Empirical Philosophical Investigations

in Education and Embodied Experience

Joacim Andersson
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://textbookfull.com/product/empirical-philosophical-investigations-in-education-an
d-embodied-experience-joacim-andersson/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Self-Tracking: Empirical and Philosophical

Investigations 1st Edition Btihaj Ajana (Eds.)

https://textbookfull.com/product/self-tracking-empirical-and-
philosophical-investigations-1st-edition-btihaj-ajana-eds/

Digital Hermeneutics Philosophical Investigations In

New Media And Technologies Alberto Romele

https://textbookfull.com/product/digital-hermeneutics-
philosophical-investigations-in-new-media-and-technologies-
alberto-romele/

Critical Transdisciplinary and Embodied Approaches in

STEM Education Pratim Sengupta

https://textbookfull.com/product/critical-transdisciplinary-and-
embodied-approaches-in-stem-education-pratim-sengupta/

The Embodied Mind Cognitive Science and Human

Experience Francisco J. Varela

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-embodied-mind-cognitive-
science-and-human-experience-francisco-j-varela/
Empirical Research in Statistics Education 1st Edition
Andreas Eichler

https://textbookfull.com/product/empirical-research-in-
statistics-education-1st-edition-andreas-eichler/

Empirical Research for Software Security Foundations

and Experience 1st Edition Ben Othmane

https://textbookfull.com/product/empirical-research-for-software-
security-foundations-and-experience-1st-edition-ben-othmane/

Science Education in India Philosophical Historical and

Contemporary Conversations Rekha Koul

https://textbookfull.com/product/science-education-in-india-
philosophical-historical-and-contemporary-conversations-rekha-
koul/

Psychiatry in practice : education, experience, and

expertise 1st Edition Bhugra

https://textbookfull.com/product/psychiatry-in-practice-
education-experience-and-expertise-1st-edition-bhugra/

Philosophical Foundations of Education Siddheshwar

Rameshwar Bhatt

https://textbookfull.com/product/philosophical-foundations-of-
education-siddheshwar-rameshwar-bhatt/
 THE CULTURAL AND SOCIAL
FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATION
Series Editor: A.G. Rud

EMPIRICAL
PHILOSOPHICAL
INVESTIGATIONS IN
EDUCATION AND
EMBODIED
EXPERIENCE

Joacim Andersson,
Jim Garrison, and
Leif Östman
The Cultural and Social Foundations of Education

Series Editor
A. G. Rud
College of Education
Washington State University
Pullman, WA, USA
The Palgrave Pivot series on the Cultural and Social Foundations of
Education seeks to understand educational practices around the world
through the interpretive lenses provided by the disciplines of philosophy,
history, sociology, politics, and cultural studies. This series focuses on the
following major themes: democracy and social justice, ethics, sustainability
education, technology, and the imagination. It publishes the best current
thinking on those topics, as well as reconsideration of historical figures and
major thinkers in education.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14443
 Joacim Andersson • Jim Garrison
Leif Östman

Empirical
Philosophical
Investigations
in Education and
Embodied Experience
Joacim Andersson Jim Garrison
School of Health Sciences Learning Sciences & Tech
Örebro University Virginia Tech
Örebro, Sweden Blacksburg, VA, USA

Leif Östman
Teacher Education
Uppsala University
Uppsala, Sweden

The Cultural and Social Foundations of Education

ISBN 978-3-319-74608-1    ISBN 978-3-319-74609-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74609-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018935182

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
­institutional affiliations.

Cover pattern © Melisa Hasan

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer

International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Preface

The social sciences dominate discourse within the field of education. The
field of social sciences dislocates disciplines such as philosophy to the hin-
terlands of humanities along with religion, history, literary studies, and the
arts. At the center reside the STEM subjects of science, technology, engi-
neering, and mathematics, or increasingly STEMH, where the “H” stands
for health, not humanities. Similarly, quantitative and qualitative methods
dominate educational research, with philosophy sometimes assigned the
role of examining the “foundations” of the social sciences or maybe being
the source of ethical concerns perhaps with some rare mention of
aesthetics.
This work brings philosophy to the heartland of empirical educational
research. It does so by emphasizing the primacy of social practice in the
philosophies of John Dewey and the later Ludwig Wittgenstein. We will
draw on Dewey to emphasize the embodiment of these practices. In doing
so, we oppose some of the most deeply entrenched prejudices not only of
education and educational research, but also of modernity, including most
of modern philosophy.
First and foremost, this work challenges the assumption that philosoph-
ical concepts and insights cannot directly guide empirical educational
research. Further, by developing a philosophically informed research
method, we will show why it is nonsense to separate the humanities from
the sciences. We also wish to overcome the false fragmentation of culture
into the sciences, aesthetics, and ethics. Within the primacy of human
practice, including educational practice, these can only serve as useful dis-
tinctions that we must not allow to harden into cultural diremptions.

v
vi PREFACE

Finally, we seek to rescue philosophy itself from the false turn it took in
early modernity when it abandoned the love of wisdom for an exclusive
infatuation with epistemology. We believe that if we had a rich theory of
embodied learning, we might not need epistemology as traditionally prac-
ticed. Education and educational research itself has become so beholding
to the modern enchantment with epistemology that it can only look at
learning through a disembodied epistemological lens.
Chapter 1, “Dewey, Wittgenstein, and the Primacy of Practice,” exam-
ines the intersection between the philosophy of John Dewey and the later
Wittgenstein by exploring their emphasis on primacy of practice. This
chapter accentuates the primacy of practice in comprehending the acquisi-
tion of sociolinguistic meaning (e.g., forms of life, language-games, mean-
ing as use, etc.), the rejection of private language, antifoundationalism,
contextualism, and antirepresentationalism. Taken together, these ideas
provide what we call a first-person perspective that renders the products
and the processes of learning plainly visible to nuanced methodological
observation. Chapter 1 develops this perspective primarily in terms of the
later Wittgenstein. W. V. O. Quine (1969), Richard Rorty (1979), and
Stephen Toulmin (LW 4: vii–xxii) help establish the similarity between
Wittgenstein and Dewey. This chapter provides the philosophical theoreti-
cal framework for the method of practical epistemological analysis (PEA)
that we introduce in Chap. 3.
In Chap. 2, “Distributed Minds and Meanings in a World Without a
Within: Embodiment and Creative Expression,” we exposit ideas found
in Dewey that were either underdeveloped or unexplored by Wittgenstein.
These ideas include the primacy of the aesthetic encounter, creative
action, aesthetically expressive meaning, embodiment, embodied mean-
ing, and how minds and meaning distribute wherever they occur
throughout a world without withins. We introduce William James’s
“radical empiricism,” a version of which Dewey explicitly embraces (See
MW 3: 158ff.). This chapter also appeals to the work of the sociologist
Hans Joas’s (1996) conception of “the body schema” as well as the work
of Mark Johnson (2007). Both Joas and Johnson rely heavily on Dewey
in developing their own ideas. We will also depend on Chris Shilling’s
(2008, 2012) “body pedagogics” along with Dewey and James to better
understand the learning of “body techniques” (Mauss 1973). These
ideas, along with some aspects of Deweyan transactionalism, provide the
philosophical framework for constructing two analytical models. The
first, the situated epistemic relations model (SER model) introduced in
 PREFACE
   vii

Chap. 3, is used to identify how learners form SERs during acts of bodily
transposition. The second, the situated artistic relations model (SAR
model) introduced in Chap. 4, is used to identify how learners form
SARs during acts of creative artistic expression.
Chapter 3, “A Method and Model for Studying the Learning of Body
Techniques: Analyzing Bodily Transposition in Dinghy Sailing,” intro-
duces the empirical method of PEA used to study a learner’s coordination
of experiences in a specific context. In the work that first introduced PEA,
Per-Olof Wickman and Leif Östman (2002a, b) relied primarily on the
philosophy of Wittgenstein, although they regularly mentioned Dewey in
developing their empirical research method. This method has been widely
used in the years since its introduction (see Östman 2010; Andersson
2014; Andersson and Maivorsdotter 2016, among dozens more).
Establishing a closer connection between Wittgenstein and Dewey in
Chap. 2 allows us to further refine this method. Here, the first-person
perspective is presented in terms of Dewey’s transactionalism that is used
to provide a primarily transactional understanding of PEA.
After presenting the empirical analytical method of PEA, we present the
analytical model of SER that allows us to empirically study the acquisition
of SERs using SER variables and SER indicators. This model also provides
a transactional interpretation. The SER model provides descriptions and
explanations regarding learning processes and products from the data col-
lected using PEA. If a researcher’s theoretical framework, analytical method,
and the analytical model used to create explanations, prediction, control
learning, and such are the same, they will tend to just confirm each other.
The perfect alignment of theory, method, and model may easily lead to
confirmation bias wherein one finds only what they are looking for. That is
why we separate the PEA method from the SER model. The PEA method
and the SER model are highly situational and context sensitive. They pro-
vide in situ analysis and explanation of a learner’s sociolinguistic embodied
practices as a way of inferring learning directly in context from the learner’s
manifestly observable actions. This chapter employs the SER model and
the PEA method to empirically investigate learning the body technique of
tacking (i.e., sailing upwind) as a mobility practice.
Chapter 4, “A Method and Model for Studying the Learning of Artistic
Techniques: Analyzing Sculptural Expression in School Sloyd,” draws on
Dewey’s thinking about the primacy of the aesthetic encounter, creative
action, aesthetic appreciation, and especially the creation of artistically
expressive meanings discussed in Chap. 2. There we extend the SER model
viii PREFACE

by developing a second model that is also separate from the PEA method
that allows us to empirically study situated artistic expression and aesthetic
appreciation of SARs. The SAR model provides descriptions and explana-
tions regarding learning artistic processes of self-expression along with
learning appreciation of aesthetic products during the process. Like the
SER model, the SAR model along with SAR variables and SAR indicators
is highly situational and context sensitive. As with the SER model, the PEA
method provided data to the SAR model to facilitate in situ analysis and
explanation of a learner’s sociolinguistic embodied artistic-aesthetic prac-
tice such that the researcher can reasonably infer learning directly from the
learner’s palpably observable actions. Sloyd is a system of handicraft-­
oriented education; it is a compulsory subject in Swedish and Norwegian
schools for students from around 9 to 15 years of age. This chapter employs
the SAR model and the PEA method to analyze Sloyd as an embodied
production practice enabling explorations of learning as it goes from an
instrumental learning of a body technique to an artistic expression through
a body technique.

