Interpretation as Action: The Risk of Inquiry
Jon Awbrey and Susan Awbrey
"We hope you will find these thoughts of ours both interesting and
useful." These are words spoken to express an intention, a bearing in
the mind of a person toward an object which is yet to be achieved. The
readiest moment of human life involves the interplay of signs, ideas,
and objects-more explicitly, the interrelation of signifying
expressions, states and dispositions of the mind or person, and objects
or objectives either actual or potential. Our work designing
instruments to enhance the play of inquiry has attuned us to the themes
of interpretation and intentionality which every inquiry seems to
involve. We hear what sounds like familiar strains reaching us from the
hermeneutic quarter. The purpose of this essay is to trace to their
sources a few of these potentially common themes, to draw out one line
of their historical development, and to gather what consequences they
inspire for educational practice and continued inquiry.
Introduction
In order to study the nature of signification and communication, the
theory of signs must involve itself with questions of interpretation
and intention. The theory of inquiry studies the common pattern of all
determination, all proceeding toward the settlement of unsettled
situations. There is a key relationship between signs and inquiry. We
will follow this relationship through three points of reference.
Aristotle's Peri Hermeneias or On Interpretation introduces the
relationship of signs, impressions in the mind, and objects. C. S.
Peirce fully explores the triadic relation of signs, interpretants, and
objects in its bearing upon his threestage process of inquiry. John
Dewey elaborates these ideas in his view of the lived experience as the
"existential matrix" of inquiry. Three major questions will be explored:
How does the sign relation that underlies the nature of signification and communication compare within these works?
We discuss the role of the interpreter in the activity of
interpretation. Aristotle assumes that objects and impressions in the
mind are constant across all interpreters. Confronting this assumption
with the needs of hermeneutic and educational practice, we argue that a
comparative and developmental understanding of interpreters is
required. This in turn demands the more complete theory of signs
envisioned by Peirce and Dewey, which continues to be developed in the
semiotic and pragmatic traditions.
What is inquiry and how is it related to the theory of signs?
We examine the structure of inquiry as articulated by Peirce and Dewey.
In this model, inquiry begins with a surprising phenomenon or
problematic situation. Whether felt as pleasant wonderment or painful
bewilderment, we feel driven to some activity that will return us to
our prior equilibrium. This may issue in a search for explanation that
reduces the surprise or for a plan of action that resolves the problem.
The ensuing activities share a common form, the differentiation of a
pattern. In our consternation, we recognize a variety of features, some
of which can be varied as part of our capacity for free choice. The
problem or surprise is present because of its difference from
something. As a surprise, what happens is different from what we
habitually expect. As a problem, what happens is different from what we
hopefully intend. To change the systematic expectation against which
background a surprising phenomenon originally figured, we must discover
some freedom to change what generated that expectation, and so to
modify our personal model of the world.
What do these ideas suggest for the practice of education?
A variety of implications will be explored. In this view, the teacher
acts as a catalyst of inquiry, serving as a mediator to quicken the
actualization of something already present in the potential of the
student. Emphasis is placed on developing tools that extend the
learner's capacity for inquiry. The authors' goal is to design computer
software that will enhance the capacity for exploring complex,
qualitative information and will support inquiry by serving as a bridge
between teaching and research. By engaging in their own explorations
and making assumptions explicit, learners will be invited to "think
reflectively" about their interpretations.
The Theory of Signs and the Role of the Interpreter
We accept the tenet of pragmatism that all thought takes place in
signs. Our interest in the enterprise of "training thought" (Dewey
1991) demands that we examine the role of the interpreter in all the
activities that make use of or take place in signs.
Aristotle On Interpretation
Our first point of reference is Aristotle's introduction of the sign relation in his treatise On Interpretation.
Words spoken are symbols or signs (symbola) of affections or
impressions (pathemata) of the soul (psyche); written words are the
signs of words spoken. As writing, so also is speech not the same for
all races of men. But the mental affections themselves, of which these
words are primarily signs (semeia), are the same for the whole of
mankind, as are also the objects (pragmata) of which those affections
are representations or likenesses, images, copies (homoiomata).
(Aristotle, De Interp. i. 16a4).
