g complete in
itself. For the doctrine of organic development means that the living
creature is a part of the world, sharing its vicissitudes and fortunes,
and making itself secure in its precarious dependence only as it
intellectually identifies itself with the things about it, and,
forecasting the future consequences of what is going on, shapes its own
activities accordingly. If the living, experiencing being is an intimate
participant in the activities of the world to which it belongs, then
knowledge is a mode of participation, valuable in the degree in which it
is effective. It cannot be the idle view of an unconcerned spectator.

(iii) The development of the experimental method as the method of
getting knowledge and of making sure it is knowledge, and not mere
opinion--the method of both discovery and proof--is the remaining great
force in bringing about a transformation in the theory of knowledge.
The experimental method has two sides. (i) On one hand, it means that we
have no right to call anything knowledge except where our activity has
actually produced certain physical changes in things, which agree with
and confirm the conception entertained. Short of such specific changes,
our beliefs are only hypotheses, theories, suggestions, guesses, and
are to be entertained tentatively and to be utilized as indications of
experiments to be tried. (ii) On the other hand, the experimental method
of thinking signifies that thinking is of avail; that it is of avail in
just the degree in which the anticipation of future consequences is
made on the basis of thorough observation of present conditions.
Experimentation, in other words, is not equivalent to blind reacting.
Such surplus activity--a surplus with reference to what has been
observed and is now anticipated--is indeed an unescapable factor in all
our behavior, but it is not experiment save as consequences are noted
and are used to make predictions and plans in similar situations in the
future. The more the meaning of the experimental method is perceived,
the more our trying out of a certain way of treating the material
resources and obstacles which confront us embodies a prior use of
intelligence. What we call magic was with respect to many things the
experimental method of the savage; but for him to try was to try his
luck, not his ideas. The scientific experimental method is, on
the contrary, a trial of ideas; hence even when practically--or
immediately--unsuccessful