Go back to Digital Texts Pragmatism Pragmatism, method of philosophy in which the truth of a proposition is measured by its correspondence with experimental results and by its practical outcome. Thus pragmatists hold that truth is modified as discoveries are made and that it is relative to time and place and purpose of inquiry. C.S. PEIRCE and William JAMES were the originators of the system, which influenced John Dewey. From the Concise Columbia Encyclopedia. Copyright © 1991 by Columbia University Press.