1.1.1 The Cartesian Paradigm

The French philosopher René Descartes (Reference Descartes, Cottingham, Stoothoff and Murdoch1641) laid the foundations for the mechanistic and deterministic paradigm. He argued that there are two separate ontological realms: res extensa and res cogitans. Res extensa pertains to all that is extended in three-dimensional space, while res cogitans refers to all the things that appear in the mind (e.g., thought, internal dialogue, and imagery) and rational thought (e.g., Pythagoras’ theorem, mathematics). Unlike res extensa, res cogitans does not have any extension in three-dimensional space.

Descartes’ (Reference Descartes, Cottingham, Stoothoff and Murdoch1641) dualistic ontology isolated the cognitive and spiritual element within res cogitans, thus enabling scientists to study res extensa in purely mechanical terms. This separation had the benefit of isolating the soul, and thus religion, and freeing scientists up to study the natural world unencumbered by religious doctrine. It laid the foundations for material determinism: the idea that everything that has happened and will happen in the material domain is merely the unfolding of a mechanical system. Pierre-Simon Laplace (Reference Laplace1814, p. 4) described material determinism as follows:

Laplace’s arresting idea was that the entire universe is like a mechanical clock – fully determined by its starting position. Thus, everything, from exploding stars to the sentences on this page, is the inevitable ticking of the mechanical universe set in motion at the start of time.

Descartes’ sharp separation between res extensa and res cogitans led, on the one hand, to the rationalistic study of ideas without extension (mathematics, geometry, logic, etc.) and, on the other hand, to the empirical sciences of things with extension (physics, biology, chemistry, etc.). Although rationalism and empiricism are often opposed (because they disagree on whether truth comes from ideas or observations), they are both mechanistic ontologies: They start with things (empirical or logical), and all interactions are secondary.

For Descartes, Truth is timeless. True logical relations do not change with time. For example, the laws of geometry are unchanging. Equally, the human mind, he argued, does not develop. The human soul, Descartes wrote, is always conscious in any circumstance – even in a mother’s womb. Furthermore, logical relations between objects in the world, in so far as they are True, must be True for all time. Descartes’ ideas carry forward Plato’s allegory of the cave: that human experience is like the shimmering colorless shadow of an intricate three-dimensional object cast upon a cave wall by a flickering fire. Plato termed the posited Truth behind experience “natural kinds” – these are the objects that underly human experience. While experience is fallible, natural kinds are perfect and outside of time.

Much contemporary social research is within the Cartesian paradigm (Farr, Reference Farr1997; Marková, Reference Marková1982). This paradigm aims to identify, define, and measure “variables” (i.e., things). Only secondarily are these variables related to one another (e.g., correlations, experiments). The metaphor is Laplace’s clockwork universe, with the variables being the cogs ticking onward through cause–effect relations. When change occurs, the Cartesian paradigm searches for causal cogs. The assumption is that the change needs explanation, but the variables do not – they are taken for granted.

One anomaly in the Cartesian paradigm is development. While there are many methodologies for assessing initial states and outcomes, there are fewer methodologies for assessing what happens in between (Valsiner, Reference Valsiner and Lerner2006). The relations between independent and dependent variables are described with probabilistic statistics, but what actually occurs within any given situation is not an abstract probability. Probabilistic statistics obscure variance, thus blending various underlying processes into a single abstract and possibly nonexistent curve of probability (Fisher et al., Reference Fisher, Medaglia and Jeronimus2018; Hayes et al., Reference Hayes, Hofmann and Stanton2019). Even asking questions about what happened in a given case between input and output becomes challenging. Studying a single case is seen to be foolish because, within this paradigm, a single case does not form a probability. Thus, the actuality of an event (i.e., the case of what actually happened – a fact in pragmatist terms) is secondary to an abstraction that never occurred (i.e., the statistical model). Indeed, cases that do not fit the model (i.e., outliers) are deviations to be removed. This subordination of the actual to the abstract model is deeply antipragmatist; pragmatism puts events first and treats theories, and knowledge more generally, as fallible abstractions.

A second anomaly of the Cartesian paradigm arises in the domain of psychology. Psychology is the science of mind and behavior, with the “and” revealing the Cartesian split (Farr, Reference Farr1987). On the one hand, psychology operates with an ontology of res extensa, for example, when studying the neuroscience of the brain or the predictability of human behavior. On the other hand, it operates with an ontology of res cogitans, for example, when studying the phenomenology of human experience or the psychological dynamics of self-reflection. This oversharp separation between the mind and the world led to a psychology of mind disconnected from the body (Damasio, Reference Damasio2006) and from other minds (Gillespie, Reference Gillespie2006a). The mind was marooned, cut adrift from the material and social world.

Although Descartes is too often oversimplified and blamed for the ills of contemporary thinking (Baker & Morris, Reference Baker and Morris1996), his ideas did lay the groundwork for a paradigm that separates the mind from the body and foregrounds things over processes. The peculiarity of this Cartesian paradigm becomes more apparent when contrasted with the alternative, a paradigm that foregrounds processes over things.

