Glad to see you are doing something more on Dewey. I had not read him in 2016, and my overall exposure to American philosophers was limited. I hope to read more of his work, time and energy permitting. In reading his How We Think, I was surprised that his efforts as an educator were probably as important to him as philosophy. That was, to me, significant. It seemed to cement his memory as great American. Was he the impetus for the eventual term, public intellectual? Or was that designation prominent, before his time? Public intellectuals may or may not be philosophers, seems to me, but in the broadest sense of the word (or even the narrowest?), all philosophers are.

I do not know if Dewey was THE American philosopher, even though some may think so. I have several others whom I will not name---all of them fit into a schema; most of them are now deceased and some who are yet living are either revered, despised; summarily dismissed or all of the above. I'd rather 'joots it' and keep an open mind generally. I have found the pragmatists most interesting because they have a practical way of looking at how 'things' and 'hanging together' make up the foundation of the study of philosophy, in the broadest possible sense of the term. Some revered philosophers of the past are given more credit than they deserve, while some others, more-or-less forgotten, had important things to say and/or supported views not shared by their contemporaries. There is, I have claimed, a totality of circumstances to be considered when praising or condemning philosophical thought of one sort or another. Try Jumping Outside Of The Space. You need not tell anyone of your intentions---that way you may experiment, at-will, without feeling the need to explain yourself, to associates or anyone else for that matter. Have some fun, along the way---you only get to do this once.
HGN.

In 1841, Charles Mackay wrote his book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, which inspired the most recent Armand Gamache mystery by Louise Penny, published in 2021.

In 1907 Francis Galton published a short article entitled Vox Populi in Nature used by James Surowiecki in his 2004 book The Wisdom of the Crowds.

In between these publications, John Dewey was born.

Dewey’s ideas of the crowd and Democracy, of god and nature, of any dualistic concept, changed in his early works to a holistic vision. I’m totally making this up, but it seems I detect a note of change when he reviews Francis Galton’s book Natural Inheritance in 1889. Maybe it started earlier. There Dewey makes a simple error (that no one seems to catch) reading a table pulled from Galton’s work. That error is excusable as modern statistics was in its first wave – there were three total in Dewey’s lifetime. Dewey spends most of the review talking about what now seem simple concepts of mean and distribution. But he makes a keen insight into the idea that statistics can determine natural kinds.

Galton took this insight into a eugenic social Darwinism that persists. On the other hand, Dewey would transform American politics and economy from a mainly capitalist program to a social democratic view culminating after his death in the civil rights movement.

The basic ideas of Dewey’s philosophy of Democracy were popular in his time. He came down on the wrong side of very few progressive movements in his lifetime. He championed or cheered on every liberal cause that eventually won the day based on the idea that Democracy creates an opportunity for broadspread flourishing.

Dewey’s democratic vision is a holistic and transactional experience (not the Trumpian transactional deal-making or Hobbesian social contract.) Democracy was a fundamental way of living for Dewey. Government is, at best, a tool to this view of everyday engagement.

That people don’t have public spheres today is not a loss because they rarely had them in Dewey’s day. Online social media allows one-to-many and many-to-many forums for Dewey’s ideal Democracy to materialize if we can get this right. Google has already shown the ability to predict flu outbreaks in internet traffic. Terrorist actions are monitored online. Crime can be caught early. The wisdom of the crowds is real.

But there is a flip side to Dewey’s idea of Democracy of equal importance to his vision, and that is freedom. That is a severe stumbling block, as not all action and many thoughts are harmful to others even as ones freedom to think and act are assured. Facebook’s incredulity points to actual harm as enacted by social media. Popular wars like the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan can be democratic nightmares, significantly when propaganda and false intelligence squander public goodwill.

The most promising solutions I see are the radical market strategies put forth by economic philosophers like Eric Posner and Glen Weyl in the PT show of that name. Ranked voting, engaged focus teams empowered to take action, and multiple publics engaged in deciding issue specifics that today are all but intractable to our current democratic systems.

The wisdom of the crowds is seemingly unharnessable when the public will is multimodal, and the winner takes all politics rule the day. Perhaps in a future setting, this will change. The issues at hand can’t wait for incremental solutions.

I have admired Dewey's work for some time. And your blog posts on all things government. I live in the ubiquitous midwest...an area where the term 'world view' is all but ignored. Over the years, I have written to the local newspaper on various matters. It is a major daily, with statewide distribution. My submissions have been respectful and, occasionally, critical. Sometimes, I hope, thoughtful. But, after a time several years ago, we stopped our subscription. That did not go over well. They tried to offer us discounted rates. We declined because their news had too much spin for our taste. We live here for several reasons. Reading skewed news is not on the list.
Anyway, I still write them, time to time. Just to stir the kettle. They do not respond. I wonder if it is thus everywhere in the heartland. I suspect as much. The paper is aimed at a majority. Non-members need not expect recognition. Particularly those who have a broader 'world view'. We are here. They would 'rather 'not notice.. Doubly so if one does not buy their paper. Or their ideology.