Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice.

Charles Sanders Peirce (and his pragmatic maxim) deserves most of the credit for pragmatism, along with later twentieth century contributors William James, John Dewey and George Santayana.

Pragmatism enjoyed renewed attention after W. V. O. Quine and Wilfrid Sellars used a revised pragmatism to criticize logical positivism in the 1960s. Another brand of pragmatism, known sometimes as neopragmatism, gained influence through Richard Rorty, the most influential of the late 20th-century pragmatists. Contemporary pragmatism may be broadly divided into a strict analytic tradition and "neo-classical" pragmatism (such as Susan Haack) that adheres to the work of Peirce, James, and Dewey. The word pragmatism derives from Greek πρᾶγμα (pragma), "deed, act", which comes from πράσσω (prassō), "to pass over, to practise, to achieve".

Noun

pragmatism (uncountable)

1. The pursuit of practicality over aesthetic qualities; a concentration on facts rather than emotions or ideals.
2. (politics) The theory that political problems should be met with practical solutions rather than ideological ones.
3. (philosophy) The idea that beliefs are identified with the actions of a believer, and the truth of beliefs with success of those actions in securing a believer's goals; the doctrine that ideas must be looked at in terms of their practical effects and consequences.
   • 1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Folio Society 2008, p. 378:

     Our conception of these practical consequences is for us the whole of our conception of the object [...] This is the principle of Peirce, the principle of pragmatism.

• idealism

wikipedia:Pragmatism.

• "Nature to be commanded must be obeyed" Francis Bacon
  • Source
  • Also sometimes written as "Reality to be conquered must be obeyed".
• If the mountain won't come to Muhammad, Muhammad will go to the mountain.
• "Good Poets Borrow. Great Poets Steal"
  • Source
  • This statement has been applied to other fields of creative activity, including wikipedia:Philosophy and wikipedia:Software development.
  • Corollaries:
    • "Good programmers write. Great Reuse"
    • Source
• "The gods help them that help themselves" Aesop
  • from "Hercules and the Wagoner"
• "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
  • George Bernard Shaw
• "In Rome, act like a Roman".
  • Common proverb.