, no parts of our thinking are immune to the

weight of evidence that might come in future experience’

(Pfeiffer, 2003).

Pragmatism and operational research

Churchman and Ackoff

Pragmatism has come to OR most directly through the work

of the pioneering operational research and systems thinkers,

Churchman (1971, 1979) and Ackoff (1979, 1981). Both were

students of the pragmatist philosopher Edgar Arthur Singer,

Jr (1873–1954). At the turn of the century Singer, a civil

engineer in his youth, became assistant to William James at

Harvard. He later took up a post in the Philosophy

Department of the University of Pennsylvania developing

his own version of pragmatism. In an era dominated by

technology Singer argued that philosophy as thinking had to

give way to philosophy as doing. No longer was philosophy

to be conceived as the exclusive activity of thinkers telling

men of action what to do. The ideal was continuous

progress; progress could be achieved through experiment as

well as experience, an approach referred to as ‘experimental

idealism’. This new mission for philosophy was taken up by

Churchman and Ackoff.

Churchman’s thinking has its roots in the philosophy of

pragmatism in general and in Singer’s version in particular.

He developed the idea of ‘inquiring systems’, defining the

characteristics of Lockean (start with a blank sheet and

gather evidence), Leibnizean (start with the current body of

knowledge and extend it), Kantian (examine evidence and

the current body of knowledge from one’s own perspective),

Hegelian (engage in a process of dialectical reasoning) and

Singerian inquiring systems. According to Mitroff and

Turoff (1973) the Singerian inquiring system can be thought

of as a management theory for applying other inquiring

systems: starting with logic, other sciences are then

introduced, a process described by Churchman as ‘sweeping

in’. In doing so, the Singerian inquirer becomes now and

then a Leibnizian, a Lockean, a Kantian and a Hegalian

inquirer. For Churchman it was vital that the analyst should

examine how any situation would be understood by different

inquiring systems, an idea that led him to a dialectical

approach (Churchman, 1971). Churchman requires the

analyst to take a rather heroic role: to conduct inquiry

that is scientific, that includes the whole system potentially

relevant to a problem, and that designs social systems

in terms of ‘inquiring systems’ and the ‘enemies’ (Ulrich,

2004).

According to Jackson (2000) Churchman’s approach can

be criticized for its ‘subjectivism’ and its ‘idealism’, but

904 Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 57, No. 8

he acknowledges its influence on ‘the interpretive system

approach and the emergence of emancipatory systems

thinking’ through (i) its understanding of objectivity, (ii) its

emphasis on ‘whole systems’ improvement in terms of the

‘true’ clients, and (iii) its deep moral commitment (pp 224–

225). Ulrich, who worked for some time with Churchman,

has attempted to achieve the same ends as Churchman, but

in his approach the principle of ‘sweeping in’ is replaced by

the discursive process of ‘boundary critique’ as the core

methodological concept (Ulrich, 2004).

Ackoff was more successful than Churchman in turning

his action-orientated philosophizing based on Singerian

pragmatism into practical methods that could be applied

by practitioners. He argued that objectivity through model-

ling was impossible; objectivity can only be approached by

groups of individuals with diverse values. His approach

‘interactive planning’ involves gaining the participation of

stakeholders in the design of desirable futures and bringing

them about. His work has had a major impact on the OR

and systems communities, particularly in the UK.

Jackson (2000) observes that Ackoff’s approach has also

been criticized for its ‘subjectivism’ and its ‘idealism’.

Further, he says that Ackoff is accused of not giving serious

attention to deep-seated conflict and coercion and of relying

too much on participation as a remedy for organizational

problems. He is also accused of artificially limiting the scope

of his projects so as not to challenge his client’s or sponsors

fundamental interests. Ackoff believes his critics are

obsessed with the notion of irresolvable conflicts. He points

out that he has not encountered such conflicts in more than

300 projects (pp 243–246).

Future potential

Pragmatism itself is now largely ignored by the OR

Academic Community. When it is mentioned it is usually

rejected. For instance, Jackson (1999) believes that practice

should be under the guidance of (controlled by) theory and

therefore opposes any descent (as he would see it) into

pragmatism which expects theory to serve practice. Mingers

(2000) argues that in the OR/MS context there are three

main problems with instrumentalism: (i) it does not provide

information about why a particular theory or model does or

does not work, (ii) it does not contribute towards an

understanding of the way in which things work since it does

not claim to generate explanations, and (iii) it also only

provides a relatively ineffective criterion of truth. Despite his

rejection of pragmatism in general and of instrumentalism in

particular, Mingers says: ‘Clearly, this view [pragmatism] is

very compatible with the practical ends-orientated nature of

OR and has been implicitly suggested by Raitt (1979), ‘We

do not ask if it is true, only if it works—we validate not

verify’ (p 835) and Dando et al (1977) ‘The overall aim y is

to contrive devices by which y the system can, in some

sense, be supposed to work better’ (p 90).’

