How did William James influence John Dewey’s thinking?

William James played a pivotal role in shaping John Dewey’s philosophical development, particularly during the 1890s as Dewey sought to move away from Hegelian idealism. Dewey was significantly influenced by the experimental psychology advanced by James, which helped shift his own academic focus.12

James’s influence is evident in several key areas of Dewey’s thought:

• Humanistic Pragmatism: Dewey noted that while Charles Sanders Peirce wrote as a logician, James wrote as a humanist. This humanistic perspective helped Dewey integrate scientific methods with considerations of human values and purposes.1
• Nature of Reality: Anticipating Dewey, James viewed reality as a "buzzing" array of data rather than something static, and he argued that the distinction between mental experience and the physical world was "messy".3
• Functionalism: Both thinkers viewed thought as adaptive and purposive. James’s functional conception of mind—which emphasized the pursuance of future ends—provided a foundation for Dewey’s own development of instrumentalism, the view that ideas are tools used to navigate and improve experience.431

Ultimately, Dewey synthesized these influences to create a coherent theory that bridged the logical and humanistic currents of pragmatism.1