Down the rabbit hole: Tracking the humanizing effect of John Dewey's pragmatism on Norbert Wiener

Echoes of pragmatism have long been noted in the Cold War era and, specifically, Norbert Wiener's cybernetics, which comes from the Greek kybernetes or “steersman,” and offers a science of feedback, human behavior, and information. Increasingly, Wiener's work is revisited in the pursuit of “big data” in education. Yet, scholars ignore the influence of pragmatism-and John Dewey, in particularon cybernetics and its reach into education. This paper reveals how Dewey played a role in Wiener's philosophical underpinning and views on education. With the research methods of textual analysis and archival material, it enables a demonstration that pragmatism made for a humanizing effect on Wiener's efforts and, ultimately, his ongoing and increasing impact in technology and education. ()