The working hypothesis of this essay is: If we upgraded pragmatism from the old, classic version to the newer version, public administration would work better.I very much appreciated Patricia M. Shields's wonderful article on "The Community of Inquiry" in the November 2003 edition of Administration & Society. She draws scholarly attention to the pragmatic frame of reference and thereby contributes mightily to public administration theory and epistemology. But I wish she would take a closer look at the work of Richard Rorty (1999). Rorty, a great admirer of John Dewey, is the leading pragmatist today and America's most famous living philosopher. His work is amazingly accessible given its level of sophistication.

Early epistemology assumed that the observer (a) was independent of and distinct from the object being observed and (b) could validate objective reality in a language system called the laws of science. The authors offer something different. In arguing that knowledge is responsive to the culture in which it is embedded, they take a perspectival approach, gathering localized intentionality, context, social practices, and linguistic meaning (called ground) into the project of inquiry (called figure). Knowledge building, in other words, depends on the background and interests of the epistemic community that is generating knowledge.

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The Administration & Society article titled "The Community of Inquiry" (Shields, 2003) recalled for me an article I wrote with the late Charles Fox titled "The Epistemic Community" (Miller & Fox, 2001), also published in Administration & Society. However, there was a different feel between these two articles, despite their similar titles and some similar problems in their arguments. My critique of Shields's (2003) article was an attempt to put my finger on the similarities and differences (Miller, 2004b). Judging from the reception that my criticism received (Evans, 2005;Hickman, 2004;Shields, 2004; Snider, in press;Stolcis, 2004;Webb, 2004), I must have put my finger on some kind of hot button. DOGMATISMDisagreements on questions of pragmatic philosophy should be expected. 1 In my view, pragmatism does not regard itself as a finished pronouncement but as an open, ongoing conversation. Hence, my critics have caused me to wonder about the assuredness with which some selfdescribed pragmatists are able to portray others as wrong. Shields (2004) proclaims that "Rorty and Miller got it wrong, because they misinterpreted Dewey" (p. 352). Webb ( 2004) ascribes unworthy motives to Richard Rorty in asserting that his neopragmatism "is most accurately described as an artful and selective misreading" of Dewey (p. 484). Webb adds that postmodernists are akin to "semiliterate evangelists" in the way they reference Kuhn (p. 482). Then, further expanding the scope of gratuitous abrasion, he writes that "there is no indication that Miller has direct knowledge of classical pragmatism" (Webb, 2004, p. 480). For his 360

This article investigates the discipline of public administration as it is manifested in symposium articles published during the period 1985–99. What was the field trying to accomplish? The method of investigation is narrative analysis. Using specific discourse markers (method, substantive contents, and authorial intentions), the authors found a wide variety of purposes and projects in the symposia investigated. The condition of public administration, they conclude, is distinguished by a radical pluralism—a striking absence of any singular conception of public administration scholarship.