1.1.2 The Hegelian Paradigm

The Hegelian paradigm gets its name from the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Reference Hegel1807), an early and celebrated proponent of processes. Specifically, Hegel theorized “things” as being secondary to processes, as arising within “the life of the whole”:

Is the oak tree superior to the acorn? Which comes first? Which is right? According to Hegel, these questions do not make sense because both are phases of the same process. However, although they are parts of the same process, the acorn and the oak tree are not equivalent. There is genuine nontautological growth and transformation. Hegel wrote, somewhat flippantly, that mathematics was boring because it was all tautology; every discovery was given in advance in the axiomatic assumptions of mathematics. Equally, a mechanical clockwork universe, like mathematics, does not grow or develop; it merely rearranges. In contrast, Hegel was interested in qualitative transformation and the emergence of nontautological novelty.

Hegel’s philosophy was notoriously abstract (and, in that sense, deeply unpragmatist; James, Reference James1882). But he needs to be understood in his historical context as trying to describe systems evolving before Darwin, systems theory, or ecological thinking. Dewey (Reference Dewey1910b) saw in Darwin a concrete instantiation of Hegel’s process philosophy, and by combining Hegel and Darwin, he arrived at a naturalistic conception of the human mind and society undergoing continual change. That is to say, the mind and society are not outside of nature but part of it – responding, adapting, and acting within the ecology of nature. In contrast to the mechanistic stimulus–response psychology of his time, Dewey (Reference Dewey1896) argued that perception, cognition, and action form a dynamic system of adjustment. He rejected the idea that the mind is a subjective domain observing the objective domain. He replaced this Cartesian idea with a pragmatist conception of the mind as the means through which we reconstruct our relation to the world to enable action to proceed.

Every philosophy has to start with something. Plato began with a timeless Truth “behind” human experience. Descartes began with the unquestionable Truths of rationality and geometry. Laplace began with the idea of a clockwork universe in motion. In contrast, pragmatism begins with human activity – everyday actions and experiences that comprise the world as we know it. Within ostensibly mundane daily activities, humans are in a dynamic processual relation to the world. Within daily activities, knowledge is successfully created and used, and the debate between timeless Truths and solipsistic skepticism dissolves (James, Reference James1912). While Plato and Descartes chose to build their systems of knowledge on something outside human experience, pragmatism chooses to build knowledge from within the experience of mundane human interaction. Human experience arises when we interact with the world or other people.

The idea of taking interactions (or processes) as foundational, as the basic unit of analysis, is not unique to pragmatism. It is evident in a range of domains, including studies of language, evolutionary and ecological theory, and complex systems theory.

In terms of language, Bakhtin’s (Reference Bakhtin1981) contributions are clearly within a process philosophy. He conceptualized language and texts as living, dynamic, and contextual. A paradigmatic orientation is especially evident in Bakhtin’s (Reference Bakhtin1986) criticism of Saussure. Saussure (Reference Saussure1916) sought the structure of language (langue) “behind” the concrete manifestations of talk (parole). For Saussure, the aim was to identify the abstract rules that could explain language use in everyday life. More recently, Chomsky (Reference Chomsky1995) has sought to identify a universal grammar underlying all human languages. In contrast, Bakhtin, operating within a process paradigm, argued that langue was an abstraction, and instead, the bedrock reality of language was parole – how language is used in daily life and how it varies between contexts (Linell, Reference Linell2009). Everyday language use, Bakhtin argued, is not a pale reflection of a more abstract Truth; rather, it is language in process – grounded in the past, adapting to new contexts, and becoming the language of tomorrow.

In terms of evolutionary and ecological theory, process philosophy is pervasive, if often implicit. This point was made in philosophy by Dewey (Reference Dewey1910b) and was developed in psychology by Werner (Reference Werner and Harris1957), among others. Where Hegel had the idea of things evolving and changing, Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection made the idea of evolution concrete; it showed how species, and even humans, were within a process of change. More recently, Deacon (Reference Deacon2011) contrasts engineering logic (a Cartesian paradigm that builds things up from parts) with organic (biological) logic (a Hegelian paradigm in which the parts are differentiated within a functional whole). Humans, Deacon argues, are not created by assembling hearts, lungs, and limbs together – like Frankenstein’s creation. Human life begins with cell differentiation and the progressive specialization of cells, which functionally differentiate within the whole of the emerging organism. The “parts” of an organism, like the parts of an ecosystem, become what they are through their functional role within the larger system.

Finally, complexity theory studies complex, especially dynamic, systems (Byrne & Callaghan, Reference Byrne and Callaghan2013). It is closely related to evolutionary and ecological thinking, but it takes more inspiration from mathematics (Kauffman, Reference Kauffman1996). It is often applied beyond biology, for example, to understand cellular automata, turbulence, and weather systems. Increasingly, it is used to understand human psychological (Guastello et al., Reference Guastello, Koopmans and Pincus2008) and societal phenomena (Page, Reference Page2015). The basic idea is that numerous elements interacting produce higher-level phenomena that are more than the sum of the elements (e.g., rivers are more than water molecules, the mind is more than the cortex, and society is more than individuals). Complex systems have emergent phenomena, such as attractors (e.g., a whirlpool), and qualitative phase shifts (e.g., water becoming ice). Complexity theory is an example of a process paradigm because these higher-level phenomena emerge from the interactions of component elements.

