CONCEPT
Inquiry (Dewey)
Dewey's technical term for the full cycle of intelligent engagement — the controlled transformation of a problematic situation into a settled one through hypothesis, experiment, and reconstruction.
Inquiry, in Dewey's precise usage, is not ordinary thinking but the disciplined process by which the organism resolves genuine doubt. It begins with a felt difficulty — a situation whose existing meanings no longer serve. It proceeds through the formulation of a problem, the generation of hypotheses, the reasoning-through of implications, the testing of hypotheses by action, and the reconstruction of the situation and the inquirer's understanding in light of the result. Each phase is essential. Each takes time. The phases cannot be compressed without altering the character of what is being done. Inquiry is intelligence in its operational form, and the question the AI age forces is whether the conditions of AI-augmented work preserve the phases of inquiry or eliminate them in the name of efficiency.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Dewey laid out the structure of inquiry with the care of an engineer describing load-bearing members. The felt difficulty occasions the whole process; without genuine doubt, nothing motivates thought. The definition of the problem