Örebro, Sweden Joacim Andersson

Blacksburg, VA, USA Jim Garrison
Uppsala, Sweden Leif Östman

Bibliography
Andersson, J. (2014). Kroppsliggörande, erfarenhet och pedagogiska processer: en
undersökning av lärande av kroppstekniker. Doctoral dissertation, Acta
Universitatis Upsaliensis.
Andersson, J., & Maivorsdotter, N. (2016). The ‘body pedagogics’ of an elite
footballer’s career path – Analysing Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s biography. Physical
Education and Sport Pedagogy. https://doi.org/10.1080/17408989.2016.12
68591.
Joas, H. (1996). The creativity of action. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press.
Johnson, M. (2007). The meaning of the body: Aesthetics of human understanding.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Mauss, M. (1973). Techniques of the body. Economy and Society, 2(1), 70–88.
Östman, L. (2010). ESD and discursivity: Transactional analyses of moral meaning
making and companion meanings. Environmental Education Research, 16(1),
75–93.
 PREFACE
   ix

Quine, W. V. (1969). Ontological relativity. In W. V. Quine (Ed.), Ontological

relativity and other essays (pp. 26–68). New York: Columbia University Press.
Rorty, R. (1979). Philosophy and the mirror of nature. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Shilling, C. (2008). Changing bodies. London: Sage.
Shilling, C. (2012). The body and social theory. London: Sage.
Wickman, P.-O., & Östman, L. (2002a). Induction as an empirical problem: How
students generalize during practical work. International Journal of Science
Education, 24(5), 465–486.
Wickman, P.-O., & Östman, L. (2002b). Learning as discourse change: A socio-
cultural mechanism. Science Education, 86(5), 601–623.
 Contents

1 Dewey, Wittgenstein, and the Primacy of Practice   1

1.1 Quine, Rorty, and Toulmin on Wittgenstein and Dewey  2
1.1.1 Toulmin: Wittgenstein’s Pragmatism  2
1.1.2 Quine: Naturalism, Antirepresentationalism,
and the Private Language Argument  4
1.1.3 Rorty: Rejecting Modern Epistemology
and the Traditional Theory of the Mind 10
1.2 Behaviorism, the Primacy of Action, Contextualism,
and Radical Indetermination 13
1.3 Rules, Customs, and Habits 17
1.4 Toward a First-Person Perspective on Learning 21
Bibliography  24

2 Distributed Minds and Meanings in a Transactional World

Without a Within: Embodiment and Creative Expression  27
2.1 The Primacy of the Embodied Aesthetic Encounter 28
2.2 From Prelinguistic “Knowing How,” to the Linguistic
“Knowing That,” to Embodied, Post-linguistic “Knowing
How”: Tracing the Emergence of Significant
and Immanent Meaning 34
2.2.1 From Prelinguistic “Knowing How,”
to the Linguistic “Knowing That”: Abrichtung
and Unterricht 35
2.2.2 Significant (i.e., Linguistic) Meaning
and Immanent Meaning 37

xi
xii Contents

2.3 Consummatory Aesthetic Meanings and Artistic

Self-expression 49
2.4 Representation as Distributed Mental Functioning:
Situated Learning Throughout a World Without Withins 58
2.5 Toward a Transactional First-Person Perspective
on Learning 63
Bibliography  67

3 A Method and Model for Studying the Learning

of Body Techniques: Analyzing Bodily Transposition
in Dinghy Sailing  69
3.1 SER, PEA, and Some Paradigmatic Questions 70
3.2 The Analytical Model of SER 72
3.3 The Analytical Method of PEA 80
3.4 Analyzing Embodied Learning Through the Example
of Dinghy Sailing 87
3.4.1 The Teaching Practice of Dinghy Sailing 87
3.4.2 Situated Epistemic Relation 93
3.4.3 SER Indicator 96
3.4.4 What Influences the Learning 97
3.5 Discussion 99
3.5.1 What Is Learned?100
3.5.2 What Influences the Learning?101
3.5.3 Continuity and Change102
3.5.4 Connection to Embodiment and Philosophy103
Bibliography 105

4 A Method and Model for Studying the Learning

of Artistic Techniques: Analyzing Sculptural Expression
in School Sloyd 109
4.1 The Analytical Model of SAR111
4.2 Learning to Express Oneself: The Learning Content
and the Elements Influencing the Learning114
4.3 The Use of PEA in an SAR Analysis117
4.4 An Analysis of Sculptural Expression Through
the Example of School Sloyd118
4.4.1 The First Part of the Analysis121
4.4.2 The Second Part of the Analysis123
 Contents 
   xiii

4.5 Discussion126
4.5.1 What Is Learned127
4.5.2 Variables and Indicators in the SAR Model128
4.5.3 What Influences the Learning129
4.6 Conclusion131
Bibliography 132

Bibliography  133

Index 139
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 The figure of the archetypical process of learning 74

Fig. 3.2 Picture strip of roller-tacking 89
Fig. 4.1 Judging “roughness” 115
Fig. 4.2 Picture strip of sculptural expression 120

xv
 CHAPTER 1

Dewey, Wittgenstein, and the Primacy

of Practice

Abstract This chapter explores some of the most interesting intersections

between the philosophy of John Dewey and the later Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Practical epistemological analysis (PEA), Situated Epistemic Relations
(SER), and Situated Artistic Relations (SAR) examine learning primarily
as a sociolinguistic practice. Since it is a sociolinguistic practice, much of
both the product and the process of learning are plainly visible to sophis-
ticated methodological observation. This chapter emphasizes the primacy
of practice in comprehending linguistic meaning (i.e., forms of life,
language-­games, meaning as use, etc.), the rejection of a private language,
antifoundationalism, and epistemological contextualism, action, and anti-
representationalism. It establishes the philosophical framework for our
analytical method developed in Chap. 3 and assumed in Chap. 4.

Keywords Dewey • Wittgenstein • Antifoundationalism

• Antirepresentationalism • Sociolinguistics

This chapter first draws on W. V. Quine, Richard Rorty, and Stephan

Toulmin to establish some critical connections between Wittgenstein and
Dewey that we will use to develop practical epistemological analysis (PEA),
situated epistemic relations (SERs) and situated artistic relations (SARs).

© The Author(s) 2018 1

J. Andersson et al., Empirical Philosophical Investigations in Education
and Embodied Experience, The Cultural and Social Foundations
of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74609-8_1
2 J. ANDERSSON ET AL.

Next, we show why we prefer the idea of action, and especially the pri-
macy of social practice, to reductive behaviorism as an approach to study-
ing human learning in situ. We also acknowledge the permanent presence
of radical underdetermination. We then take up social rules and customs
and how they establish bodily habits of practice as the embodied base of
learning. We conclude by developing a first-person perspective on
learning.

1.1   Quine, Rorty, and Toulmin on Wittgenstein

and Dewey

The current scholarship rarely acknowledges the resemblance between

Wittgenstein and Dewey, especially in education, even though philoso-
phers as respected as W. V. O. Quine, Richard Rorty, and Stephen Toulmin
have long since established many of the most significant similarities for our
purposes.

