Pragmatism and uncertainty in the interwar years

Abstract

This thesis investigates some key aspects of intellectual life in the interwar years. It examines a number of significant debates which took place in this period. It begins with a survey of the crisis literature which appeared at the end of the Great War. This is followed by an examination of arguments in favour of the scientific control of social development. The next debate is about the nature of science in the light of modern physics, and the lessons that modern physics was deemed to hold for other areas of intellectual inquiry. The fourth debate concerns the philosophy of pragmatism, its various meanings and proposals for social and intellectual reconstruction. The principal debate examined in this thesis covers the broad question concerning the political manifestations of pragmatism and pluralism. Making sense of this debate requires detailed historical and philosophical analysis. The final issue that this thesis considers is the impact of the philosophy and vocabulary of pragmatism on certain economic debates in the 1920s and 1930s. In discussing these topics this thesis demonstrates that the interwar years witnessed vigorous intellectual exchanges across a broad range of disciplines. This thesis shows that participants in these intellectual debates shared and retained faith, despite many instances of misunderstanding, in the unity of all knowledge.