This early text recognizes the three roles within the sign relation:
signs, ideas, and objects. It also characterizes the relationships
between these three roles. For Aristotle, the relation between signs
(words) and ideas (affections and impressions) is that of a symbol to
what it symbolizes. In origin, a symbol was a split coin used as a
token of recognition. In concrete terms, the symbol is a particular
kind of sign. As a fragment, it refers both to its other half and to
the whole that they originally formed. The relation between ideas and
objects is that of an impression to what it is a likeness of. Although
Aristotle leaves it implicit, we can see that there is a relationship
between signs and objects that is a compound of the first two
relations. It is the indirect relation, a fragment of a likeness. There
is irony here, that the sign relation is rooted in a type of iconoclasm.
Figure 1 illustrates the sign relation as described by Aristotle. The
arrows are drawn to indicate the direction of increasing symbolization,
proceeding around the faces of the sign relation in an opposite sense
from the process of adducing meaning which it is the job of
interpretation to reconstruct. The interpreter, as agent and embodiment
of all the various sign processes, does not have a particular role in
the sign relation but is, in a sense, identified with the whole of it.
Figure 1. The Sign Relation in Aristotle

Aristotle's description contains two claims of constancy, that ideas
and objects are the same for all interpreters. This view does not allow
for the plurality and mutability of interpreters, two features that we
must be concerned with in hermeneutics and education. John Dewey
expresses this point well:
Thinking is specific, in that different things suggest their own
appropriate meanings, tell their own unique stories, and in that they
do this in very different ways with different persons. (Dewey 1991, 39).
However, this account of Aristotle's may be considered in part a
reasonable approximation and in part a suggestive metaphor, suitable as
a first approach to a complex subject.
Some other features of this text will figure in our later discussions.
Pragmata, the Greek word used for "objects," has shades of meaning
ranging from physical objects to purposeful objectives to problematic
objections. Derivatives of it can refer to troubles and treatises, all
very much the business of inquiry. These objects became the "going
concerns" of pragmatism. However, the attempt of pragmatists to convey
these varied meanings in practice was often misconstrued as a reduction
of intentions to physical operations. One last point of interest, the
text suggests that Aristotle appreciated the tension between cultural
and natural signs by employing words with both connotations
(symbola vs. semeia).
The Sign Relation According to Peirce
In moving from Aristotle's account of the sign relation to Peirce's, it
helps to identify some links between them. Words spoken or written are
classed together as Signs. Ideas, affections and impressions,
correspond to what Peirce calls Interpretants. For all practical
purposes, interpretants are just another class of signs. They may even
be just another role the same class of signs can play. If any
distinction is intended between them, it is only that interpretants are
more intimately involved in the mind or person of the Interpreter.
Peirce gave the following definition of a sign in his 1902 Application to the Carnegie Institution:
Logic is formal semiotic. A sign is something, A, which brings
something, B, its interpretant sign, determined or created by it, into
the same sort of correspondence (or a lower implied sort) with
something, C, its object, as that in which itself stands to C. This
definition no more involves any reference to human thought than does
the definition of a line as the place within which a particle lies
during a lapse of time. (Peirce, NE 4, 54).
There are two important features to note in this portrayal of the role
of signs in logic. First, Peirce's goal is to differentiate the formal
and the material aspects of thought and inquiry. This attempt is
motivated by his interest in a certain question: "What is the relation
of matter and form in the actuality of the mind (entelechy) and is
their synthesis a third something or not? This helps us understand how
Peirce can be concerned with developing a formal characterization of
signs and sign processes without being just another "formalist." His
interest is partly due to the influence of Aristotle, whose dictum that
"soul is form" is given in the following text:
So the soul (psyche) must be substance (ousia) in the sense of being
the form (eidos) of a natural body (soma), which potentially (dynamei)
has life. And substance in this sense is actuality (entelecheia).
(Aristotle, De Anima II. i. 412a20).
Second, Peirce's claim that his definition of a sign involves no
reference to human thought means no necessary reference. The adjective
"nonpsychological" that he often attaches to this conception of signs
and logic is not intended to be exclusive of human thought but to
expand the scope of the concepts beyond it (Peirce, NE 4, 21). The
prefix "non" is better read as an acronym for "not of necessity," and
is commonly used in mathematical discourse in just this way. It extends
the use of a concept into wider domains than the paradigm cases upon
which our original intuitions were formed.
A definition of signs and their processes which is not limited by prior
restriction to human psychology can be used to investigate human
thought as a species of natural process. There is considerable power in
this naturalistic viewpoint. It allows us to put human thought in a
context of other sign processes, to ask what might be the specific
differences that distinguish it, and to consider its evolution through
different orders of complexity.