1.1.1  
Toulmin: Wittgenstein’s Pragmatism
In his introduction to Dewey’s The Quest for Certainty, Stephen Toulmin,
who studied with Wittgenstein, remarks, “Viewing Wittgenstein as a prag-
matist of a sophisticated kind can certainly be helpful. In particular, his use
of the notions of ‘language-games’ and ‘forms of life’ serves to focus
attention directly on the question of praxis” (LW 4: xiii). We strongly
agree. We do not believe Wittgenstein was a pragmatist, although it is easy
to put him into dialogue with Deweyan pragmatism. In starting this con-
versation, we assume a certain reading of Wittgenstein and Dewey that
acknowledges their comparable philosophies. Alternative readings may
emphasize their differences over their similarities, but we will tend to favor
highlighting the latter since it is heuristically useful for formulating our
research methodology.
Toulmin remarks on the many “parallels between the mature position
of John Dewey, as captured in The Quest for Certainty, and the views that
Ludwig Wittgenstein began to develop from 1927 on” (LW 4: xii–xiii).
One of these parallels is that “both men were equally opposed to the
theory of sense data” (LW 4: xiii).1 It is part of their rejection of British
empiricism. In the next chapter, we will find Dewey arguing that data for
 DEWEY, WITTGENSTEIN, AND THE PRIMACY OF PRACTICE 3

inference is “taken” from anoetic qualitative experience as part of inquiry;

it is not given.
Toulmin recognizes that in various “areas of research…John Dewey’s
insistence on the active character of human knowledge is now bearing
fruit, and the combined heritage of Dewey and Wittgenstein is giving us a
new command over psychology and social theory” (LW 1: xiv). We rely on
Wittgenstein and Dewey to provide a new command over educational
research. Toulmin also observes:

Whereas Dewey spoke in rather broad terms of knowledge as rooted in

“action,” and did not give us a technique for analyzing action in any system-
atic way, the ideas of the later Wittgenstein have stimulated a great deal of
thought about the taxonomy of human actions. (LW 1: xiii)

Chapters 3 and 4 introduce three techniques for analyzing action in a system-

atic way. The first is the analytical method of PEA. The second technique is
the model of SER that employs data provided by PEA. The third technique is
the model of SAR that likewise employs data provided by PEA. SER and SAR
may both be employed together using the PEA data.
The primacy of practice plays a prominent role in Wittgenstein and
Dewey’s understanding of ideas. Toulmin declares:

For Dewey … “ideas” have the meanings they do only to the extent that
they are put to work. Human beings show rational command over their lives
through the sets of operations which they devise and put to work. To use
Wittgenstein’s image, an “idea” or a “thought” which is not associated with
such sets of operations serves no more purpose (and so has no more mean-
ing) than an “idle wheel” added to a clock mechanism, which drives nothing
and so has no intelligible effect. (LW 1: xvii–xviii)

Both Wittgenstein and Dewey reject the notion that a collection of prop-
erties that a set of entities have in common alone comprises a concept,
meaning, or universal. For Wittgenstein, all we have are “family resem-
blances” (PI §§ 66–67; see also BB, 17–18). In his essay “What are
Universals?” Dewey affirms, “From the point of view of what has been
said, every universal, like any rule, is a formulation of an operation to be
performed” (LW 11: 107). In Wittgenstein’s terms, a universal has no
4 J. ANDERSSON ET AL.

meaning outside the forms of life, including their various language-

games that deploy them. Toulmin also comments on Dewey and
Wittgenstein’s rejection of private language, which is discussed in the
next chapter (xix).

1.1.2  
Quine: Naturalism, Antirepresentationalism,
and the Private Language Argument
In one of the most influential papers in the tradition of analytic philosophy,
“Ontological Relativity,” Quine (1969) relies heavily on the similarities
between Dewey and Wittgenstein regarding linguistic “behavior,” “use,”
and “context.” Quine states: “Philosophically I am bound to Dewey by the
naturalism…. With Dewey I hold that knowledge, mind, and meaning are
part of the same world…. There is no place for a prior philosophy” (26).
Quine adds that, like Dewey, when discussing the philosophy of mind, he
turns to language to comprehend mental functioning. Linguistically, he also
wishes to avoid “pernicious mentalism” in semantics (27). Quine’s natural-
ism is strident in its rejection of mentalism and psychic representationalism.
It is worth mentioning that Dewey’s naturalism is more robust than that of
Wittgenstein’s, especially in Dewey’s emphasis on embodiment.
Quine cites Dewey to support his rejection of representationalism:
“Meaning … is not a psychic existence; it is primarily a property of behav-
ior” (27; see LW 1: 141).2 Quine states:

Meanings are, first and foremost, meanings of language. Language is a social

art which we all acquire on the evidence solely of other people’s overt behav-
ior under publicly recognizable circumstances. Meanings, therefore, those
very models of mental entities, end up as grist for the behaviorist’s mill. (26)

Later, we will show why it is better to think in terms of action, even cre-
ative action, rather than “behavior” since it allows us to avoid confusion
with the reductive behaviorism of John B. Watson or B. F. Skinner, which
Dewey and Wittgenstein reject. Nonetheless, behavior, action, and such
render mental functioning observable.
Quine refers to the following passage, which emphasizes the role of
structured social relations: “Language is specifically a mode of interaction
of at least two beings, a speaker and a hearer; it presupposes an organized
group to which these creatures belong, and from whom they have acquired
 DEWEY, WITTGENSTEIN, AND THE PRIMACY OF PRACTICE 5

their habits of speech. It is therefore a relationship” (27; see LW 1: 145).

Quine quotes from the following passage, which is so important, and so
similar to Wittgenstein, that we cite it at length:

A requests B to bring him something, to which A points, say a flower. There

is an original mechanism by which B may react to A’s movement in point-
ing. But natively such a reaction is to the movement, not to the pointing,
not to the object pointed out. But B learns that the movement is a pointing;
he responds to it not in itself, but as an index of something else. His response
is transferred from A’s direct movement to the object to which A points.
Thus he does not merely execute the natural acts of looking or grasping
which the movement might instigate on its own account. The motion of A
attracts his gaze to the thing pointed to; then, instead of just transferring his
response from A’s movement to the native reaction he might make to the
thing as stimulus, he responds in a way which is a function of A’s relation-
ship, actual and potential, to the thing. The characteristic thing about B’s
understanding of A’s movement and sounds is that he responds to the thing
from the standpoint of A. He perceives the thing as it may function in A’s
experience, instead of just ego-centrically [sic]…. Such is the essence and
import of communication, signs and meaning. Something is literally made
common in at least two different centres of behavior. (LW 1: 140–141)3

Let us call this “the flower game.” It resembles a Wittgensteinian language-­

game. Notice the importance of coordinating action with regard to some
object literally made common in action. It is a three-term relationship
involving (A) and (B) taking each other’s attitude with regard to a third
factor, the referent (R). (A), (B), and (R) emerge simultaneously as they
undergo reciprocal transformation in the transaction.
We may compare the flower game with the builder’s language-game
early in the Investigations. In this game, language enables communication
between a builder (A) and an assistant (B). They are building with blocks,
pillars, slabs, and beams. (B) has to pass the materials in the order in which
(A) needs them (PI § 2). One possible move in this game involves the
request: “Bring me a slab” (PI § 19 ff.). The functional coordination of
Dewey’s flower game resonates with Wittgenstein’s slab game (see PI §§
18–21). Maybe builder (A) is teaching her assistant (B) the art of bricklay-
ing such that in the process, the assistant acquires the meaning of “slab”
(R). Perhaps before playing the game, the assistant considered “slab” a
meaningless “that,” having only some vague character that philosophers
6 J. ANDERSSON ET AL.

occasionally call qualitative “thatness,” if they attended to the quality at all

or if it was not completely anoetic. If so, then when the builder first says,
“slab,” the assistant might think she was only grunting. Possibly in the
process, the assistant may use the slab in creative ways the builder finds
useful and incorporates into her future practice. In this case, the referent
also acquires new meaning for the builder.
Quine also mentions that once we understand the use of language in its
social context, we will realize there are no private languages. Again, he cites
Dewey: “Soliloquy … is the product and reflex of converse with others”
(27; see LW 1: 135). For Wittgenstein, a private-language where “indi-
vidual words … refer to what can only be known to the person speaking;
to his immediate private sensations” is not a genuine, meaningful, rule-
governed language (PI § 243). Linguistic signs can only function when
there is a possibility of judging the correctness of their use; therefore, “the
use of [a] word stands in need of a justification which everybody under-
stands” (PI § 261). In the next chapter, we will establish how PEA allows
us to observe and SER to publically judge correctness of use. Compare
Wittgenstein to Dewey: “Primarily meaning is intent and intent is not per-
sonal in a private and exclusive sense” (LW 1: 142). The PEA method
combined with the SER and SAR models allows us to identify objective
indicators of a learner’s intent. Dewey finds that if “we had not talked with
others and they with us, we should never talk to and with ourselves” (135).
Quine comments: “Years later, Wittgenstein likewise rejected private lan-
guage. When Dewey was writing in this naturalistic vein, Wittgenstein still
held his copy theory of language” (27). Quine reviews the usual com-
plaints against the uncritical semantics of the picture theory of meaning,
which Wittgenstein himself associates with his Tractatus in Philosophical
Investigations (TLP; see PI § 23, 97, 114).
Quine only cites from Dewey’s 1925 work, Experience and Nature
(LW 1). However, he could have referred to Dewey’s 1916, Democracy
and Education: “The bare fact that language consists of sounds which are
mutually intelligible is enough of itself to show that its meaning depends
upon connection with a shared experience” (MW 9: 19). Sounds in them-
selves are meaningless grunts and snorts. Dewey indicates, “After sounds
have got meaning through connection with other things employed in a
joint undertaking … they can be used in connection with other like sounds
to develop new meanings, precisely as the things for which they stand are
 DEWEY, WITTGENSTEIN, AND THE PRIMACY OF PRACTICE 7

combined” (MW 9: 19). Notice that until they acquire meaning in socio-
linguistic practice, we cannot use sounds to develop new meanings:
Acquiring linguistic meaning involves engaging in concrete social
practices:

In short, the sound h-a-t gains meaning in precisely the same way that the
thing “hat” gains it, by being used in a given way. And they acquire the same
meaning with the child which they have with the adult because they are used
in a common experience by both. The guarantee for the same manner of use
is found in the fact that the thing and the sound are first employed in a joint
activity, as a means of setting up an active connection between the child and
a grown-up. (MW 9: 19)