Immediately prior to the quote above Raitt (1979) writes:

‘The distinctive feature of OR in my view is its use of models

and analogies. A model is not a theory, it has no direct

substantive implications. No-one expects the history of OR

to show an accumulation of models of increasing power,

precision or generality. A model is constructed for practical

application in a particular situation. It is wholly instru-

mental.’

It seems that many believe OR is or ought to be practical

and instrumental. It is also my experience that good OR

practitioners both aspire to be, and are in practice,

pragmatic. There are a number of reasons for thinking that

pragmatism could serve OR practitioners well, including:

(1) Pragmatism fits what we do, how practitioners behave in

practice: In the early days of the Metaphysical Club

Green urged that the membership look to ‘the practical

significance of every proposition’, a view which he

appears to have derived from Alexander Bain’s (1818–

1903) definition of belief—‘of that upon which a man is

prepared to act’. Green and then Holmes saw that

Bain’s ideas articulated the viewpoint of practical

lawyers (Kuklick, 2003). The same can be said of

OR practitioners. In practice most OR consultants

resolve issues by comparing the outcomes that would

result from different courses of action in a particular

context rather than appealing to a generalized set of

abstract principles. They also find it helpful to

concentrate on outcomes when trying to obtain

consensus to a course of action: although a diverse

set of people can seldom agree on a set of principles,

they can often agree on a course of action because each

person considers the outcomes are desirable from their

own perspective.

(2) Pragmatism supports an empirical (in other words

scientific) approach: Most OR practitioners would be

reluctant to give up a basically scientific approach to

their activity. Dewey has shown how this scientific

orientation can be taken beyond the establishment of

facts; it can be applied to the full range of human

activities such as education, organizational design,

politics and international affairs.

(3) Pragmatism emphasizes the uncertainty and changing

nature of our findings: It views science as fallible and

dependent on context, a view that has resonance with

the experience of practitioners working in the field. We

have all had to accept that the science we learnt at

school and college is not as definitive as we thought.

The pragmatist view that science is fallible, changing

and subject to social context accords with the views of

many philosophers of science (from Kuhn onwards).

OR practitioners adopt the methods of natural and

social science to develop local, context-dependent

science that is not easily transferable either from one

context to another or from one time to another in the

R Ormerod—History and ideas of pragmatism 905

same context. Pragmatism also suggests that in the

absence of a logically watertight argument, the weight

of evidence can be used to judge whether to adopt a

certain belief as true. It would advocate testing such an

uncertain truth experimentally. Thus, policy actions

(the outcomes of which are seldom certain) are

experiments.

(4) Pragmatism recognizes the individual psychological

nature of meaning: James in particular developed the

idea that meaning is personal. Pragmatism is an

account of the way people think, the way they come

up with ideas, form beliefs, and reach decisions. No

belief, James thought, is justified by its correspondence

with reality, because mirroring reality is not the

purpose of having minds. In his first article as a

professional psychologist, ‘Remarks on Spencer’s

definition of mind as correspondence’ in the Journal

of Speculative Philosophy (1878) he wrote, ‘The knower

is an actor, and coefficient of the truth. y Mental

interests, hypotheses, postulates, so far as they are

bases for human action—action which to a great extent

transforms the world—help to make the truth which

they declare. In other words, there belongs to mind,

from its birth upward, a spontaneity, a vote. It is in the

game.’ The use of soft methods could find support in

these ideas.

(5) Pragmatism holds that inquiry is social, as is knowledge:

Retaining, maintaining and updating knowledge is a

collective exercise. The process of questioning, experi-

mentation and data gathering will converge on a

consensus. For Peirce this meant engaging the scientific

community, for James it meant a wider group of

erudite individuals, while for Dewey it meant the whole

community. The method of pragmatism would drive

out incorrect and immoral views. The ideas of

pragmatism in general and of Dewey (1937) in

particular provided one of the two streams of thought

(the other being Chicago sociology) that contributed to

the development of the grounded theory approach to

qualitative analysis by Glaser and Strauss (Strauss,

1987).

