Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository

method of proceeding is by varying conditions one by
one so far as possible, and noting just what happens
when a given condition is eliminated. (150)
Of this notion of “varying conditions,” he explains further
that, “Observations formed by variation of conditions on the
basis of some idea or theory constitute experiment. Experiment
is the chief resource in scientific reasoning because it
facilitates the picking out of insignificant elements in a
gross, vague whole” (152). For the scientist undertaking such
an experimental method, “facts” are tested through the
introduction of variation - the “novel and variable.” Thus the
mark of “[e]xperimental thinking, or scientific reasoning” is
the testing, deliberate and thorough, of the known with the
unknown – the certain with the uncertain. In this way,
“experiment” becomes the dialectic: “the dialectical method.”
And if we see the dialectic I have been writing about thus far
as a sort of “scientific method of thought,” it is at the heart
of not simply Dewey’s theory of “reflective thought” but his
philosophy of education.
This said, I would return to the setting of his original
portrait of “reflection”: “a forked road situation,” “a
situation which is ambiguous, which presents a dilemma, which
proposes alternatives” (11) and, because of that, where we must
ask ourselves, “Which road is right?” He describes the
significance of that “situation,” again, as follows:
160