Wittgenstein and Dewey also agree that words derive their meaning when
used within forms of life. This phenomenon is the linguistic primacy of
practice. It is important not to confuse the perspective of those actually
participating in a social practice (what we will later call the first-person
perspective) with the spectator stance of those outside of it (what we will
later call the third-person perspective), such as the educational researcher.4
Tools of all kinds facilitate social practices. Because primordial language
is something we make and use in social contexts to facilitate cultural prac-
tices, Dewey frequently calls one component of his philosophy of lan-
guage and logic “instrumentalism.” For instance:

“Utensils” were discussed … in connection with the useful arts and knowl-
edge, and their indispensable relation with science pointed out. But at every
point appliances and application, utensils and uses, are bound up with direc-
tions, suggestions and records made possible by speech; what has been said
about the role of tools is subject to a condition supplied by language, the
tool of tools. (LW 1: 134)

Wittgenstein, too, has plenty to say about tools in his variants on the
builder’s game (PI §§ 11, 14, 15, 41, 42, and elsewhere). He explicitly
states: “Language is an instrument. Its concepts are instruments” (PI §
569). “As to be a tool, or to be used as means for consequences, is to have
and to endow with meaning,” Dewey maintains, “language, being the
tool of tools, is the cherishing mother of all significance” (LW 1: 146).
Practitioners use tools, including the tool of tools, from their first-person
8 J. ANDERSSON ET AL.

participatory perspectives, which we must not confuse with the spectator

perspective of the observer or explainer.
In the context of practice, the most important tool is always the
practitioner:

Yet till we understand operations of the self as the tool of tools, the means in
all use of means, specifying its differential activities in their distinctive conse-
quences in varying qualities of what is experienced, science is incomplete and
the use made of it is at the mercy of an unknown factor, so that the ultimate
and important consequence is in so far a matter of accident. (LW 1: 189–190)

When practitioners use themselves as tools, it is a first-person participatory

perspective that researchers must not confuse with their observational,
explanatory third-person perspective. Of course, practitioners are much more
than just tools. We cannot reduce human beings to their instrumental func-
tioning without massive, often tragic, loss of ethical and aesthetic meaning.
Dewey is careful not to ignore or even separate the instrumental from
the fulfilling, consummatory function of language. SAR is a model that, in
conjunction with the SER model and PEA, provides descriptions and
explanations of an important subset of such consummatory linguistic
experiences.5 Dewey observes, “Communication is consummatory as well
as instrumental. It is a means [to the end] of establishing cooperation….
Shared experience is the greatest of human goods” (LW 1: 157). Later he
remarks: “Here, as in so many other things, the great evil lies in separating
instrumental and final functions” (LW 1: 159). For Dewey, the consum-
matory, fulfilling, final phase is immediate, qualitative, and noncognitive;
however, it follows up on the cognitive “referent” of the linguistic mediat-
ing symbol. The reference arises from the shared use of a tool, which is the
instrument of language in the context of a shared social practice, a
language-­game, as a means to a shared meaning. For Dewey, “a meaning
is a method of action, a way of using things as means to a shared consum-
mation, and method is general, though the things to which it is applied are
particular” (LW 1: 147).6 However, as we will see later, the shared con-
summation comes after reaching the common referent. Reference (i.e.,
the signified) is intellectual or logical; they are part of the mediating sign-­
signified relation. Reference arises socially from a shared consummation.
However, the shared consummatory experience itself is an immediate,
self-contained, fulfilling, qualitative experience.
 DEWEY, WITTGENSTEIN, AND THE PRIMACY OF PRACTICE 9

For Dewey, instrumental meanings are means to an intended reference

(i.e., a shared end), that is, a shared understanding or agreement in action:

The heart of language is not “expression” of something antecedent, much

less expression of antecedent thought. It is communication; the establish-
ment of cooperation in an activity in which there are partners, and in which
the activity of each is modified and regulated by partnership. To fail to
understand is to fail to come into agreement in action; to misunderstand is
to set up action at cross purposes. (LW 1: 141; see also, LW 12: 52–53)

The point is strikingly similar to Wittgenstein’s notion of linguistic “agree-

ment in action” (RFM VI, §39).
Once we come to agreement in action, we may share a common, non-
cognitive, consummatory experience that is the referent of meaning, idea,
concept, and such. We must not commit “the great evil” of separating the
instrumental and consummatory function of language. Whether it is a
flower, a brick, or a unicorn, we can come to agreement in action and
thereby share a meaning. Unicorns are meaningful; we can readily describe
them (or at least the spiraling horn) and, perhaps, thereby have and share
the consummatory experience. Dewey is thus careful not to ignore or even
separate the instrumental from the fulfilling, consummatory function of
language.
Deflating the bloated claims of philosophical idealism and rationalism,
Dewey insists that all reasoning is practical means-ends reasoning. The
pretense of pure reason is simply a misleading hypostatization of useful
abstractions drawn from various concrete social practices. He remarks:
“There is nothing novel nor heterodox in the notion that thinking is
instrumental. The very word is redolent of an Organum—whether novum
or veterum” (MW 10: 367). Similarly, Wittgenstein urges: “Look at the
word ‘to think’ as a tool” (PI § 53). Language and logic contribute to the
practical art of making meaning and using the meanings made to make
other things within forms of life. PEA, SER, and SAR allow us to detect,
describe, and explain the feelings, habits, and purposes of the self as the
tool of tools along with the instrumental use of meaning.
Of course, there is also disagreement: “To fail to understand is to fail to
come into agreement in action; to misunderstand is to set up action at cross
purposes” (LW 1: 141). Quine (1969) writes: “When we turn thus toward
10 J. ANDERSSON ET AL.

a naturalistic view of language and a behavioral view of meaning, what we

give up is not just the museum figure [i.e., the picture theory] of speech.
We give up an assurance of determinacy” (28). Quine uses Wittgenstein
and Dewey to develop his own thesis of “ontological” indeterminacy:

When … we recognize with Dewey that “meaning … is primarily a property

of behavior,” we recognize that there are no meanings, nor likenesses nor
distinctions of meaning, beyond what are implicit in people’s dispositions to
overt behavior…. If by these standards there are indeterminate cases, so much
the worse for the terminology of meaning and likeness of meaning. (29)

Identical twins raised in the same happy home may never be sure they are
in ontological agreement. “Reference itself,” Quine concludes, “proves
behaviorally inscrutable” (35). In observing the actions of others, or even
our own actions, we may never be certain of the meanings we assume.
However well-warranted, we may be mistaken. In Dewey’s terms, we may
never hope to secure indubitable knowledge of others or ourselves. In
using PEA, SER, and SAR, we can only hope to provide strong warrant
for observed learning; we can never complete the quest for certainty.

1.1.3   Rorty: Rejecting Modern Epistemology

and the Traditional Theory of the Mind
The mistaken notion that the mind should reflect external reality provides
Richard Rorty (1979) with the title of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.
There, he relies on Wittgenstein, Dewey, and Martin Heidegger to over-
throw traditional epistemology: “Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey are
in agreement that the notion of knowledge as accurate representation
made possible by special mental processes, and intelligible through a gen-
eral theory of representation, needs to be abandoned” (7). Rorty joins
Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey in overcoming the legacy of John
Locke (1690/1959):

Besides articulate sounds, therefore, it was further necessary that we should

be able to use these sounds as signs of internal conceptions; and to make
them stand as marks for the ideas within his own mind, whereby they might
be made known to others, and the thoughts of men’s minds be conveyed
from one to another. (Book III, 3)
 DEWEY, WITTGENSTEIN, AND THE PRIMACY OF PRACTICE 11

Locke with his “internal conceptions” and ideas corresponding to things

outside the mind offers an instance of the picture theory of meaning. The
same problem haunts British empiricists, Descartes, and others in the
rationalist tradition as well as Kant, Husserl, and, indeed, almost the whole
of modern philosophy. These rationalists remain stuck in an intractable
inner versus outer dualism, of which the dualisms of mind versus body,
subject versus object, and knower versus known are simply special cases.7
They all assume the correspondence theory of truth where something
(i.e., ideas, representations, etc.) hidden in “the mind” corresponds to
something outside it.
Relying on Dewey and Wittgenstein’s antirepresentationalism, Rorty
eliminates not only the very idea of “the mind” as traditionally conceived,
but also the entirety of modern epistemology as the pursuit of what Dewey
calls “the quest for certainty.” Indeed, Rorty (1979) suggests, “We empha-
size rather what Dewey and Wittgenstein have in common—their view
that a natural quest for understanding has been run together, by modern
philosophers, with an unnatural quest for certainty” (228).8 Today, the
traditional modernist notion of the mind dominates educational research
decades after Dewey’s death while educational researchers still strive to
complete the impossible quest for certainty. In the next chapter, we will
find that one of the chief virtues of PEA, SER, and SAR as methods and
models of educational research is that their antirepresentationalism over-
comes the dualisms of the traditional conception of the mind.
Rorty (1979) suggests, “we see knowledge as a matter of conversation
and of social practice, rather than as an attempt to mirror nature” (171).
Notice the emphasis on the primacy of practice. Further, like Quine, Rorty
sees his own position as a version of behaviorism: “Explaining rationality
and epistemic authority by reference to what society lets us say, rather than
the latter by the former, is the essence of what I shall call ‘epistemological
behaviorism,’ an attitude common to Dewey and Wittgenstein” (1979,
174; see also 176, 213, 228, and elsewhere). Again, we prefer the word
“action” or even the phrase “creative action” over behavior, but the idea
that we do not have to infer hidden mental functions from behavior is
something we fully accept; although, of course, we cannot ever hope to
complete the quest for certainty regarding a student’s learning. PEA, SER,
and SAR allow us make well-warranted empirical (albeit, never certain)
claims regarding learning directly from overt action.
12 J. ANDERSSON ET AL.