Two other features of the sign relation, as portrayed by Peirce, are
especially crucial. First, the designations sign, interpretant, and
object are pragmatic roles and not attributes of real essence or
permanent nature. Second, a sign relation in the generic case can be
irreducibly triadic, and as such cannot be wholly understood from any
compound of its dyadic fractions.
Pragmatic Roles vs. Exclusive Attributes
The assignments of entities to the roles of sign, interpretant, and
object do not mark any distinctions of essence or substantial
differences among these entities. The same entity may function in any
role. For example, Queen Elizabeth may be a symbol of her realm to her
subjects; but as a person, she is an interpreter of the English
language. Of course, some things may be found more suitable than others
for a given role, but this is a pragmatic factor and discovered after
the fact. These attributions are exactly that, roles attributed to an
entity from a certain point of view, and correctly attributed only in
relation to its moment by moment functioning in a currently relevant
sign process.
Sign Relations are Irreducibly Triadic
What does it mean that a sign relation is irreducibly triadic? In
simplest terms it means that there are facts about a sign relation
which cannot be pieced together from separate investigations of the
pairwise relations. Thus, studies which limit themselves to syntax
(relations internal to the sign domain) or semantics (relations between
signs and objects) or semiotics (relations between signs and
interpretants), all necessary to the topic, are not sufficient to
capture the full dimensionality of the subject. Pragmatics is the name
we use for the full theory of signs, one that provides for the
consideration of plurality and progress in the analysis of interpreters.
Why is it important that a sign relation is irreducibly triadic? In our
general effort to understand complex phenomena using the simpler things
we already understand as guides, the irreducibly triadic nature of
signs brings both good news and bad news. The bad news we have already
seen. There is no hope of fully understanding the sign relation in
terms of anything simpler. The good news is this. If we do become
accustomed to things as complex as the sign relation, then many other
interesting phenomena can be clarified by using it. Indeed, it is our
impression that at least some of the tensions in the issue of
intentionality can be resolved by relating them to similar tensions in
the sign relation.
Signs and Inquiry, Information and Doubt
When we call attention to the fact that signs and expressions are human
artifacts, it forces us to recognize that signs are objects in their
own right, with all the contingency and facticity that this entails. It
is only natural that in pointing out the status of a sign as sign, we
are reminded of its fallibility, the chance that it can fail to mean
anything either present or forthcoming, the risk that it may lead or
mislead by degrees in its aim. The sign may be broken in numerous ways,
failing to connect by not denoting or not connoting, losing its
relation to objects in the world or ideas in the mind. All the ways
that it can succeed are ways that it can fail to signify.
What is frequently appreciated in many so-called symbols is exactly
their vagueness, their openness, their fruitful ineffectiveness in
expressing a "final" meaning, so that with symbols and by symbols one
indicates what is always beyond one's reach. (Eco 1986, 153).
The fallibility of signs is shared with the human activities of
interpretation and inquiry, and bears a relation to the situated
character of all dynamic processes of determination.
If doubt and indeterminateness were wholly within the mind-whatever
that may signify - purely mental processes ought to get rid of them.
But experimental procedure signifies that actual alteration of an
external situation is necessary to effect the conversion. A situation
undergoes, through operations directed by thought, transition from
problematic to settled, from internal discontinuity to coherency and
organization. (Dewey 1988, 185).
Signs are enabled to have significance only within a proper setting. A
whole system of signs is required to constitute what we variously call
a medium, a channel, a formal or natural language. In such a context,
information becomes a property that we attribute to signs. A sign given
in this kind of situation has the ability to reduce the uncertainty
that an interpreter has with regard to an object domain. It is in
virtue of this ability that a sign is said to possess and convey
information.
This power of reducing uncertainty, of mediating between the less and
the more determinate situation, is just the virtue that inquiry seeks
to have. Our established systems of signs are the typical results of
wellcompleted inquiries, while inquiries in the present tense have no
guarantee of yielding such stable and reusable products.
The Pattern and Stages of Inquiry
Up until now we proceeded synthetically, attempting to reconstruct the
nature of inquiry from the shape and flow of its chief constituents,
signs in action. We now move inquiry into the foreground, examining the
functions and stages which support it. In doing this, it is natural to
reverse the order of presentation and to work from our current
perspective on signs toward the functional and historical precursors
which round out our view of inquiry.
