Abstract

The close relationship that thinking bears to doing is perhaps the foundational idea in the plilosophy of education. This idea makes its first systematic appearance in the thought of Charles S. Peirce. In order to appreciate Peirce’s discovery, we cannot interpret hirn through the eyes of Richard Rorty, who obscures Peirce’s insight by making distinctions Peirce would have resisted. thought and action coincide most essentially in Peirce’s concept of the “scientific” method for fixing beliefs. This method is the most reliable guide for justifying thought because it requires humans to act upon the world. Only such action helps reveal a steadily friendlier and more dependable environment. Rorty misses this idea of Peirce’s in so far as he clings to a radically romantic conception of creativity.