Christianity proffered a fixed revelation of absolute, unchanging Being and Truth; and the revelation was elaborated into a system of definite rules and ends for the direction of life. Hence “morals” were conceived as a. code of laws, the same everywhere and at all times. The good life was one lived in fixed adherence to fixed principles. In contrast with all such beliefs, the outstanding fact in all branches of natural science is that to exist istobein process, in change. Nevertheless, although the idea of movement and change has made itself at home in the physical sciences, it has had comparatively little influence on the popular mind as the latter looks at religion, morals, economics, and politics. In these fields it is still supposed that our choice is between confusion, anarchy, and something fixed and immutable. It is assumed that Christianity is the final religion; Jesus the complete and unchanging embodiment of the divine and human. It is assumed that our present economic regime, at least in principle, expresses something final, something to endure—with, it is incidentally hoped, some improvements in detail. It is assumed, in spite of evident flux in the actual situation, that the institutions of marriage and family that developed in medieval Europe are the last and unchanging word.
—john dewey, Living Philosophies (1931), pp. 25-26.
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