To illustrate the place of the sign relation in inquiry we begin with
Dewey's elegant and simple example of reflective thinking in everyday
life:
A man is walking on a warm day. The sky was clear the last time he
observed it; but presently he notes, while occupied primarily with
other things, that the air is cooler. It occurs to him that it is
probably going to rain; looking up, he sees a dark cloud between him
and the sun, and he then quickens his steps. What, if anything, in such
a situation can be called thought? Neither the act of walking nor the
noting of the cold is a thought. Walking is one direction of activity;
looking and noting are other modes of activity. The likelihood that it
will rain is, however, something suggested. The pedestrian feels the
cold; he thinks of clouds and a coming shower. (Dewey 1991, 6-7).
In this narrative we can identify the characters of the sign relation
as follows: coolness is a Sign of the Object rain, and the Interpretant
is the thought of the rain's likelihood. In his 1910 description of
reflective thinking Dewey distinguishes two phases, "a state of
perplexity, hesitation, doubt" and "an act of search or investigation"
(Dewey 1991,
9), comprehensive stages which are further refined in his later model
of inquiry. In this example, reflection is the act of the interpreter
which establishes a fund of connections between the sensory shock of
coolness and the objective danger of rain, by way of his impression
that rain is likely. But reflection is more than irresponsible
speculation. In reflection the interpreter acts to charge or defuse the
thought of rain (the probability of rain in thought) by seeking other
signs which this thought implies and evaluating the thought according
to the results of this search.
Figure 2 illustrates Dewey's "Rain" example, tracing the structure and
function of the sign relation as it informs the activity of inquiry,
including both the movements of surprise explanation and intentional
action. The dyadic faces of the sign relation are labeled with just a
few of the loosest terms that apply, indicating the "significance" of
signs for eventual occurrences and the "correspondence" of ideas with
external orientations. Nothing essential is meant by these dyadic role
distinctions, since it is only in special or degenerate cases that
their shadowy projections can maintain enough information to determine
the original sign relation.
Figure 2. Signs and Inquiry in Dewey

If we follow this example far enough to consider the import of thought
for action, we realize that the subsequent conduct of the interpreter,
progressing up through the natural conclusion of the episode-the
quickening steps, seeking shelter in time to escape the rain-all of
these acts form a series of further interpretants, contingent on the
active causes of the individual, for the originally recognized signs of
rain and for the first impressions of the actual case. Just as critical
reflection develops the associated and alternative signs which gather
about an idea, pragmatic interpretation explores the consequential and
contrasting actions which give effective and testable meaning to a
person's belief in it.
Dewey's Definition of Inquiry
By 1938 Dewey had developed a definition of inquiry which summarized his mature views:
Inquiry is the controlled or directed transformation of an
indeterminate situation into one that is so determinate in its
constituent distinctions and relations as to convert the elements of
the original situation into a unified whole. (Dewey 1986, 108).
In view of the apparently inextricable relationship our previous
discussions have detected between interpretation and inquiry, it would
seem natural that a definition of inquiry should have some bearing on
interpretation. Given Dewey's definition of inquiry, this forces the
question: Can both interpretation and inquiry be seen as special types
of determination?
Prior to our discussion of the sign relation, an affirmative answer to
this question might have seemed surprising, because these two things
seem so different. Interpretation and inquiry are not usually
identified with each other in everyday thought. Interpretation gives
meanings to signs. Inquiry seeks to end perplexity. Interpretation of
everyday speech is not reflected upon as problematic, whereas inquiry
is the very model of problem-solving activity.
But now the idea that interpretation is every bit as risky as inquiry
should be familiar. There is no infallible reflex which gives meanings
to signs, expressions, and texts. Conversely, inquiry, "thinking" in
its best sense, "is a term denoting the various ways in which things
acquire significance" (Dewey 1991, 38). So, there is no longer an
obstacle to viewing these two processes as forms of determination.
Architecture of Inquiry
Peirce and Dewey gave similar accounts of the architecture of inquiry,
its typical pattern and generic stages. Both Peirce and Dewey agree
that inquiry is "a response by human beings to some break or
interruption in their previously untroubled behavior." In Dewey's later
thought, the stages of inquiry involve: (1) "the problem implicit in
such an interruption is located, formulated, and developed"; (2)
"hypotheses (or suggestions) for solving the problem are introduced and
are examined, with a view to determining by reasoning just what is
implied by them"; (3) "a hypothesis is tested by appropriate
experiments which either verify or disconfirm such logical consequences
of the hypothesis"; and (4) "a judgment as to whether a proposed
hypothesis does (or does not) resolve the problem that initiated the
inquiry." (All quotes in this paragraph are from Nagel, in Dewey 1986,
xv-xvi).
