Is It Getting Dewey In Here?

Today is the 160th birthday of John Dewey.  A noted public intellectual, he taught at the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago (two institutions I attended, which is why I'm mentioning them).

A prominent American philosopher of pragmatism, he did important work in the areas of education and psychology.  He also wrote on many other issues in his long life, including art, ethics and metaphysics.

And he looks exactly like you'd expect him to look. Perhaps that's part of his pragmatism.

And yet, I bet today he's best known as the guy who invented the Dewey Decimal System.  Which he did not do.  That was Melvil Dewey, one of the founders of the American Library Association.  He was born December 10, 1851, so you'll have to wait a month and a half to celebrate that.