Pragmatism has an affinity to any tradition that emphasizes “processes” over “things” and takes change and development seriously – whether it is the development of language systems, biological systems, or any other complex systems. The elements can be diverse (words, people, species), but they are all situated within larger systems (language, societies, ecosystems). The key is that the elements are not timeless but developing; not definable in isolation but definable in terms of their functional role within the system; and not hidden “behind” what is going on but are what is going on.

1.2.1 Beyond Subject and Object: The Truth Is in the Future

At the heart of pragmatism is a reconceptualization of Descartes’ infamous distinction between subject (res cogitans) and object (res extensa). This distinction is central to a correspondence theory of Truth: Does the image in the mind of the subject mirror the object out in the world? Such a “mirror theory” of truth pervades naïve realism (Rorty, Reference Rorty1981). Pragmatism reconceptualizes the distinction between subject and object and, in so doing, reconceptualizes the nature of truth.

Although the Cartesian separation between subject and object looks clear-cut, in practice it is messy. Dewey (Reference Dewey1905, p. 230) identifies this anomaly using the example of awakening to a scary sound:

This seemingly innocuous example poses a problem. Is the scary perception subjective, while the chaffing shade is objective? The problem is that the frightening perception did not feel subjective in the moment. And what if there really was a burglar at the window? Then, would the chaffing shade now become subjective? Dewey’s point is that assigning experiences to subjective or objective domains is unhelpful and muddled because the raw experience, in the moment, is equally real in all cases.

Dewey argues that the first experience (the scary noise) is no less real than the second (the chaffing shade); both empirical experiences are equally real experiences. What differentiates them is in the future (whether there was anything more than the chaffing shade). As experiences accumulate, one experience may supersede the other at the level of understanding, as a theory of the world, setting an expectation for how to act next – which in turn may be superseded (see Chapter 2).

We often use the term “subjective” to talk about an action that has become uncertain, where expectation has been surprised. Within this disruption, the path of action is no longer obvious, decisions have to be made, and options have to be weighted against one another (e.g., to go back to sleep or to investigate the noise). In such scenarios, what seems objective at time one becomes subjective at time two and vice versa. Thus objectivity and subjectivity cannot exist side by side in different ontological realms; instead, they are sequentially related as different phases of human activity, with the former being a taken-for-granted activity and the latter being an activity that has become problematic. The critical point is that both subject and object become differentiated within the activity.

Another anomaly of the subject–object dualism can arise between people (Mead, Reference Mead1932). Consider a neuroscientist examining the brain of a patient using an advanced scanner. The screen shows the topography of the brain, where the blood flows, and thus the loci of cognitive activity. It is seductive to conceptualize this as the “real” or “objective” basis of the patient’s experience; or, put another way, what is real is the blood flow, while the patient’s experience is merely subjective. But the anomaly arises when we take a step back: Is the neuroscientist’s assessment of the scan also merely subjective? Is the blood flow merely a perception in the neuroscientist’s brain? If so, this could only be detected by a second neuroscientist examining a brain scan of the first neuroscientist. But, again, this examination would be a mere subjective experience, and so on, ad infinitum. The point is that the patient’s experience is as real as the neuroscientist’s experience; the only difference is that they are in two different bodies coupled with a belief system that privileges one experience over the other.

Pragmatism reconceptualizes the subject–object dualism by taking a naturalistic stance. Building on the ideas of Darwin, pragmatism argues that all human activity (including mental activity) is part of nature (Dewey, Reference Dewey1922; Mead, Reference Mead1932). Thinking and collective inquiry (e.g., science) are not outside of nature, observing it, but part of the interactions that comprise nature. The term “naturalism” denotes the fact that experience (including empirical observation) does not “give access to” nature but rather is part of nature (see Chapter 2). Thus, “experience” is not a subjective quality; it is a real relation to the world that is part of the world. This overcomes the problematic idea that the subjective is outside the objective, observing it.

Pragmatism’s primary unit of analysis is interaction, variously called “acts” (Dewey, Reference Dewey1896), “experience” (James, Reference James1912), “social acts” (Mead, Reference Mead1912), “perspectives” (Mead, Reference Mead and Brightman1926), and “transactions” (Dewey & Bentley, Reference Dewey and Bentley1946). These terms overcome the subject–object dualism because both subject and object are derivative of these experiences, acts, or transactions. An experience is holistic, and a conceptual act is required to differentiate subject and object within the experience. From the standpoint of an observer (either a third party or observing one’s past self), it is tempting to say that subject and object meet in experience – that experience is a fusion of subject and object, a view on the object tainted by subjectivity. But from the standpoint of the experience, there is only that which is experienced. The experience is primary, and any differentiation of subject and object is secondary. Pragmatism is firmly rooted in the primary moment of experience – conceptualized as a dynamic moment of activity. For this reason it has been variously described as “immediate empiricism” (Dewey, Reference Dewey1905), “radical empiricism” (James, Reference James1912), and “empirical naturalism” (Dewey, Reference Dewey1958).

