Existence as Precarious and as Stable

Dewey's first study of life by means of philosophy considers the necessity of both stable, constant existences as well as the precarious, dubious, and the ever changing.  They work together in relation to one another, the constant is so in relation to what changes, the complete in relation to the incomplete, order in relation to chaos.  This reminds me of Dewey's discussion of rhythm in Art as Experience. Dewey argues that the philosophic fallacy is where "thinkers have relegated the uncertain and unfinished to invidious state of unreal being, while they have systematically exalted the assured and complete to the rank of true Being" (p. 51.)  I think of the logical positivists, and Dewey specifically names Bertrand Russell (p. 54) but includes the Platonic Idea of a "finished, complete, stable, wholly unprecarious reality," Democritus, Aristotle, Spinoza, and a host of others.  Expanding on this theme Dewey writes, "A world of 'ifs' is alone a world of 'musts'- the 'ifs' express the real differences; the 'musts' real connections.  The stable and recurrent is needed for the fulfillment of the possible; the doubtful can be settled only through its adaptation to stable objects" (p. 59). 

The nature of our world, the combination of the stable and the doubtful, is what gives rise to thinking.  "reflective thinking transforms confusion, ambiguity and discrepancy into illumination, definiteness and consistency.  But it also points to the contextual situation in which thinking occurs" (p. 61) and hence Dewey's insistence in chapter one that theory must return to experience.  Contingent for rational thought however, is imagination, "The conversion of the logic of reflection into an ontology of rational being is thus due to arbitrary conversion of an eventual natural function of unification into a causal antecedent reality; this in turn is due to the tendency of the imagination working under the influence of emotion to carry unification from an actual, objective and experimental enterprise, limited to particular situations where it is needed, into unrestricted, wholesale movement which ends in all-absorbing dream" (p. 62).  Thus, the fact that we do think, Dewey argues, is the ultimate proof that uncertainty and contingency exists.

The last point I want to remember goes back to the idea of rhythm.  Dewey writes, "Every existence is an event" (p. 63).  In time, everything changes, the perception of the certainty is found in "measure, relation, ratio, knowledge of the comparative tempos of change" (p. 64).  When we look at our individual existence we understand this fact, but when we consider the rules we believe govern nature it becomes more difficult to grasp.  It leads me to ask the question, if in time everything ends, what about time, does it too end, and was there a period of before time?  I'm asking the question knowing that Stephen Hawking, using string theory, suggested that time and our universe sprang into existence from nowhere.  I obviously don't know enough to discuss how he was able to support that theory, but I think Dewey would have avoided the question in the first place, because the theory in question is beyond the scope of what we can test in experience.