4. History and development of pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that originated in the United States around 1870. The most important pragmatists, known as classical pragmatists, were Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Other important scholars who have contributed and supported pragmatism over the years, known as neopragmatists, include the likes of Richard Rorty, George Herbert Mead, W.V.O Quinine, Cornel West, Richard Bernstein, Wilfrid Sellers, Nelson Goodman, Hilary Putnam, Donald Davidson, and Cherryholmes. It was a reaction against existing and opposed views of reality posed by positivist and interpretivist schools of thinking.
A pragmatic study focuses on an individual decision maker within an actual real-world situation. The process of undertaking a pragmatic study is first to identify a problem and view it within its broadest context. This leads to research inquiry, which seeks to better understand and ultimately solve the problem. A pragmatic piece of research may involve multiple methods, some of which would be familiar to either of the more traditional schools and hence it enabled the combination of such techniques. However, it has to be noted that pragmatists do not have to use multiple methods; rather they use methods or combination of methods pragmatically in order to advances a specific piece of research in the best possible manner.
