Footnotes and Bibliography

Notes:

  

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dewey, John, How We Think. 1910. Reprint, New York: Prometheus Books, 1991.

Korzybski, Alfred, "A Veteran's Re-Adjustment and Extensional Methods." In Alfred Korzybski: Collected Writings (1920-1950), edited by M. Kendig. Pittsboro, North Carolina: Town House Press, Inc., 1990.

FOOTNOTES

John Dewey, How We Think (1910; reprint, New York: Prometheus Books, 1991)

Alfred Korzybski, "A Veteran's Re-Adjustment and Extensional Methods," in Alfred Korzybski: Collected Writings (1920-1950) (Pittsboro, North Carolina: Town House Press, Inc., 1990), pp. 541-551

John Dewey, How We Think,

"(a) Direct immediate discharge or expression of an impulsive tendency is fatal to thinking [emphasis added]. Only when the impulse is to some extent checked and thrown back upon itself does reflection ensue. ... The difficulties that present themselves within the development of an experience are, however, to be cherished by the educator, not minimized. for they are the natural stimuli to reflective inquiry. Freedom does not consist in keeping up uninterrupted and unimpeded external activity, but is something achieved through conquering, by personal reflection, a way out of the difficulties that prevent an immediate overflow and a spontaneous success." pp. 64-65

“(c) In any case positive habits are being formed [emphasis added]: if not habits of careful looking into things, then habits of hasty, heedless, impatient glancing over the surface; if not habits of consecutively following up the suggestions tht occur, then habits of haphazard, grasshopper-like guessing; if not habits of suspending judgment till inferences have been tested by the examinations of evidence, then habits of credulity alternating with flippant incredulity, belief or unbelief being based, in either case, upon whim, emotion, or accidental circumstances. The only way to achieve traits of carefulness, thoroughness, and continuity (traits that are, as we have seen, the elements of the “logical”) is by exercising these traits from the beginning, and by seeing to it that conditions call for their exercise.

Genuine freedom, in short, is intellectual; it rests in the trained power of thought, in ability to “turn things over,” to look at matters deliberately, to judge whether the amount and kind of evidence requisite for decision is at hand, and if not, to tell where and how to seek such evidence. If a man's actions are not guided by thoughtful conclusions, then they are guided by inconsiderate impulse, unbalanced appetite, caprice, or the circumstances of the moment. To cultivate unhindered, unreflective external activity is to foster enslavement, for it leaves the person at the mercy of appetite, sense, and circumstance" [emphasis added]. pp. 66-67