The problem with trying to locate the experience in subjectivity (res cogitans) is that it gets marooned there; then all experience becomes merely subjective, and the anomaly of “objective” observation rises again. This leads to a foundational philosophical problem: How can we reliably know anything? The realist argues that we can distinguish what is “in the mind” from what is “in the world.” The relativist counters that because things at time one are “in the world” and at time two are “in the mind” (e.g., spontaneous generation, phrenology), it must all be in the mind. The pragmatist makes a more fundamental point: Both the realist and the relativist are arguing the two sides of Descartes’ problematic dualism. Pragmatism aims to transcend this dualism, and the associated anomalies. It does this by holding on to the “reality” (with a small “r”) of experience while rejecting the spurious distinction between “timeless Reality” (with a capital “R”) and human subjectivity.

Experiences are real; they can be expected or unexpected, desirable or undesirable. Believing that the wall one is walking toward is subjective will lead to a bruising encounter. This means that we can talk about false beliefs as beliefs that produce an unexpected outcome. False beliefs, just like true beliefs, are consequential, and it is the future consequences that will definitively distinguish them. Pragmatism eschews timeless Truth (with a capital “T”) in favor of a future-oriented truth (with a small “t”). James (Reference James1907, p. 201) writes: “The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process.” In this sense, truth exists in the past; in the present is experience and in the future is uncertainty.

Rorty (Reference Rorty1982, p. xxix) pointed out that the sentence “it works because it is true” is equivalent to the sentence “it is true because it works.” He argued that this equivalence reveals that “truth” is nothing more nor less than the demonstration of truth. Truth is not inherent and timeless; it merely expresses confidence about the next test. Although abandoning the idea of a Truth independent of its testing might seem to be a step too far toward relativism, it is actually how science (in a positivist sense) proceeds. Pragmatism is essentially a formalization of science (e.g., postulating hypotheses and testing them) that, like science, subordinates all theories to the next test.

Knowledge, according to pragmatism, is a promise that is more or less justified. It does not abandon truth; it defers it. Pragmatism is an attempt to learn from past events, to extrapolate from the past toward a future that is unknown. And who would claim that the future holds no surprises? To talk about our theories being True and timeless is hubris in the face of infinity. To quote James (Reference James1907, p. 207) again: “Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs ‘pass’, so long as nothing challenges them, just as banknotes pass so long as nobody refuses them.” But, just like the credit system, the edifice is unstable, and the parts are liable to collapse when the future that we expected is not the future that we get.

1.2.2 Starting from Where We Are

Every philosophy requires a starting point, and pragmatism starts from where we are. Descartes (Reference Descartes, Cottingham, Stoothoff and Murdoch1641) sought a single unquestionable Truth from which to rebuild all knowledge. He found his Archimedean point in his indubitable doubting (“cogito, ergo sum,” “I think, therefore I am”) and the rational Truths of mathematics (e.g., Pythagoras’ theorem). Pragmatism, in contrast, does not have an Archimedean point of absolute certainty. Instead, it starts from the dense web of mini truths and practical realities that constitute everyday life. As Toulmin (Reference Toulmin1992, p. 179) wrote: “[T]he only thing we can do is make the best of starting with what we have got, here and now.”

The naïve realist idea that there is a singular, beautiful, and timeless Truth waiting to be “discovered” behind human experience is seductive but blinding (Midgley, Reference Midgley2003). This beguiling idea is an assumption, not an empirical experience; it is grounded in metaphors (e.g., deterministic clocks, mirrors of truth, laws of nature) and allegories (such as the forms casting shadows on Plato’s cave). Instead of building science upon such metaphors and allegories, pragmatism takes a more cautious approach, arguing that we should start with the empirical (i.e., experiential) reality of our situation, namely the here and now, including the bricolage of ideas, heuristics, and tools that have got us this far. Instead of building knowledge on some utopic but unknowable (and thus uncertain) foundation, pragmatism builds knowledge on the messy but familiar foundation of everyday life. Despite being imperfect, this web of practices has the advantage of being honed over millennia. Pragmatists celebrate this bricolage of mini truths and context-dependent heuristics. This is in stark contrast to Descartes, who sought well-planned and rational knowledge.

Descartes wanted to use his Archimedean point of unquestionable Truth as a foundation for rebuilding all knowledge. He sought an orderly, internally consistent, and superficially “more seemly” body of knowledge. But nearly 400 years later, we still only have, as we have always had (and probably always will have), an unruly, context-dependent, and deeply organic bricolage of knowledge. While Descartes would be dismayed, pragmatists are unsurprised. We should evaluate knowledge not in terms of how well laid out it is but in terms of how empowering it is. What does it enable people to do?

