Nature as Event: A Study on John Dewey’s Naturalism

Abstract

John Dewey’s naturalism requires viewing nature and experience from the perspective of holism, emphasising the continuity between these two. To Dewey, nature is not a fixed entity, but an event in an ongoing process of unfolding. The temporality of an event can meet Dewey’s requirement of constructing a philosophical notion about change and development. The event has a relatively stable structure. The continuity between living things and non-living things becomes possible because of the characteristic transactions of events, and experience thus becomes something emergent in nature and actively intervenes in its unfolding. The emergence of human intelligence and the application of language has lifted nature to a controllable and operable plane, making experience a crucial guide for the unfolding of nature.