Peirce's most elegant and detailed account of inquiry is given in the
context of his 1908 article "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of
God" (CP 6.468-476). According to Peirce, inquiry begins with "some
surprising phenomenon, some experience which either disappoints an
expectation, or breaks in upon some habit of expectation of the
inquisiturus."
The first functional stage of inquiry is abduction, which involves
"pondering these phenomena in all their aspects," allowing a conjecture
to arise "that furnishes a possible Explanation," regarding the
conjecture with "favor" and holding it to be "Plausible." Abduction is
the "whole series of mental performances between the notice of the
wonderful phenomenon and the acceptance of the hypothesis." It is:
the dark laboring, the bursting out of the startling conjecture, the
remarking of its smooth fitting to the anomaly, as it is turned back
and forth like a key in a lock, and the final estimation of its
Plausibility, … Its characteristic formula of reasoning I term
Retroduction [abduction], i. e. reasoning from consequent to
antecedent. (Peirce, CP
6.469).
Peirce's second stage of inquiry, deduction, is the testing of the hypothesis.
This testing, to be logically valid, must honestly start, not as
Retroduction starts, with scrutiny of the phenomena, but with
examination of the hypothesis, and a muster of all sorts of conditional
experiential consequences which would follow from its truth.
(Peirce, CP 6.470).
Finally, in the third stage, induction, the inquirer ascertains "how
far those consequents accord with Experience, and of judging
accordingly whether the hypothesis is sensibly correct."
(Peirce, CP 6.472).
Peirce divides the stages of inquiry at different points than Dewey,
relating them to three modes of inference that he calls abductive,
deductive, and inductive reasoning.
(Abduction suffers a flight of fanciful names from hypothesis, through
presumption and suggestion, to retroduction.) These forms of inference
were drawn from Aristotle's three figures of syllogism and passed
through a series of metamorphoses in Peirce's refractory. Though they
follow one another in the typical progress of inquiry, these elements
of inference may also be combined in other ways, for example, to yield
mixed forms of reasoning such as analogy (Peirce 1982, 180).
Implications for Educational Practice
According to John Dewey, it is because of the human quest for perfect
certainty that philosophy has inherited three problematic viewpoints:
the first, that certainty, security, can be found only in the fixed and
unchanging; the second, that knowledge is the only road to that which
is intrinsically stable and certain; the third, that practical activity
is an inferior sort of thing, necessary simply because of man's animal
nature and the necessity for winning subsistence from the environment.
(Dewey, 1988, 41).
These predispositions of philosophy toward antecedent, fixed universals
have led to what Peirce and Dewey call a spectator theory of knowledge
which "excludes any element of practical activity that enters into the
construction of the object known" (Dewey 1988, xi). Still it is not the
uncertainty itself for which Dewey believes we lack tolerance but the
risk that it entails. In contrast with invariants the results of
action, even action painstakingly planned and conceived, can never be
certain. Its outcomes are only probable. What then can inquiry offer
that the spectator theory of knowledge cannot? Instead of the pursuit
of invariant objects as the foundation of certainty, inquiry affords a
feeling of control based on discovering the "relations among changes in
place of definition of objects immutable beyond the possibility of
alteration" (Dewey 1988,
82). No longer are we passive receptacles of facts but actively involved explorers, constantly interpreting our experiences.
Teacher as Catalyst
In this view the teacher acts as a catalyst of student inquiry, serving
as a mediator or sign to quicken the actualization of something already
present in the potential of the student. The student's impulse is the
'moving spring' of inquiry, but impulse does not direct intelligent
inquiry. It is purpose that shapes reflective inquiry - "A purpose
differs from an original impulse and desire through its translation
into a plan and method of action based upon foresight of the
consequences of acting under given observed conditions in a certain
way" (Dewey 1963, 69). Such purposes are formed through observation,
experience (both first hand and as information obtained from those who
have wider experience), and judgment which puts observation and
experience together to determine what is "signified" (Dewey 1963, 69).
To nurture this process teachers can create environments where blind
action (impulse) is not an end in itself but where experiences build
the habits of reflective inquiry. Reflective thinking, "active,
persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of
knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further
conclusions to which it tends" (Dewey 1991, 6) is indeed the process of
inquiry.