(6) Pragmatism supports a theory of learning based on

experience, experimentation and action: Dewey suggests

less use of lecturing and more of participation and

activity for educational purposes. Quite apart from the

implications for the education system in general,

lecturers in OR can find support for participatory

exercises and projects within their courses. Practitioners

are encouraged to build participation and experimenta-

tion into their interventions.

(7) Pragmatism addresses morality, social interests and

politics: The advocates of emancipatory and critical

thinking within OR criticize other approaches for

failing to engage with issues of conflict and power:

they say they lack a theory of interests and society.

Pragmatism is not silent on such issues. Dewey gives a

naturalistic account: ‘to show how in modern societies

the requirements of morality support, and in turn are

bolstered by, a determinate, although not fixed, notion

of human well-being’ (Festenstein, 1997, p 187). His

approach is ‘capable of explaining why people with

their particular interests and commitments would have

a central interest in communicative relations, and why

that is a morally significant fact’ (Festenstein, 1997,

p 186). Pragmatism invokes the cannons and norms of

rationality of a particular society (a consensus whose

values and traditions constitute the framework for a

thought and define the conditions in which it can be

validated), cannons and norms that are not fixed but

are subject to change. Dewey seeks to ground a

grassroots conception of liberal and democratic poli-

tics. This recognizes a plurality of values but accepts its

own partiality: that its beliefs and values are historically

conditioned, fallible and open to revision (Festenstein,

1997). The views of Habermas, Putman and Rorty have

evolved from those of Dewey; between them they

provide a number of different ways of conceptualizing

these issues which could have a bearing on the choice

and conduct of an OR intervention.

(8) Pragmatism places theory in the service of practice:

Given their commitment to the development of theory,

some academics, particularly those seeking to develop

new ways of thinking about the conduct of OR, may

find this hard to accept. However, for many others it

is difficult to see how the development of better

algorithms or problem-solving methods has some

higher purpose other than aiding practice in appro-

priate circumstances. It is true that there is a strand of

anti-intellectualism in pragmatism: it argues against the

adoption of abstract principles as ends, preferring to

examine the outcomes of means in a particular context.

However, pragmatism is not against theory, it simply

gives it a different, less exalted role. According to

pragmatism theory should come out of a requirement

of practice/action.

(9) Many OR approaches can find support in the philosophy:

For instance, risk analysis finds support in the

pragmatic emphasis on outcomes, participative ap-

proaches are in accord with Dewey’s theories on

education as a group activity learning from experience

and it is possible that cognitive mapping could find

support in James’s individual psychological approach.

Pragmatism would see in multi criteria decision making

(MCDM) a way of ensuring that emphasis is placed on

outcomes and consequences, on means as well as ends.

Mathematical programmes are logic machines. Simula-

tion is experimentation. Systems dynamics allows the

‘whole system’ to be modelled. Probability theory and

statistics allow statements to be made about the

fallibility of our forecasts and predictions.

906 Journal of the Operational Research Society Vol. 57, No. 8

(10) Pragmatism’s stance on many things seems surprisingly

modern: The recognition of science as a social activity

anticipates the debates about the social nature of

science brought to fore by Kuhn and Bruno Latour and

others. Peirce’s development of semiotics is also a

forerunner of the 20th-century interest in language. He

would have found the twists and turns of literary

criticism a natural extension of his interests. James’s

approach has much in common with the existentialism

of Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980). Boer-

sema also finds strong links between the ideas of Sartre

and Peirce on the nature of consciousness (Boersema,

2003)

(11) Pragmatism’s biological approach should stand it in good

stead to adapt to new science: There is tremendous

amount of rethinking going on as a result of research

into the mind, consciousness, evolution and genetics.

James’s wish that psychology should be treated like a

natural science is at last being realized. The mind

sciences are the province of evolutionary biologists,

cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, psychophysicists,

linguists, computer scientists and so on (Gazziniga,

1998). BF Skinner’s theories of stimulus and response

have yielded to Noam Chomsky’s contention that

language is a biologically in-built human capability.

Steven Pinker has extended the argument suggesting

that language is a human instinct. Through genetics we

are beginning to understand some of the mechanisms of

the mind. Pinker in The Blank State (Pinker, 2002)

describes how controversy has developed: EO Wilson in

his book, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Wilson,

1975), suggested that the new scientific understanding

could change the way we think and talk about social

policies; the responses by Stephen Jay Gould and others

in Allen et al (1975) have reverberated through the

academic world and the controversy continues to this

day (Wilson, 1998; Gould, 2003). This is an exciting

battle of ideas at the frontier of intellectual endeavour.

