Classical Pragmatism and its Varieties: On a Pluriform Metatheoretical Perspective for Knowledge Organization

Pragmatism is a metatheoretical perspective within knowledge organization (KO) that derives from an American philosophical tradition active since the late 19 century. Its core feature is commitment to the evaluation of the adequacy of concepts and beliefs through the empirical test of practice: this entails epistemological antifoundationalism, fallibilism, contingency, social embeddedness, and pluralism. This article reviews three variants of Pragmatism that have been historically influential in philosophy—Charles Sanders Pierce’s scientifically oriented pragmaticism, William James’s subjectivist practicalism, and John Dewey’s socially oriented instrumentalism—and indicates points of contact between them and KO theories propounded by Henry E. Bliss, Jesse H. Shera, and Birger Hjørland, respectively. KO applications of classical Pragmatism have tended to converge toward a socially pluralist model characteristic of Dewey. Recently, Richard Rorty’s post-modern brand of Neopragmatism has found adherents within KO: whether it provides a more advantageous metatheoretical framework than classical Pragmatism remains to be seen. * I thank Birger Hjørland, Claudio Gnoli, and two anonymous reviewers for reading and commenting upon an earlier draft of this essay. I also wish to express my gratitude to the participants at the 2009 North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization for their feedback. Needless to say, I alone am responsible for any errors of fact, infelicities of interpretation, and obscurities in exposition lurking in this text.