The pragmatist approach has no grand ambition to reconstruct all knowledge. Instead, it seeks local fixes and incremental improvements. As Ansell and Boin (Reference Ansell and Boin2019) describe, pragmatism aims to repair the ship while at sea. It respects what is and focuses on what is problematic. It evaluates knowledge piecemeal in terms of its function, consequences, and potential. The aim is only to improve upon the knowledge we have. This makes pragmatism deeply consonant with science. Science is not about making grand narratives, holding nonempirical assumptions as unquestionable, or seeking timeless Truths. Science uses empirical methods to solve problems, address predicaments, and develop useful knowledge; it is a method of continual refinement (Midgley, Reference Midgley2003).

Like the earth itself, human knowledge is suspended in space without foundations. But this does not detract from its remarkable, intricate, and contextual refinement. Knowledge grows, not by finding foundations but by continually challenging, revising, and weaving an ever-denser web. Knowledge grows because it is woven into the warp and weft of practical activity. It is tested and tuned each time we experience the consequences of our actions. Our knowledge is robust because it does not rely upon any singular foundation. It is a web spun by trillions of action-consequence loops, and like any web, there is no singular point of failure. Midgley (Reference Midgley2003, p. 26) asks: Why do “we choose to represent the development of our knowledge always in terms of building,” with the assumption of needing good foundations, “rather than, for instance, of an interaction with the world around us, leading to growth”?

For those in search of timeless Truths and indubitable foundations, the pragmatist paradigm can be unsettling. It can seem, James (Reference James1907, pp. 260–261) writes, that knowledge is “adrift in space, with neither elephant nor tortoise to plant the sole of its foot upon. It is a set of stars hurled into heaven without even a centre of gravity to pull against.” But knowledge from a pragmatist standpoint has an anchor, namely, human activity. Holding firm to human action, knowledge can be evaluated as effective or ineffective, as insightful or mundane, and as empowering or disempowering.

1.2.3 Navigating Rupture and Surprise

The social world is not stable or timeless; history continues to be made, and knowledge must continue to adapt (Power et al., Reference Power, Zittoun and Akkerman2023). New technologies, societal challenges, and scientific breakthroughs disrupt our expectations. Technologies we take for granted did not exist a generation ago. Moreover, many of the challenges we face are partly a product of these technologies (e.g., climate change, inequality, and sedentary lifestyles). Consequently, many contemporary research questions could not have been asked a generation ago (e.g., reducing polarization online, algorithmic bias, and the impact of social media on the formation of teenage identities). Given our dynamic social world, the idea of timeless Truths is, at best, simplistic and, at worst, risks blinding us to our responsibility for creating tomorrow’s truths (and problems).

Pragmatism is well suited to understanding crises, ruptures, and uncertainty (Rorty, Reference Rorty1989). Indeed, it conceptualizes knowledge as a means for handling uncertainty (Dewey, Reference Dewey1929). Human knowledge aims to make the world predictable, explainable, and actionable (Ansell & Boin, Reference Ansell and Boin2019). The only facts we have are in the past; the future is an expectation awaiting disruption. What happens will establish the truth of our expectations. However, hindsight is of little use. Knowledge is a crystallization of past experiences and events that did happen, into extrapolations and generalizations that help us to navigate what might happen (Peirce, Reference Peirce1955). From a pragmatist standpoint, knowledge is akin to a map used to choose a path into the future. But no map is perfect: The route is not the journey.

The pragmatist approach to uncertainty is similar to Friston’s (Reference Friston2010) unifying theory of active inference. This theory proposes that all living structures (from cells to animals and societies) aim to reduce surprise. Disruptions imply a disconnect between the environment and how it is represented. Learning is an attempt to reduce future surprises. All living systems have a boundary between themselves and a broader environment. In so far as the environment determines the fate of an organism, the survival of the organism depends upon modeling and, thereby, mastering the environment. But the action of the organism also shapes the environment. There is a bidirectional relationship: The environment, via sensation, shapes the organisms’ representation; this representation, via action, shapes the material and social environment (Constant et al., Reference Constant, Ramstead, Veissière and Friston2019). Thus, at the heart of life are action-oriented representations of the environment that, through loops of sensation and action, work to minimize future surprises. Although the theory of active inference underplays the vital role of culture in channeling human thought and action (Clark, Reference Clark2018), it nevertheless provides a unifying account of life as reducing the uncertainty of the future.

The inherent contingency and uncertainty of the human enterprise should not provoke despair. Instead, it should motivate a pragmatist stance. Useful knowledge, which empowers humanity, can reduce future surprises, enabling us to become more resilient and responsible participants in creating the future. We are not passive in the face of the future: We ensure our roofs are watertight, we check the weather forecast, and we carry umbrellas. Maybe our roof has a leak, the weather forecast will be wrong, or the umbrella is broken, but these uncertainties do not stop us.