Inspired by Dewey and Wittgenstein, Rorty seeks to replace “knowl-

edge as the assemblage of accurate representations” with a “pragmatist’s
conception of knowledge which eliminates the Greek contrast between
contemplation and action, between representing the world and coping
with it” (11). PEA, SER, and SAR allow us to study the actions of learners
as they attempt to cope with educational contexts. Once we overcome the
mind versus body and the inner mind versus outer reality dualisms as well
as abandon the notion that mental functioning only occurs inside the
head, we will realize that a great deal of mental functioning is publically
observable within a given context of practice. We take up the distributed
nature of mental functioning in the next chapter.
Rorty further affirms, “If we have a Wittgensteinian notion of lan-
guage as tool rather than mirror, we will not look for necessary condi-
tions of the possibility of linguistic representation” (9). We have seen
that Dewey is equally instrumental about language. However, Rorty
scolds Dewey for not taking “the linguistic turn”: “I see it as the great
virtue of [Donald] Davidson’s linguistification of Dewey’s antirepresen-
tationalism that it enables us to get rid of ‘experience’” (Rorty 1995,
219 fn. 10). Rorty, like other analytically influenced philosophers,
emphasizes the primacy of linguistic propositions. For Deweyan pragma-
tists, language is simply an extraordinarily important moment of emer-
gent experience within the wider domain of emergent social experience:
“Agreement in the proposition arrived at is significant only through this
function in promoting agreement in action” (LW 12: 53). More exactly,
Dewey proclaims:

Personally I have no doubt that language in its general sense, or symbols,

is connected with all mental operations that are intellectual in import and
with the emotions associated with them. But to substitute linguistic
behavior for the quality of acts that renders them “mental” is an evasion.
(LW 5: 227)

Rorty’s linguistic turn may mark a major difference between him and Dewey.
We will emphasize language as an instrument, a tool, while retaining a
Deweyan notion of experience, including prelinguistic anoetic experience as
well as consummatory postlinguistic experiences, which include “immanent”
meanings, aesthetic meanings, and expressive meanings.
 DEWEY, WITTGENSTEIN, AND THE PRIMACY OF PRACTICE 13

1.2   Behaviorism, the Primacy of Action,

Contextualism, and Radical Indetermination
We do worry about Quine and Rorty’s use of the word “behaviorism”
because it might misrepresent Dewey and Wittgenstein. Skinner’s method-
ological behaviorism influenced Quine (see Quine 1960, especially Chap. 3).
This impact is not surprising given their lifelong friendship (see Malone
2001). However, Quine avoids Skinner’s reductivism (see Rorty 1979, 176).
Rorty (1979) calls attention to Dewey and Wittgenstein’s worries about
“the movement which was eventually to become the ‘behavioristic psychol-
ogy’” that Quine admires (228). In making this observation, Rorty has
recourse to Dewey’s “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology,” which over-
comes both reductionism and dualism (EW 5, 96, 107).
To make his point, Rorty could have also turned to Dewey’s “The
Need for Social Psychology”:

[A]ll psychological phenomena can be divided into the physiological and

the social, and that when we have relegated elementary sensation and appe-
tite to the former head, all that is left of our mental life, our beliefs, ideas and
desires, falls within the scope of social psychology. (MW 10: 54)

Elsewhere he states, “The social participation affected by communication,

through language and other tools, is the naturalistic link which does away
with the often alleged necessity of dividing the objects of experience into
two worlds, one physical and one ideal” (LW 1: 7). Dewey wants to elimi-
nate any notion of mental representation as some sort of psychic entity inside
the mind distinct from the body, although he also wants to avoid reduction-
ism. Physiologists, including those using brain-scanning techniques and
such, can likewise observe reflexive mental functioning not observable by
such methods and models as PEA, SER, and SAR. As long as one does not
attempt to reduce the mind to the brain, one may see our approach as com-
plementary to and capable of working in tandem with such research.9
In his preface to Human Nature and Conduct, subtitled “An Introduction
to Social Psychology,” Dewey provides a statement of the three basic ingre-
dients of his psychological system by proclaiming that the book

sets forth a belief that an understanding of habit and of different types of

habit is the key to social psychology, while the operation of impulse and
intelligence gives the key to individualized mental activity…. [M]ind can be
14 J. ANDERSSON ET AL.

understood in the concrete only as a system of beliefs, desires and purposes

which are formed in the interaction of biological aptitudes with a social
environment. (MW 14: 3)

Innate instincts (i.e., impulses), needs, desires, interests, and acquired

habits lie on the biological side of the biosocial transaction from whence
mental functioning emerges by participating in the practices of a social
environment. Eager to avoid reductionism, Dewey insists that “the mean-
ing of native activities is not native; it is acquired” (MW 14: 65). In them-
selves, natural impulses (hunger, thirst, sex, etc.) are meaningless. They
acquire meaning from the norms, grammar, rules, meanings, and values
of sociolinguistic participation in forms of life including the various
language-­games found within them. Dewey asserts, “We need to know
about the social conditions which have educated original activities
[impulses, instincts] into definite and significant dispositions [habits]
before we can discuss the psychological element in society. This is the true
meaning of social psychology” (MW 14: 67). For Dewey, the mind
emerges from a biological (neurophysiological) matrix. We do not find
any extensive discussion of the biological matrix in Wittgenstein. With the
introduction of the notion of habits, we catch our first glimpse of what
Dewey offers PEA, SER, and SAR in terms of its analytical model that
cannot be found in its sociolinguistic method: embodiment.
Dewey indicates that “mind as intellect” is “possession of and response
to meanings” (LW 1: 7). What Dewey calls “social psychology” is the
acquisition of meaning through participation in social practices; that is,
precisely the sort of thing Wittgenstein calls forms of life with their various
language-games. “Through speech a person dramatically identifies himself
with potential acts and deeds,” Dewey claims, “he plays many roles, not in
successive stages of life but in a contemporaneously enacted drama. Thus
mind emerges” (LW 1: 135). Meaning arises in social practice; hence,
meaning is not primarily subjective, although it has aspects unique to each
individual. Notice the importance of the fulfilling, immediate, qualitative,
“shared consummation.”
Dewey worked out his ideas about language, intentionality, and mental
functioning in collaboration with his long-time friend and colleague
George Herbert Mead. It might have helped if Dewey had used Mead’s
phrase “social behaviorism” to describe sociolinguistic activity.10
Wittgenstein asks himself, “‘Are you not really a behaviourist in disguise?
 DEWEY, WITTGENSTEIN, AND THE PRIMACY OF PRACTICE 15

Aren’t you at bottom really saying that everything except human behav-
iour is a fiction?’—If I do speak of a fiction, then it is of a grammatical
fiction” (PI §307; see also §308). By “grammatical,” Wittgenstein means
linguistic and logical norms of a given language-game within shared social
practices (i.e., forms of life).
A close reading of Dewey and Wittgenstein shows they frequently use
the word “action,” especially in the context of social action. Wittgenstein
maintains, “The term ‘language-game’ is meant to bring into prominence
the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of
life” (PI § 23). Meanwhile, Dewey insists, “We have to be able to re-state
the whole social context which alone supplies the meaning” (LW 1: 160).
Here is another passage where Wittgenstein connects words and the con-
text of social action:

We can also think of the whole process of using words … as one of those
games by means of which children learn their native language. I shall … call
the whole, consisting of language and the actions into which it is woven, the
“language-game.” (PI § 7)

Passages like this one remind us that Wittgenstein and Dewey were
both former classroom teachers. The passage is an instance of social
learning. It is part of the pedagogical turn in the later Wittgenstein (see
Macmillan 1983). The later Wittgenstein frequently uses pedagogical
examples, especially in On Certainty (OC), but we find many similar
references in Philosophical Investigations (PI). Of course, Dewey was
one of the most famous educators of the twentieth century. Teaching
and learning settings provide many fine examples of complex forms of
sociolinguistic action.
Wittgenstein and Dewey converge on the importance of action and the
primacy of practice:

Giving grounds, however, justifying the evidence, comes to an end – but the
end is not certain propositions striking us immediately as true, i.e., it is not
a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the
language-game. (OC §204; see also §411)

Dewey simply says, “language is primarily a mode of action” (LW 1: 160).

