William James summary

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William James, (born Jan. 11, 1842, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Aug. 26, 1910, Chocorua, N.H.), U.S. philosopher and psychologist. Son of the philosophical writer Henry James (1811–82) and brother of the novelist Henry James, he studied medicine at Harvard, where he taught from 1872. His first major work, The Principles of Psychology (1890), treated thinking and knowledge as instruments in the struggle to live. His most famous work is The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). In Pragmatism (1907), he generalized the theories of Charles Sanders Peirce to assert that the meaning of any idea must be analyzed in terms of the succession of experiential consequences to which it leads and that truth and error depend solely on these consequences (see pragmatism). He applied this doctrine to the analysis of change and chance, freedom, variety, pluralism, and novelty. His pragmatism was also the basis for his polemic against monism, the idealistic doctrine of internal relations, and all views that presented reality as a static whole. He was also a leader of the psychological movement known as functionalism.

Henry James Summary

Henry James was an American novelist and, as a naturalized English citizen from 1915, a great figure in the transatlantic culture. His fundamental theme was the innocence and exuberance of the New World in clash with the corruption and wisdom of the Old, as illustrated in such works as Daisy Miller

pragmatism Summary

Pragmatism, school of philosophy, dominant in the United States in the first quarter of the 20th century, based on the principle that the usefulness, workability, and practicality of ideas, policies, and proposals are the criteria of their merit. It stresses the priority of action over doctrine, of

psychology Summary

Psychology, scientific discipline that studies mental states and processes and behaviour in humans and other animals. The discipline of psychology is broadly divisible into two parts: a large profession of practitioners and a smaller but growing science of mind, brain, and social behaviour. The two

philosophy of religion Summary

Philosophy of religion, discipline concerned with the philosophical appraisal of human religious attitudes and of the real or imaginary objects of those attitudes, God or the gods. The philosophy of religion is an integral part of philosophy as such and embraces central issues regarding the nature