For pragmatism, mental life begins with the surprise of disruption. Indeed, mental life is described as navigating big and small surprises. Consider Peirce’s (Reference Peirce1878, p. 289) example of paying for a taxi:

The human mind is merged into activity most of the time. When gazing out of the taxi window or when exiting the taxi, there is no experience of a subject–object dualism. There is merely acting-in-the-world. However, when activity breaks down, when habit or expectation fails, when a genuine decision arises, or when the stimuli are uncertain, then what we term “mind” springs to life (Dewey, Reference Dewey1896; Gillespie, Reference Gillespie2005a). Such experiences of disruption were also analyzed by Mead (Reference Mead1903, pp. 101–102), who developed the idea further.

When action is blocked, for example, the door does not open, there is a kaleidoscopic flash of suggestion: Is it push or pull? Is the door jammed or locked? Is it a practical joke or might it work if I try again? As the stream of consciousness flows between the possibilities, and action follows to test each option, this is not so much representation colliding with nature, as it is the “disintegration and reconstitution of the stimulus.” That is to say, what is happening is the reconstruction of the world, both on the objective side (when the door opens) and on the subjective side (in navigating the options). The problem-solving is as much part of nature as the door opening (or not). And the same applies to science. When problems arise, science works to redefine the stimulus (e.g., reconceptualize disruptive data) so that action can proceed.

The logical conclusion of naturalizing beliefs and theories is radical: Thinking, and by extension the scientific process, is a growth within the natural world. This is why James (Reference James1907, p. 259) describes the universe as “unfinished, growing in all sorts of places, especially in the places where thinking beings are at work.” Similarly, Mead (Reference Mead1932, p. 175) wrote: “[T]he psychological process is an instance of the creative advance of nature.” Thus, in pragmatism we find Hegel’s idea of nature and history being in process. And by overcoming Descartes’ dualism, pragmatism returns the mind to nature. Thoughts, movements of the mind, regardless of how small, are part of nature reorganizing itself.

1.3.1 Relativist?

Pragmatism is frequently misunderstood and accused of relativism (Haack, Reference Haack1976; also, see Chapter 2). If knowledge is not a mirror of nature, if theories are tools for human purposes, if incompatible experiences of the same phenomenon are equally experientially real, then surely pragmatism is relativist. The problem with relativism is that it replaces one extreme with another. Instead of theories being absolutely true, theories become absolutely relative (Putnam, Reference Putnam1995). From a pragmatist standpoint, both naïve realism and relativism are fundamentalist. But from a naïve realist standpoint, the pragmatist alternative is challenging to understand (Brinkmann, Reference Brinkmann2013; Haack, Reference Haack1976).

Relativism, from a pragmatist standpoint, is an incomplete argument. Human interests (see Chapter 9) do taint all human knowledge, but they are also a bridge over the quagmire of relativity. Knowledge either fulfills our human interests or not. If the knowledge or theory fulfills our interest, if our action has the expected consequence, then we call the knowledge true. Of course, other species might have other interests (Von Uexküll, Reference Von Uexküll1982), and they might call something else true (e.g., grass is food for a cow, and wood is food for a woodworm). But the point is that human interests in the world provide unambiguous nonrelativist criteria for evaluating knowledge, namely: Does it work?

1.3.2 Uncritical?

Pragmatism has been accused of being laissez faire; having an uncritical approach to power (Phillips, Reference Phillips1995). No matter how undesirable or harmful an idea is, it is true if it works. What about spreading misinformation? If it spreads and it fulfills its desired consequences (e.g., sowing distrust), then is the misinformation “true”? Does this mean that the most popular beliefs (i.e., the most successful) are the most “true”? More broadly, how can one criticize any knowledge if it is “working”? What if the knowledge works for one group at the expense of another group? Or what if the knowledge enables one group to exploit another group?

The pragmatist retort is that misinformation, manipulation, and ideology need to be evaluated from the standpoint of the larger community. While they might “work” for a subgroup, they do not “work” for the broader community; they will produce disruptive surprises. Moreover, because pragmatism never separates truth and value (Brinkmann, Reference Brinkmann2009; Putnam, Reference Putnam1995), it is actually well placed to critically evaluate the interests being served by knowledge. This is because it puts human interests at the heart of all human knowledge (Habermas, Reference Habermas1968). Indeed, because pragmatism does not reify knowledge as true independent of people, it emphasizes that all science needs to be steered by a democratic process (Addams, Reference Addams2002; Brinkmann, Reference Brinkmann2013).

1.3.3 Behaviorist?

The focus on human activity, on the consequences of action, can also lead to the accusation that pragmatism is overly behaviorist and thus neglects psychology (e.g., thoughts, feelings). Indeed, Dewey’s (Reference Dewey1896) work on the reflex arc was influential in developing behaviorism, and Mead (Reference Mead1934) described himself as a “social behaviorist.” Surely, ideas and theories should not be evaluated only in terms of practical consequences? Indeed, many celebrated contributions to art and humanity do not even aim to have behavioral consequences – such as imagination, reverie, art appreciation, and aesthetic experiences.

