Dewey’s Five-step Thinking Method Analysis

Dewey, as the present of US sprit, pushed American Pragmatism to peak. In his academiccareer, he made brilliant contribution to philosophy area, as well as other areas. During hiswhole life in the20th century, the America occurred huge social change. He integratedHegel’s Theory of Knowledge, Darwin’s theory of evolution, and Peirce, James’s pragmatismand created a new philosophical methodology. Dewey’s philosophy is an almighty philosophy,though it is complex, it is an organic system of philosophy. In his whole philosophy system,logical inquiry plays a significant role and five-step thinking method is the main part of it.Dewey thought that knowledge is made of the types of concept as a tool. The purpose ofit is to alleviate situation. Thinking is the reflection between summarize and indirection ofobjective stuffs and a way that we human with the help of words、images and movements. Itrevels the relationship between essential characteristics and internal as an advancedcognitive forms. It is mainly showed while people solve problems. Dewey raised the five-stepthinking method to explain the process of thinking. He thought that complete and scientificthinking process should be divided into five steps logically.(1) Difficulties and challengesexperienced;(2) Locate and define;(3) Possible answer or solving method;(4) inferenceassociation;(5) Build or abandon belief through further observation and experimentation.Dewey’s five-step thinking method is just a general framework of thinking active. It cannot beaccomplished in an action while to solve problems. Inversely, it is an actual process ofthinking cycle according to own experience and the specific situationFive-step thinking method could help human abandon dogmatic theory and exploreanalysis scientifically and constantly learn and close to truth to gain new knowledge.Problems are the key and core for scientific discovery. Five-step thinking method could guideto find and clear problems; raise hypotheses and reason properly. Through test hypotheses,systematic and scientific recognize model could be built. For science philosophy, the meaningof Five-step thinking method is to offer a new angle view to solve social problems.In summary, domestic academic researchers show great enthusiasm about Dewey’sphilology. However, it is focused on pragmatism and education areas. Furthermore，in termsof thinking logic, t is not in-depth and systematic while studied. Though five-step thinkingmethod is applied in education field, it is seldom applied in scientific discovery method and itis worth to delve into and contribute to research Dewey thought systematically.