He means social action, of which teaching is a fine example. Elsewhere,
Wittgenstein writes, “words are deeds” (CV 46). The word “deed” is
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
into the boilers, and accumulated there. It saponified and formed a
foam which filled the whole boiler and caused the water to be worked
over with the steam as fast as it could be fed in. I have always
wondered why the engine, being vertical, should not have exhibited
any sign of the water working through it at the upper end of the
cylinder. The explanation after all appears simple. The water on
entering the steam chest mostly fell to the bottom and little passed
through the upper ports. The trouble from oil was not felt at all in the
Lancashire boiler. This, I suppose, was due to three causes. The
latter held a far greater body of water, had a much larger extent of
evaporating surface, and far greater steam capacity. I was always
sorry that I did not give the Harrison boiler the better chance it would
have had with a jet condenser.
In this pair of diagrams, which are copied from the catalogue of
Ormerod, Grierson & Co., the low steam pressure, 29 pounds above
the atmosphere, will be observed. This was about the pressure
commonly carried. The pressure in the exhibition boilers, 75 pounds,
was exhibited by Mr. John Hick, of Bolton, as a marked advance on
the existing practice.
In preparing for the governor manufacture I had my first revelation
of the utter emptiness of the Whitworth Works. Iron gear patterns
were required, duplicates of those which had been cut for me at
home by Mr. Pratt. The blanks for these gears were turned as soon
as possible after I reached Manchester, and sent to the Whitworth
Works to be cut. It seemed as though we should never get them.
Finally, after repeated urging, the patterns came. I was sent for to
come into the shop and see them. They were in the hands of the
best fitter we had, who, by the way, was a Swedenborgian preacher
and preached every Sunday. The foreman told me he had given
them to this man to see if it was possible to do anything with them,
and he thought I ought to see them before he set about it. I could
hardly believe my eyes. There was no truth about them. The spaces
and the teeth differed so much that the same tooth would be too
small for some spaces and could not be wedged into others; some
would be too thick or too thin at one end. They were all alike bad,
and presented all kinds of badness. It was finally concluded to make
the best of them, and this careful man worked on them more than
two days to make them passable.
The first governor order that was booked was the only case that
ever beat me. I went to see the engine. It was a condensing beam-
engine of good size, made by Ormerod, Grierson & Co. to maintain
the vacuum in a tube connecting two telegraph offices in
Manchester, and had been built to the plans and specifications of the
telegraph company’s engineer. The engine had literally nothing to
do. A little steam air-pump that two men could have lifted and set on
a bench would have been just suitable for the work. They could not
carry low enough pressure nor run slowly enough. On inspection I
reported that we should have nothing to do with it.
The custom of making whatever customers order and taking no
responsibility was first illustrated to me in this curious way. I saw a
queer-looking boiler being finished in the boiler-shop. In reply to my
question the foreman told me they were making it for a cotton-
spinner, according to a plan of his own. It consisted of two boilers,
one within the other. The owner’s purpose was to carry the ordinary
steam pressure in the outer boiler, and a pressure twice as great in
the inner one, when the inner boiler would have to suffer the stress
of only one half the pressure it was carrying.
I asked the superintendent afterwards why they did not tell that
man that he could not maintain steam at two different temperatures
on the opposite sides of the same sheets. He replied: “Because we
do not find it profitable to quarrel with our customers. That is his
idea. If we had told him there was nothing in it, he would not have
believed us, but would have got his boiler made somewhere else.”
Perhaps the most curious experience I ever had was that of
getting the governor into cotton-mills. There was a vast field all
around us, and we looked for plenty of orders. This was the
reception I met with every time. After listening to the winning story I
had to tell, the cotton lord would wind up with this question: “Well, sir,
have you got a governor in a large cotton-mill?” After my answer in
the negative I was bowed out. I early got an order from Titus Salt &
Son, of Saltaire, for two large governors but these did not weigh at
all with a cotton-spinner; they made alpaca goods.
 The way the governor was finally got into cotton-mills, where
afterwards its use became general, was the most curious part. A mill
in the city of Manchester was troubled by having its governor fly in
pieces once in a while. After one of these experiences the owners
thought that they might cure the difficulty by getting one of my
governors. That flew in pieces in a week. I went to see the engine.
The cause of all the trouble appeared at a glance. The fly-wheel was
on the second-motion shaft which ran at twice the speed of the main
shaft, and the gearing between them was roaring away enough to
deafen one. The governor was driven by gearing. The vibrations
transmitted to the governor soon tired the arms out. I saw the son of
the principal owner, and explained the cause of the failure of every
governor they had tried, and told him the only remedy, which would
be a complete one, would be to drive the governor by a belt. That, he
replied, was not to be thought of for an instant. I told him he knew
himself that a governor could not endure if driven in any other way,
and that I had hundreds of governors driven by belts, which were
entirely reliable in all cases. “But,” said he, “supposing the belt runs
off the pulley.” “The consequence,” I replied, “cannot be worse than
when the governor flies in pieces.” After wasting considerable time in
talk, he said, “Well, leave it till my father comes home; he is absent
for a few days.” “No,” said I, “if I can’t convince a young man, I shall
not try to convince an old man.” Finally, with every possible
stipulation to make it impossible for the belt to come off, he yielded
his assent, and I had the governor on in short order, lacing the belt
myself, to make sure that it was butt-jointed and laced in the
American fashion.
More than three years afterwards, two days before I was to sail for
home, I met this man on High Street, in Manchester. It was during
the Whitsuntide holidays, and the street was almost deserted. He
came up to me, holding out both hands and grasping mine most
cordially. “Do you know,” said he, “that we have increased our
product 10 per cent., and don’t have half as many broken threads as
we had before, and it’s all that belt.”
 Condenser and Air-pump designed by Mr. Porter. (Cross-section)

The tendency towards the horizontal type of engine, in place of the

beam-engine, began to be quite marked in England about that time.
This was favorable to the use of the Allen engine. The only thing that
seemed wanting to its success was a directly connected jet
condenser. No one believed that an air-pump could be made to run
successfully at the speed of 150 double strokes per minute. Yet this
had to be done, or I could not look for any considerable adoption of
the high-speed engine. This subject occupied my mind continually.
When I returned from Oporto, I had thought out the plan of this
condenser, and at once set about the drawings for it. No alteration
was ever made from the first design of the condenser, which I
intended to show with the engine at the coming Paris Exposition in
1867, and which I finally did succeed in showing there, but under
very different and unexpected relations.
The philosophy of this condenser is sufficiently shown in the
accompanying vertical cross-section. A hollow ram, only equal in
weight to the water which it displaced, ran through a stuffing-box at
the front end of the chamber, and was connected with an extension
of the piston-rod of the engine. So the center line of the engine
extended through this single-acting ram, which had the full motion of
the piston. It ran through the middle of a body of water, the surface of
which fell as the ram was withdrawn, and rose as it returned. A quiet
movement of the water was assured by three means: First, the
motion of the ram was controlled by the crank of the engine, and so
began and ceased insensibly. Second, the motion of the ram, of two
feet, produced a rise or fall of the surface of the water of only about
one inch. Third, the end of the ram was pointed, a construction which
does not appear in this sectional view, permitting it to enter and
leave the water at every point gradually. Both the condenser and the
hot-well were located above the chamber in which the ram worked.
The problem was to obtain complete displacement by means of
solid water without any admixture of free air, the expansion of which
as the plunger was withdrawn would reduce the efficiency of the air-
pump. To effect this object the air must be prevented from mingling
with the water, and must be delivered into the hot-well first. This was
accomplished by two means: First, placing the condenser as well as
the hot-well above the air-pump chamber, as already stated, and
secondly, inclining the bottom of the condenser, so that the water
would pass through the inlet valves at the side farthest from, and the
air at the side nearest to, the hot-well. Thus the air remained above
the water, and as the latter rose it sent the air before it quite to the
delivery valves. Pains were taken to avoid any place where air could
be trapped, so it was certain that on every stroke the air would be
sent through the delivery valves first, mingled air and water, if there
were any, next, and the solid water last, insuring perfect
displacement.
I have a friend who has often asked me, with a manner showing
his conviction that the question could not be answered, “How can
you know that anything will work until you have tried it?” In this case I
did know that this condenser would work at rapid speed before I tried
it. The event proved it, and any engineer could have seen that it
must have worked. The only question in my mind was as to the
necessity of the springs behind the delivery valves. Experiment was
needed to settle that question, which it did in short order. At the
speed at which the engine ran, the light springs improved the
vacuum a full pound, showing that without them these valves did not
close promptly.
The following important detail must not be overlooked. The rubber
disk valves were backed by cast-iron plates, which effectually
preserved them from being cut or even marked by the brass
gratings. These plates were made with tubes standing in the middle
of them, as shown. These tubes afforded long guides on the stems,
and a projection of them on the under side held the valves in place
without any wear. They also determined the rise of the valves. The
chambers, being long and narrow, accommodated three inlet and
three outlet valves. The jet of water struck the opposite wall with
sufficient force to fill the chamber with spray.
When the plans for this condenser were completed, and the Evan
Leigh engine had been vindicated, I felt that the success of the high-
speed system was assured, and looked forward to a rapidly growing
demand for the engines. We got out an illustrated catalogue of sizes,
in which I would have put the condenser, but the firm decided that it
would be better to wait for that until it should be on the same footing
with the engine, as an accomplished fact.
Suddenly, like thunder from a clear sky, I received notice that
Ormerod, Grierson & Co. were in difficulties, had stopped payment,
placed their books in the hands of a firm of accountants, and called a
meeting of their creditors, and the works were closed. Some of their
enormous contracts had proved losing ones. I had made such
provision in my contract with them that on their failure my license to
them became void. Otherwise it would have been classed among
their assets.
 CHAPTER XII