The results will change how we think, how we behave

and how we conduct our affairs.

(12) Pragmatism is flexible enough to accommodate other

philosophical positions: James says this about pragma-

tism: ‘But, at the outset, at least, it stands for no

particular results. It has no dogmas, and no doctrines

save its methods. As the young Italian pragmatist

Papini has well said, it lies in the midst of our theories,

like a corridor in a hotel. Innumerable chambers open

out of it. In one you may find a man writing an atheistic

volume; in the next someone on his knees, praying for

faith and strength; in a third a chemist investigating a

body’s properties. In a fourth a system of idealistic

metaphysics is being shown. But they all own the

corridor, and all must pass through it if they want a

practicable way of getting into or out of their respective

rooms’ (James, 1907, p 29). Pragmatism could thus

provide the meta-methodology required, according to

Jackson (2000), ‘to take maximum advantage of the

benefits to be gained from using methodologies

premised upon alternative paradigms’ (p 387).

A word of caution is necessary. However appealing the

attributes described above might be to the OR practitioner,

it does not follow that the underlying philosophical

propositions of pragmatism are true, or are the best way

of understanding humanity in the world, or are even

defensible. Such reassuring certainty is not accessible to the

philosophically naı̈ve (you and me) nor offered by the

philosophical cognoscenti (renowned philosophers). This is,

of course, true of all other philosophies. The only way we, as

practitioners, can judge the various philosophical positions is

in practice: do they make sense to us, what effect would

adopting them be likely to have, are they useful? These

are, of course, pragmatic questions and it could be argued

that using pragmatism to judge pragmatism is a circular

argument. However, other philosophies are in the even more

uncomfortable position of necessarily being judged by us in

terms of a philosophy, pragmatism, which they reject. We

have no choice in this so long as we are in practice

pragmatists in the habit of judging things according to their

likely impact in our particular context at this particular time.

The saving grace is pragmatism’s willingness to accommo-

date other positions.

Conclusions

Pragmatism arose in the USA in the second half of the

19th century, a time of religious, economic and intellectual

turmoil. It was based on the way that people, professional

people in particular, behaved in practice. At a time when

an alternative to the explanation of divine creation was

offered by the ideas of Darwin, consciousness, memory,

knowledge, reasoning and language were all seen as man’s

evolutionary response to his environment. According to

pragmatism, beliefs develop over generations to guide

action. These beliefs were developed collectively through

experience with only the fittest surviving. Truths were held

because they worked at that time in that context. Theories

developed out of the need to shape, simplify and make

memorable the multitude of contingent facts that action

threw up. Theory supports practice. Knowledge is fallible.

New facts need to be accommodated in the existing body of

knowledge. If current theories are contradicted a new

explanation needs to be found. Beliefs, that is theories one

is prepared to act on, need not be absolutely, logically

certain; they can be adopted on the weight of evidence.

Experience will tell.

It is the impact on outcomes that determines whether

theories have meaning and what that meaning is. Beliefs can

only be judged in terms of the outcomes of the actions they

engender. All actions are experiments. Educational practices,

R Ormerod—History and ideas of pragmatism 907

governmental policies, institutional arrangements and inter-

national interventions are all experiments and should be

judged by their outcomes. Morality lies in outcomes rather

than principles. Therefore, it is the means that should be

considered rather than ends. Whereas ends can be debated

purely rationally, means always have a factual content.

Therefore political questions are subject to scientific analysis

(to establish the facts of the matter).

OR is a professional activity rooted in practice. It looks to

theories to support this practice. It is a scientific approach

applied locally. Its findings are time and context dependent.

The questions addressed are related to the practical

requirements of decision making at a particular time in a

particular context. The theories developed need to be

established sufficiently to support specific organizational

decisions and no more. Operational or policy options are

developed and their potential outcomes are compared. If OR

wants a philosophical approach to inform its thinking about

its practice, pragmatism would seem to have much to offer.

Particularly appealing are the first and last points in the list

in the previous section: it fits what we do, how practitioners

behave in practice, and it is flexible enough to accommodate

other philosophical positions. The latter point suggests it

could play the role of an overarching philosophy for OR

(Ormerod, 2002), used to evaluate the alternatives (Check-

land’s phenomenolgy, Jackson’s critical theory, Taket and

White’s postmodernism, Mingers’s critical realism and so

on) in terms of their practical outcomes. This seems to me to

be important. As new philosophies come and go we need a

stable perspective to hang on to. The method of pragmatism

could provide such a perspective.

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Received June 2004; accepted July 2005 after two revisions

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