Endosmosis was borrowed from biology to describe group interaction

Evidence

79 Endosmosis was another Deweyan term that Ambedkar deployed and developed. It is derived from a biological term which means the passage of a fluid through a permeable membrane from a region of lower to a region of higher concentration. Mukherjee points out that the term was used originally by the French philosopher Henri Louis Bergson (1859–1941) and, after him, by American philosopher and psychologist William James (1842–1910), who was, like Dewey, a leading exponent of pragmatism, “to describe the interaction of the mind with nature”. Dewey appropriated it as a descriptor for interaction between social groups. In Ambedkar and Dewey’s work the term came to be a metaphor of the fluidity of communications between social groups, in which, according to Mukherjee (2009, 352), they managed to reconcile the two extremes and give a sense of being both separate and connected. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1102

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the technical meaning and provenance of Ambedkar’s term “endosmosis” as a metaphor for social group communication.
• XREF: Connects to pragmatist philosophy generally — Dewey, James, and Bergson all used this biological metaphor.