They [Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey] all believed that ideas are not "out there" waiting to be discovered, but are tools--like forks and knives and microchips--that people devise to cope with the world in which they find themselves...[the ideas'] survival depends not on their immutability but on their adaptability.

    by Menand, Louis     in (2001), The Metaphysical Club, p. xi-xii