Introduction to the Whitworth Works. Sketch of Mr. Whitworth. Experience in the

Whitworth Works. Our Agreement which was never Executed. First Engine in
England Transmitting Power by a Belt.

was still debating with myself what course to take,

when I received a note from Mr. W. J. Hoyle, secretary
of the Whitworth Company, inquiring if I were free from
any entanglement with the affairs of Ormerod,
Grierson & Co., to which I was able to make a
satisfactory reply. Mr. Hoyle was then a stranger to
me. It appeared that he was an accomplished steam engineer, and
had been employed as an expert to test one of my engines in
operation, an engine which we had made for a mill-owner in
Bradford. He had been very favorably impressed by the engine, so
much so as to form this scheme. He had been with the Whitworth
Company only a short time, and was struck with the small amount of
work they were doing in their tool department; and after his
observation of the engine at Bradford, learning of the stoppage of
Ormerod, Grierson & Co., it occurred to him that it would be a good
thing for his company to undertake the manufacture of these
engines. After receiving my answer to his preliminary inquiry, having
Mr. Whitworth, as he afterwards told me, where he could not get
away, on a trip from London to Manchester, he laid the plan before
him and talked him into it. I directly after received an invitation to
meet Mr. Whitworth at his office, and here commenced what I verily
believed was one of the most remarkable experiences that any man
ever had.
 William J. Hoyle

In the course of our pretty long interview, which terminated with

the conclusion of a verbal agreement, Mr. Whitworth talked with me
quite freely, and told me several things that surprised me. One was
the frank statement that he divided all other toolmakers in the world
into two classes, one class who copied him without giving him any
credit, and the other class who had the presumption to imagine that
they could improve on him. His feelings towards both these classes
evidently did not tend to make him happy. Another thing, which I
heard without any sign of my amazement, was that he had long
entertained the purpose of giving to the world the perfect steam-
engine. “That is,” he explained, “an engine embodying all those
essential principles to which steam-engine builders must sooner or
later come.” This, he stated, had been necessarily postponed while
he was engaged in developing his system of artillery, but he was
nearing the completion of that work and should then be able to
devote himself to it.
I cannot perhaps do better than stop here and give my
impressions of Mr. Whitworth. He was in all respects a phenomenal
man. As an engineer, or rather a toolmaker, he addressed himself to
all fundamental constructive requirements and problems, and
comprehended everything in his range and grasp of thought,
continually seeking new fields to conquer. Long after the period here
referred to he closed his long and wonderful career by giving to the
world the hollow engine shaft and the system of hydraulic forging. At
that time he was confidently anticipating the adoption by all nations
of his system of artillery. He had made an immense advance, from
spherical shot, incapable of accurate aim and having a high
trajectory, to elongated shot, swiftly rotating in its flight and having a
comparatively flat trajectory, and which could hit the mark and
penetrate with destructive effect at distances of several miles. These
fundamental features of modern artillery thus originated with Mr.
Whitworth. All his other features have been superseded, but his
elongated pointed rotating projectile will remain until nations shall
learn war no more; a time which in the gradual development of
humanity cannot be far away. Before I left England, however, he had
abandoned his artillery plans in most bitter disappointment. He had
met the English official mind. By the authorities of the war and navy
departments it had been unanimously decided that what England
wanted was, not accuracy of aim and penetration at long range, but
smashing effects at close quarters. The record of that is to be found
in the proceedings of the House of Commons in 1868, only thirty-
nine years ago. Think of that!
Mr. Whitworth was not only the most original engineering genius
that ever lived. He was also a monumental egotist. His fundamental
idea was always prominent, that he had taught the world not only all
that it knew mechanically, but all it ever could know. His fury against
tool-builders who improved on his plans was most ludicrous. He
drew no distinction between principles and details. He must not be
departed from even in a single line. No one in his works dared to
think. This disposition had a striking illustration only a short time—
less than a year—before I went there. He had no children. His
nearest relatives were two nephews, W. W. and J. E. Hulse. The
latter was a tool-manufacturer in Salford. W. W. Hulse was Mr.
Whitworth’s superintendent, and had been associated with him for
twenty-four years, for a long time as his partner, the firm being
Joseph Whitworth & Company. Lately the business had been taken
over by a corporation formed under the style of the Whitworth
Company, and Mr. Hulse became the general superintendent.
Mr. Whitworth was taken sick, and for a while was not expected to
live, and no one thought, even if he did get better, that he would ever
be able to visit his works again. Mr. Hulse had been chafing under
his restraint, and during Mr. Whitworth’s absence proceeded to make
a few obvious improvements in their tools, such, for example, as
supporting the table of their shaper, so that it would not yield under
the cut. To the surprise of every one, Mr. Whitworth got well, and
after more than six months’ absence, he appeared again at the
works. Walking through, he noted the changes that had been made,
sent for Mr. Hulse, discharged him on the spot, and ordered
everything restored to its original form.
To return now to my own experience. Since Mr. Whitworth had
been absorbed in his artillery development he had given only a
cursory oversight to the tool manufacture. Mr. Hulse had been
succeeded as superintendent by a man named Widdowson, whose
only qualification for his position was entire subserviency to Mr.
Whitworth.
 Sir Joseph Whitworth

