Pragmatism

Pragmatism, philosophical doctrine, developed by the 19th-century American philosophers Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and others, according to which the test of the truth of a proposition is its practical utility; the purpose of thought is to guide action; and the effect of an idea is more important than its origin. Pragmatism was the first independently developed American philosophy. It opposes speculation on questions that have no practical application. It asserts that truth is relative to the time, place, and purpose of investigation and that value is as inherent in means as in ends. Pragmatism was the dominant approach to philosophy in the United States during the first quarter of the 20th century.

The American philosopher and educator John Dewey developed pragmatism into a new philosophy, instrumentalism. The British philosopher Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller and the French philosopher Henri Bergson contributed to the development of pragmatism. Like the older utilitarianism, pragmatism presents a working philosophy for the natural sciences.