This criticism takes an overly narrow view of human activity. The early American pragmatists were particularly focused on mental life, which they conceptualized as a form of human activity. Dewey (Reference Dewey1934) theorized art, James (Reference James1890) developed the idea of “the stream of thought,” Peirce (Reference Peirce, Craig and Muller1894) wrote extensively about semiotics, and Mead (Reference Mead1934) focused on perspective-taking, internal dialogues, and reveries. This psychological focus was possible because they side-stepped Descartes’ dualism: The human mind, and semiotics more generally, is not outside of nature; it is part of nature. Thinking, imagining, and any sign use is a human activity just as much as hammering a nail. Mnemonic tactics to aid memory (Vygotsky & Luria, Reference Vygotsky, Luria, Van de Veer and Valsiner1994) and symbolic resources for imagination (Zittoun & Gillespie, Reference Zittoun and Gillespie2015) are meaning systems that empower and enrich mental activity. Thus, rather than neglecting the richness of mental life, pragmatism brings these so-called subjective phenomena back into the so-called objective domain. Thus, rather than neglecting mental life, pragmatism rescues it from being marooned in an unreal and subjective domain, returning it to nature.

1.4.1 Pragmatism and Mixed Methods

One of the main contributions of pragmatism to social research has been to provide a framework for combining qualitative and quantitative methods. Although these methods can be combined within realist and constructionist frameworks (Cassell et al., Reference Cassell, Cunliffe and Grandy2017), doing so risks introducing evaluative criteria that undermine one or the other method (Yardley & Bishop, Reference Yardley, Bishop, Willig and Stainton Rogers2017). For example, within a realist framework, qualitative data might be either overinterpreted as indicating causal relations or underinterpreted by overlooking how the data collection method (e.g., interview) constructed the responses. Within a constructionist framework, quantitative data can be dismissed as a mere experimental or historical artifact (Gergen, Reference Gergen1973), thus missing out on the opportunity for cautious generalization. The problem is that positivism and constructionism are skewed toward quantitative and qualitative methods, respectively. Thus, using one of these paradigms for both methodologies risks failing to avail of the unique contributions of each method.

Pragmatism can combine qualitative and quantitative research strengths and avoid subordinating one to the other (Morgan, Reference Morgan2007, Reference Morgan2014a; Yardley & Bishop, Reference Yardley, Bishop, Willig and Stainton Rogers2017). Instead of debating whether qualitative and quantitative methods are paradigmatically commensurable (e.g., Guba & Lincoln, Reference Guba and Lincoln1994), a pragmatist approach focuses on what each methodological approach can do, what insight it adds, and what contribution it makes (Feilzer, Reference Feilzer2010; Morgan, Reference Morgan2007). Thus, pragmatism provides mixed methods research with a flexible framework within which realist concerns about efficacy can be synergistically combined with constructionist concerns about social justice (Morgan, Reference Morgan2014a).

A more radical option for mixed methods is to move fluidly between positivism and constructionism – as advocated by dialectical pluralism (Johnson, Reference Johnson2017). This is the idea that all ontologies, epistemologies, methodologies, and ethical frameworks have value. Dismissing any based on logical incompatibility with prior commitments fails to avail of the breadth of ways of thinking about the given problem. Arguably, such open-mindedness toward potentially contradictory paradigms is pragmatic. A pragmatist, according to James (Reference James1907, p. 259),“is a happy-go-lucky anarchistic sort of creature” – and thus untroubled by mixing ontologies and epistemologies. But what distinguishes the pragmatist from the dialectical pluralist is the question: What does each perspective contribute to the problem at hand? Without this pragmatic focus on the consequences, a straddling of paradigms can cause problems. It can lead to mixed methods research where findings are siloed, or juxtaposed, with little synergy (Feilzer, Reference Feilzer2010) – with each finding marooned in its own paradigm. There needs to be a point of integration; otherwise, anything goes, and all findings are equal. Integration is needed so that tensions can be transformed into synergies (Fetters & Freshwater, Reference Fetters and Freshwater2015a). According to pragmatism, integration occurs in the consequences, through each approach yielding its fruit.

1.4.2 Pragmatism and Applied Research

Pragmatism foregrounds applied research and has, unsurprisingly, had significant traction in domains addressing practical issues. It has been advocated in education (Biesta & Burbules, Reference Biesta and Burbules2003), social work (Kaushik & Walsh, Reference Kaushik and Walsh2019), law (Patterson, Reference Patterson1990), crisis management (Ansell & Boin, Reference Ansell and Boin2019), organizational research (Kelly & Cordeiro, Reference Kelly and Cordeiro2020), and health psychology (Allemang et al., Reference Allemang, Sitter and Dimitropoulos2022; Cornish & Gillespie, Reference Cornish and Gillespie2009). In each case, pragmatism validates the frontline challenges of intervening in the social world, provides practical ideas for improving practice, and draws theoretical sustenance from the practical problems addressed.