Suspending Conclusions and Questioning Assumptions
The inquiry process demands that we suspend our conclusions and
tolerate the lack of mental ease created by uncertainty until
alternatives have been examined. We must overcome the tendency to jump
at the first suggestion that presents itself. Habermas has said that it
is not entirely our judgments but also our prejudices that determine
our being since they are "the conditions whereby we experience
something-whereby what we encounter says something to us" (Bernstein
1971, 97). Reflective thinking is then also critical thinking, "calling
into question the assumptions underlying our customary, habitual ways
of thinking and acting and then being ready to think and act
differently on the basis of this critical questioning" (Brookfield
1991, 1).
This reflective operation as we've seen can be triggered by a surprise
or a perplexity that we seek to bring to a more settled state. Today,
there is no shortage of such events. "As people try to make sense of
these externally imposed changes, they are frequently at teachable
moments as far as the process of becoming critical thinkers is
concerned" (Brookfield 1991, 10). Teachers who desire to develop the
habits of inquiry in their students might do well to consider the
characteristics of critical teachers described by Freire which include
competence in communicating the possibility of alternative
interpretations, the courage to challenge assumptions, willingness to
risk being fully engaged in the educational exchange, humility, and the
political clarity to recognize distorting perspectives (Brookfield
1991, 82). However, it must also be noted that teachers, as human
beings, have values and prejudices of their own. Recognition of these
assumptions and beliefs to ourselves and to our students is an
important part of teaching reflective thinking. It involves the
willingness to examine our biases in the light of student perspectives.
Building Tools for Inquiry
However, such attitudes are not enough. Emphasis is further placed on
developing tools that extend the learner's capacity for inquiry and
reflective thinking. "The important thing in the history of modern
knowing is the reinforcement of these active doings by means of
instruments … devised for the purposes of disclosing relations
not otherwise apparent" (Dewey 1988, 70). Thinking reflectively about
our own practice, the education of children and adults and the
development and use of computer technology, has led the authors to a
belief in the value of guided inquiry as educational method and to the
use of the computer as a tool for active learning.
Because of its capacities for interaction, modeling and feedback, the
computer has the potential to open new educational horizons. The
authors' goal is to develop computer software that will enhance the
ability of learners to experience and explore their own worlds-to form
more settled interpretations of the relationships observed, and to
examine and reinterpret the assumptions forming their world models.
Because the complexity of qualitative information often makes the
process of observation overwhelming, such new tools are needed to
explore the depths of qualitative information, to recognize its
patterns, and to interpret its significance. The second goal of this
software is to reduce the gap between teaching and research by
empowering learners to work more directly on information gathered for
research. Finally, the third goal is to model the flow of each
learner's inquiry and to highlight the individual student's implicit
assumptions. By engaging in personal explorations and making
assumptions explicit, individual learners will be invited to "think
reflectively" about their distinctive and shared interpretations.
References
Aristotle, (1983). Prior analytics. In G. P Goold (Ed.) & H.
Tredennick (Trans.), Aristotle (Vol. 1). Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
_____. (1986). On the soul. In G. P Goold (Ed.) & W. S. Hett
(Trans.), Aristotle (Vol. 8). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bernstein, R. J. (1971). Praxis and action: Contemporary philosophies
of human activity. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
_____. (1986). Philosophical profiles. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Brookfield, S. D. (1991). Developing critical thinkers: Challenging
adults to explore alternative ways of thinking and acting. San
Francisco, CA: JosseyBass Publishers.
Dewey, J. (1963). Experience and education. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Company. Originally published 1938.
_____. (1986). Logic: The theory of inquiry. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.),
John Dewey: The later works, 1925-1953. (Vol 12: 1938). Carbondale, IL:
Southern Illinois University Press.
_____. (1988). The quest for certainty. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), John
Dewey: The later works, 1925-1953. (Vol 4: 1929). Carbondale, IL:
Southern Illinois University Press.
_____. (1991). How we think. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books. Originally published 1910.
Eco, U. (1986). On symbols. In J. Deely, B. Williams, & F. E. Kruse
(Eds.), Frontiers in semiotics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press.
Peirce, C. S. (1960). A neglected argument for the reality of God. In
C. Hartshorne & P. Weiss (Eds.), Collected papers of Charles
Sanders Peirce, (Vol. 6: Scientific metaphysics). Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press. Originally published 1908.
_____. (1976). Parts of Carnegie application. In C. Eisele (Ed.), The
new elements of mathematics (Vol. 4). The Hague, Mouton Publishers.
Original letter dated 1902.
_____. (1982). On the logic of science. In Peirce Edition Project
(Eds.), Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A chronological edition. (Vol.
1: 1857-1866). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Original
lecture dated 1865.
|