My drawings and patterns were purchased by the Whitworth

Company, and I was installed with one draftsman in a separate
office, and prepared to put the work in hand at once for a 12×24-inch
engine for the Paris Exposition, where Ormerod, Grierson & Co. had
secured the space, and the drawings for which I had completed. If I
remember rightly, the patterns were finished also. While I was getting
things in order, Mr. Widdowson came into my office, and in a very
important manner said to me: “You must understand, sir, that we
work here to the decimal system and all drawings must be
conformed to it.” I received this order meekly, and we went to work to
make our drawings all over, for the single purpose of changing their
dimensions from binary to decimal divisions of the inch. There was of
course quite a body of detail drawings, and to make these over, with
the pains required to make these changes to an unaccustomed
system, and make and mount the tracings, took us nearly three
weeks. When finished I took the roll of tracings to Mr. Widdowson’s
office. He was not in, and I left them for him. An hour or so later he
came puffing and blowing into my office with the drawings. He was a
heavy man, and climbing upstairs exhausted him. When he got his
breath, he broke out: “We can’t do anything with these. Haven’t got a
decimal gauge in the shop.” “You gave me express orders to make
my drawings to the decimal system.” “Damn it, I meant in halves and
quarters and all that, and write them decimals.” So all that work and
time were thrown away, and we had to make a new set of tracings
from the drawings I had brought, in order to figure the dimensions in
decimals. He told me afterwards that when Mr. Whitworth
commenced the manufacture of cylindrical gauges he made them to
the decimal divisions of the inch, imagining that was a better mode of
division than that by continual bisection, and supposing that he had
influence enough to effect the change. But nobody would buy his
gauges. He had to call them in and make what people wanted. “And
now,” said Mr. Widdowson, “there is not a decimal gauge in the
world.” He knew, too, for up to that time they made them all. So Mr.
Whitworth could make a mistake, and I found that this was not the
worst one that he had made.
 While time was being wasted in this manner, the subject of
manufacturing the governors came up. Mr. Whitworth concluded that
he would first try one on his own shop engine, so one was bought
from Ormerod, Grierson & Co. I had a message from Mr. Widdowson
to come to the shop and see my governor. It was acting in a manner
that I had seen before, the counterpoise rising and dropping to its
seat twice every time the belt lap came around. “Total failure, you
see,” said Mr. Widdowson, “and I got a new belt for it, too.” I saw a
chance to make an interesting observation, and asked him if he
would get an old belt and try that. This he did, lapping the ends as
before about 18 inches, according to the universal English custom,
which I had long before found it necessary carefully to avoid. As I
knew would be the case, the action was not improved at all. I then
cut off the lap, butted the ends of the belt, and laced them in the
American style, and lo! the trouble vanished. The governor stood
motionless, only floating up and down slightly with the more
important changes of load. Mr. Whitworth was greatly pleased, and
at once set about their manufacture, in a full line of sizes.
He made the change, to which I have referred already, from the
urn shape to the semi-spherical form of the counterpoise. In this
connection he laid the law down to me in this dogmatic fashion: “Let
no man show me a mechanical form for which he cannot give me a
mechanical reason.” But Jove sometimes nods. They were to exhibit
in Paris a large slotting-machine. The form of the upright did not suit
Mr. Whitworth exactly. He had the pattern set up in the erecting-
shop, and a board tacked on the side, cut to an outline that he
directed. He came to look at it every day for a week, and ordered
some change or other. Finally it was gotten to his mind, the pattern
was altered accordingly, and a new casting made. This was set up in
the shop, and I happened to be present when he came to see it.
“Looks like a horse that has been taught to hold his head up,” said
he. “Mechanical reason,” thought I, fresh from my lesson. When
finished the slotting-machine was tried in the shop, and found to
yield in the back. The tool sprang away from its work and rounded
the corner. Mr. Whitworth had whittled the pattern away and ruined it.
Instead of being sent to Paris, it was broken up.
 My experiment with the governor proved the defect in the English
system of lacing belts. Every machine in the land, of whatever kind,
tool or loom or spinning or drawing frame, or whatever it was, driven
by a belt, halted in its motion every time the lap in the belt passed
over a pulley, sufficiently to drop my governor, when the same
motion was given to it, and no one had ever observed this
irregularity.
I thought they would never be ready to set about work on the
engine. First, Mr. Widdowson ordered that every casting and forging,
large and small, must be in the shop before one of them was put in
hand. After this was done I found a number of men at work making
sheet-iron templets of everything. I saw one man filing the threads in
the edges of a templet for a ³⁄₈-inch bolt. When these were all
finished and stamped, an operation that took quite a week, a great
fuss was made about commencing work on everything
simultaneously.
I went into the shop to see what was going on. The first thing to
attract my attention was the steam-chest, then made separate from
the cylinder. A workman—their best fitter, as I afterwards learned—
was engaged in planing out the cavities in which the exhaust valves
worked. I saw no center line, and asked him where it was. He had
never heard of such a thing. “What do you measure from?” “From
the side of the casting.” I called his attention to the center line on the
drawing, from which all the measurements were taken, and told him
all about it. He seemed very intelligent, and under my direction set
the chest up on a plane table and made a center line around it and
another across it, and set out everything from these lines, and I left
him going on finely. An hour later I looked in again. He was about his
job in the old way. To my question he explained that his foreman had
come around and told him I had no business in the shop, that he
gave him his directions, and he must finish his job just as he began
it.
I made no reply but went to Mr. Hoyle’s office, and asked him if he
knew what they were doing in the shop. He smiled and said, “I
suppose they are finally making an engine for you.” “No, they are
not.” “What are they doing?” “Making scrap iron.” “What do you
mean?” I told him the situation. He took his hat and went out, saying,
“I must see this myself.”
A couple of hours later he sent for me, and told me this. “I have
been all around the works and seen all that is doing. It is all of the
same piece. I have had a long interview with Mr. Widdowson, and
am sorry to tell you that we can’t make your engine; we don’t know
how. It seems to be entirely out of our line. The intelligence does not
exist in these works to make a steam-engine. Nobody knows how to
set about anything. I have stopped the work, and want to know what
you think had better be done about it?” I asked him to let me think
the matter over till the next morning. I then went to him and
suggested to him to let me find a skilled locomotive-erecter who was
also a trained draftsman, and to organize a separate department for
the engine and governor manufacture, and put this man at the head
of it, to direct it without interference. This was gladly agreed to. I
found a young man, Mr. John Watts, who proved to be the very man
for the place. In a week we were running under Mr. Watts’ direction,
and the engine was saved. But what a time the poor man had!
Everything seemed to be done wrong. It is hardly to be believed. He
could not get a rod turned round, or a hole bored round.
In their toolmaking they relied entirely on grinding with “Turkey
dust.” I once saw a gang of a dozen laborers working a long
grinding-bar, in the bore, 10 inches diameter by 8 feet long, in the
tailstock of an enormous lathe. I peered through this hole when the
bar was withdrawn. It looked like a ploughed field. Scattered over it
here and there were projections which had been ground off by these
laborers. On the other hand, the planing done in these works was
magnificent. I never saw anything to equal it. But circular work beat
them entirely. I found that the lathe hands never thought of such a
thing as getting any truth by the sliding cut. After that they went for
the surface with coarse files, and relied for such approximate truth as
they did get upon grinding with the everlasting Turkey dust.
Mr. Whitworth invented the duplex lathe tool, but I observed that
they never used it. I asked Mr. Widdowson why this was. “Because,”
said he, “the duplex tool will not turn round.” After a while I found out
why. When our engine was finished, Mr. Widdowson set it upon two
lathe beds and ran it. Lucky that he did. The bottom of the engine
bed was planed, and it could be leveled nicely on the flat surfaces of
their lathe beds. The fly-wheel ran nearly a quarter of an inch out of
truth. He set up some tool-boxes on one of the lathe beds, and
turned the rim off in place, both sides and face being out. That, of
course, made it run perfectly true. I asked the lathe hand how he
could turn out such a job. He replied, “Come and see my lathe.” I
found the spindle quite an eighth of an inch loose in the main
bearing, the wear of twenty or thirty years. He told me all of the
lathes in the works were in a similar condition. That explained many
things. The mystery of those gear patterns was solved. Every spindle
in the gear-cutting machine was wabbling loose in its holes. I can’t
call them bearings. Now it appeared why they could not use the
duplex tools. With a tool cutting on one side, they relied on the
pressure of the cut to keep the lathe spindle in contact with the
opposite side of its main bearing, and a poor reliance that was, but
with a tool cutting on each side, fancy the situation. Then boring a
true hole was obviously impossible. The workmen became
indifferent; they had no reamers, relied entirely on grinding. I asked,
Why do you not renew these worn-out bushings? but could never get
an answer to the question. Some power evidently forbade it, and the
fact is that no man about the place dared to think of such a thing as
intimating to Mr. Whitworth that one of his lathe bearings required
any fixing up, or that it was or could be anything short of perfect. He
(Mr. Whitworth) had designed it as a perfect thing; ergo, it was
perfect, and no man dared say otherwise.
Our engine work was finally, as a last resort, done by Mr. Watts on
new lathes, made for customers and used for a month or two before
they were sent out. Not only in England, but on the Continent and in
America, the Whitworth Works were regarded as the perfect
machine-shop. I remember a visit I had at the Paris Exposition from
Mr. Elwell, of the firm of Varrell, Elwell & Poulot, proprietors of the
largest mechanical establishment in Paris. After expressing his
unbounded admiration of the running of the engine, he said, “I
warrant your fly-wheel runs true.” After observing it critically, he
exclaimed, “Ah, they do those things at Whitworth’s!”
The fact was Mr. Whitworth had cursed the British nation with the
solid conical lathe-spindle bearing, a perfect bearing for ordinary-
sized lathes and a most captivating thing—when new. These
hardened steel cones, in hardened steel seats, ran in the most
charming manner. But they wore more loose in the main bearing
every day they ran, and there were no means for taking up the wear.
It came on insensibly, and no one paid any attention to it. The cream
of the joke was that people were so fascinated with this bearing that
at that time no other could be sold in England, except for very large
lathes. All toolmakers had to make it. I remember afterwards that Mr.
Freeland, our best American toolmaker, who, as I have already
mentioned, went to England and worked for some years as a
journeyman in the Whitworth Works for the purpose of learning
everything there that he could, did not bring back to America the
conical bearing.
The firm of Smith & Coventry were the first to fit their lathes with
the means for taking up this wear, which took place only in the main
bearing, where both the force of the cut and the weight of the piece
were received. They made the conical seat for the back end of the
spindle adjustable in the headstock and secured it by a thin nut on
each end. This then could be moved backward sufficiently to let the
forward cone up to its seat. This made it possible to use the solid
bearing, but it involved this error, that after this adjustment the axis of
the spindle did not coincide with the line connecting the lathe
centers; but the two lines formed an angle with each other, which
grew more decided every time the wear was taken up. This,
however, was infinitely better than not to take up the wear at all.
At that time the Whitworth Works were divided into four
departments. These were screwing machinery, gauges, guns and
machine tools. The first three of these were locked. I never entered
either of them. The latter also, like most works in England, was
closed to outsiders. No customer could see his work in progress.
This department was without a head or a drawing-office. It seemed
to be running it on its traditions. I once said to Mr. Hoyle, “There
must at some time have been here mechanical intelligence of the
highest order, but where is it?” They had occasionally an order for
something out of their ancient styles, and their attempts to fill such
orders were always ruinous. The following is a fair illustration. They
had an order for a radial drill to be back-geared and strong enough
to bore an 8-inch hole. Mr. Widdowson had the pattern for the upright
fitted with the necessary brackets, and thought it was such a good
thing that he would make two. The first one finished was tried in the
shop, and all the gears in the arm were stripped. He woke up to the
fact that he had forgotten to strengthen the transmitting parts, and
moreover that the construction would not admit anything stronger.
There was nothing to be done but to decline the order, chip off the
brackets, and make these into single-speed drills. This I saw being
done.
Mr. Widdowson told me the following amusing story. The London
Times had heard of the wonderful performance of Mr. Hoe’s multiple-
cylinder press, and concluded to have one of them of the largest
size, ten cylinders. But, of course, Mr. Hoe did not know how to
make his own presses. His work would do well enough for ignorant
Americans, but not for an English Journal. The press must be made
in England in the world-renowned Whitworth Works.
Mr. Hoe sent over one of his experts to give them the information
they might need, but they would not let him in the shop. Mr. Hulse
told him they had the drawings and specifications and that was all
they needed. When the press was finished they set it up in the shop
and attempted to run it. The instant it started every tape ran off its
pulleys, and an investigation showed that not a spindle or shaft was
parallel with any other. They had no idea of the method that must be
employed to ensure this universal alignment. After enormous labor
they got these so that they were encouraged to make another trial,
when after a few revolutions every spindle stuck fast in its bearings.
Mr. Whitworth, absorbed in his artillery and spending most of his
time in London, of course had no knowledge of how things were
going on in his shop, of the utter want of ordinary intelligence.
I formed a scheme for an application of Mr. Whitworth’s system of
end measurement to the production of an ideally perfect dividing-
wheel. In this system Mr. Whitworth employed what he termed “the
gravity piece.” This was a small steel plate about ¹⁄₈ of an inch in
thickness, the opposite sides of which were parallel and had the
most perfectly true and smooth surfaces that could be produced by
scraping. The ends of the piece to be tested were perfectly squared,
by a method which I will not stop here to describe, and were finished