The traditional realist and constructionist paradigms build their knowledge on foundations outside of daily life, and as such, they sometimes view applied research as secondary to “fundamental” research. The idea is that these are the domains within which fundamental knowledge is merely “applied.” However, from a pragmatist standpoint, it is the so-called applied domains of practice that are “fundamental.” These varied and peculiar contexts are the reality of social life. From a pragmatist standpoint, evaluating a theory either in the abstract domain of logic or in the artificial domain of the laboratory is merely a starting point to the most robust test of knowledge; is it helpful in practice?

All knowledge is contextual, and the context that is most valued from a pragmatist standpoint is the context of activity outside the laboratory. Theories that work only in the laboratory merely have the consequence of making careers for academics. Pragmatism aims to improve the human condition more broadly. This applied focus was most evident in the work of Addams (Reference Addams1990, Reference Addams2002), who was awarded a Nobel Prize for her peace activism and made fundamental contributions to social work. She rejected a teaching position at the University of Chicago so that she could focus on providing adult education and empowering people in poverty (Knight, Reference Knight2008).

Experimental research is currently grappling with the replication crisis (Shrout & Rodgers, Reference Shrout and Rodgers2018). This is the problem of experimental findings, especially in psychology, failing to replicate in other experimental contexts (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). But if findings cannot be replicated in experiments that are set up to be as similar as possible, then what hope is there of these findings having applicability in domains far removed from the controlled environment of a laboratory? There are many degrees of freedom in laboratory research (Wicherts et al., Reference Wicherts, Veldkamp and Augusteijn2016), but how many more are there in the diverse geographic, historical, and sociocultural domains of practice?

A pragmatist approach cuts through these methodological concerns by arguing that the most rigorous test of a theory is not whether it works in the laboratory but whether it feeds forward to help people build the future they want (Power et al., Reference Power, Zittoun and Akkerman2023). In short, the real test of knowledge, from a pragmatist standpoint, is: Does it, even in some small way, enrich humanity? Specifically, what does it enable people to do? And, more critically, what does it enable people to do to one another?

The pragmatist celebration of applied contexts is not a repudiation of theory: Theory is our best preparation for an uncertain future, enabling action in tried and tested domains, and serving as a resource in contexts unknown. Empowering, enriching, and useful theory is the goal of social science. The point is that applied contexts are the most fertile soil for generating empowering and enriching theory. In contrast, building theory from knowledge created in nonapplied domains, in artificial or highly peculiar domains, is likely to produce knowledge that does not generalize, that increases, rather than reduces, surprise in the domains of daily life.

1.4.3 Pragmatism and Abduction

Pragmatism has also contributed to conceptualizing how new ideas come about. New ideas are the basis of both small and large, incremental and paradigmatic, scientific advances (Galenson, Reference Galenson2008; Kuhn, Reference Kuhn1962). Yet there is a surprising dearth of theorizing about where new ideas come from. Most research methodology focuses on answering research questions or testing hypotheses. Few methodology textbooks have a section, much less a chapter, on creating new ideas (but see Crano et al., Reference Crano, Brewer and Lac2014). And there are only a handful of articles and books on theory creation (Jaccard & Jacoby, Reference Jaccard and Jacoby2020; McGuire, Reference McGuire1997; Tavory & Timmermans, Reference Tavory and Timmermans2014). This neglect was institutionalized by Popper’s (Reference Popper1934) harsh separation between the context of discovery (i.e., how an idea comes about) and the context of justification (i.e., how it can be evidenced). Popper argued that there can be no method, or procedure, for the discovery, only for justification. Thus, the context of discovery was essentially excluded from methodology.

Pragmatism, as we have outlined, is a thoroughly processual paradigm. It foregrounds development, change, and adaptation. Accordingly, it embraces the challenge of theorizing the context of discovery – to provide insight into the emergence of new ideas. From the early writings of Peirce (a person hesitating how to pay for a taxi; 1878) and Dewey (a child reaching for a flame; 1896), there was an idea that conflicting responses to stimuli could lead to novel ideas and paths of action. The assumption is that thought and action are typically in a tight functional loop, with little self-reflection or novelty. But, sometimes, action is halted, the consequences are not what was expected. In these moments, cognitive effort aims to reconstruct a new viable path of action. Practical, cultural, and experiential resources are mobilized to create a new path of action (Gillespie & Zittoun, Reference Gillespie and Zittoun2010). It follows from this that in the research domain diverse theoretical frameworks and methodological tools can act as resources to create and imagine new paths for research.

One concrete attempt to use pragmatism to conceptualize the emergence of new ideas is abductive analysis (Tavory & Timmermans, Reference Tavory and Timmermans2014). Abduction is a concept developed by Peirce (Reference Peirce1955) to denote the mode of inference that goes beyond summarizing data (induction) and logically extrapolating from theory (deduction) and instead entails a reasonable guess that leaps toward a new theory. An abductive insight brings something to the data; it posits something new that, if it were the case, would provide an improved explanation. Abductive inference is fostered through in-depth engagement with applied domains, using mixed methods, and being attuned to tensions within the data (more on this in Chapter 7). The key point is that pragmatism, as a process paradigm, provides a framework and practical suggestions for testing theory (i.e., via consequences) and generating theory (i.e., via abduction).