Thus Far Shalt Thou Go and Further? A Decolonial Perspective on Social Research in John Dewey

Abstract

John Dewey refers, in his text on Logic, to the distinction between natural and social sciences. The question of the differences between both sciences has various articulations that revolve around a central axis: the plausibility that social research can generate—as natural sciences do—existential modifications that give materiality to this process.

The aims of this work will be to:

• analyze the decolonial, postabysmal proposal of Boaventura de Sousa Santos in dialogue with some of the pragmatist’s assumptions about the methodological capacity of natural science research. This proposal makes visible the network that unites Dewey’s methodological pretension with the general framework of modern epistemology, and,
• establish a possible translation of the ways in which both epistemologies are complementary.