Substance and Form

This is the chapter in which Dewey writes "there can be no distinction drawn, save for in reflection, between form and substance.  The work itself is matter formed into esthetic substance" (p.114).  When we are in the performative what we do is carried in how we do it, or vice versa.  And I think this, from an educational standpoint, is a huge lesson. 

Dewey also comments on the link an artwork serves in communication between the artist and the audience, and that the triad is a necessary requirement of art.  And he says, "It is also true that it exists in unnumberable qualities or kinds, no two readers having exactly the same experience...A new poem is created by everyone who reads poetically" (p.112).  Here I see a relationship to an idea I attribute to Wittgenstein, that being the role of individual perception in communication.  I think Dewey builds from the angle that "language exists only when it is listened to as well as spoken.  The hearer is an indispensable partner" (p.110) not only that the hearer brings to the communication their lived experiences, their individual perception, but that they have to engage.  No part of communication is passive.  This I think is another important point from an educational perspective.  It seems to bare a relation to Dewey's concept of impulsion, because to listen to a communication, or to engage with a work of art would start with an impulsion.