A fact of community life which is not spread abroad so as to be a common possession is a contradiction in terms.
John Dewey
The Public Record
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century.
gutenberg.org
Knowledge cooped up in a private consciousness is a myth, and knowledge of social phenomena is peculiarly dependent upon dissemination, for only by distribution can such knowledge be either obtained or tested.
The ultimate harm is that the understanding by man of his own affairs and his ability to direct them are sapped at their root when knowledge of nature is disconnected from its human function.
To make physical science a rival of human interests is bad enough, for it forms a diversion of energy which can ill be afforded.
The magnifying of the physical realm at the cost of man is but an abdication and a flight.
Humanity is not, as was once thought, the end for which all things were formed; it is but a slight and feeble thing, perhaps an episodic one, in the vast stretch of the universe.
The adulteration of knowledge is due not to its use, but to vested bias and prejudice, to one-sidedness of outlook, to vanity, to conceit of possession and authority, to contempt or disregard of human concern in its use.
It is wholly a moral matter, an affair of honesty, impartiality and generous breadth of intent in search and communication.
The true purity of knowledge exists not when it is uncontaminated by contact with use and service.
The glorification of “pure” science under such conditions is a rationalization of an escape; it marks a construction of an asylum of refuge, a shirking of responsibility.
The instrumentality becomes a master and works fatally as if possessed of a will of its own--not because it has a will but because man has not.
He plays with them like a child, and whether they work harm or good is largely a matter of accident.