res, and thus reinforcing itself in ever increasing social circles(15). It is small wonder that Dewey should become involved in education. Like all moral philosophers worth their salt, Dewey, too, sought to re-build society by re-constructing education. As the guarantor of ideological survival of scientific paradigms well into the future, science-like education plays a key role in Dewey's thought in generating scientific attitudes and beliefs, and in closing the self-perpetuating circle that starts-ends with education, and ends-starts with scientific institutions. Like all great philosophers ever since Plato, Dewey, too, travelled in ever larger circles that made it harder and harder for the non-initiated to see their common center. In his enthusiasm for the role of science in society, and by default, if not by design, in education, Dewey seems to have allowed a much more central role for science, than the underlying logic of his premises may have warranted. For example, he did not fully address some of the more obvious criticisms against science, or anticipate or discuss the educational usefulness of non-scientific methods. For example, he did not fully discuss or credit the role that non-scientific methods, such as, imagination-centered education, role-play, or metaphysical discussion, may have in the development of democratic character. Other issues which merit further analysis include the morality of treating nature as a mere means for scientific development; the purely a-moral or instrumental nature of science(16); the employment of scientific methods by non-democratic regimes(17); the possible non-objectivity of scientific inquiry, including its underlying historical and cultural relativism(18); its possibly becoming another essence in the Deweyan lexicon of imperative anti-essentialism(19); its game-like qualities; and finally, and more importantly from an educational perspective, science being possibly used in education not as a...
