William James (January 11, 1842, New York - 
August 26, 1910, Chocorua, New Hampshire). William James was born 
in New York, son of Henry James, Sr., an independently wealthy and 
notoriously eccentric Swedenborgian theologian well acquainted with 
the literary and intellectual elites of his day. The intellectual 
brilliance of the James family milieu and the remarkable epistolary 
talents of several of its members have, since the 1930s, made it a 
subject of continuing interest to historians, biographers, and 
critics.

Early years

Like his younger brother, Henry James, widely regarded as one of 
the most important novelists of the nineteenth century, William 
James received a remarkably eclectic trans-Atlantic education, thanks 
to which he was fluent in both German and French. His early artistic 
bent led to an early apprenticeship in the studio of William Morris 
Hunt in Newport, Rhode Island, but yielded in 1861 to scientific 
studies at Harvard University's Lawrence Scientific School.

In his years early adulthood, James suffered from a variety of 
physical and mental difficulties, including problems with his 
eyes, back, stomach, and skin, as well as periods of depression 
in which he was tempted by the thought of suicide. Two younger 
brothers, Garth Wilkinson (Wilky) and Robertson (Bob), fought in 
the Civil War, but the other three siblings (William, Henry, and 
Alice) all suffered from periods of invalidism. James was, however, 
able to join Harvard's Louis Agassiz on a scientific expedition up 
the Amazon River in 1865.

The entire James family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts after 
William James decided to study medicine at Harvard Medical School 
and Massachusetts General Hospital in 1866; he obtained his degree 
in 1869 after several extended interruptions of his studies for 
illness, which led him to live for extended periods in Germany, 
in the search of cure. (It was at this time that he began to publish 
-- at first, reviews in literary periodicals like the North 
American Review.) What he called his "soul-sickness" would only 
be resolved in 1872, after an extended period of philosophical 
searching.

James's time in Germany proved intellectually fertile, for his 
true interests were not in medicine but in philosophy and 
psychology. Later, in 1902 he would write: "I originally studied 
medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into 
psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had 
any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I 
ever heard being the first I ever gave" (Perry, The Thought and 
Character of William James, vol. 1, p. 228).


Professional career

James studied medicine, physiology, and biology, and began to teach 
in those subjects, but was drawn to the scientific study of the 
human mind at a time when psychology was constituting itself as 
a science. James's acquaintance with the work of figures like 
Hermann Helmholtz in Germany and Pierre Janet in France facilitated 
his introduction of courses in scientific psychology at Harvard 
University. He established one of the first -- he believed it to 
be the first -- laboratory of experimental psychology in the 
United States in Boylston Hall in 1875. (On the question of this 
claim to priority, see Gerald E. Myers, William James: His Life 
and Thought [Yale Univ. Press, 1986), p. 486].)

William James taught at Harvard all his life. He was appointed 
instructor in physiology in 1872, instructor in anatomy and 
physiology in 1873, assistant professor of psychology in 1876, 
assistant professor of philosophy in 1881, professor of 
psychology in 1889, professor of philosophy in 1897, and emeritus 
professor of philosophy in 1907.


Writings

William James wrote voluminously throughout his life; a fairly 
complete bibliography of his writings by John McDermott is 47 
pages long (John J. McDermott, The Writings of William James: 
A Comprehensive Edition, rev. ed. [Univ. of Chicago Press, 1977 
ISBN 0226391884], pp. 812-58). (See below for a list of his 
major writings and additional collections)

He first gained widespread recognition with Principles of 
Psychology (1890), which criticized both the English 
associationist school and the Hegelianism of his day as 
competing dogmatisms, of little explanatory value, and which 
sought to re-conceive of the human mind as inherently purposive 
and selective.


Epistemology

James defined truth as that which works in the way of belief. 
"True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters 
as well as directly up to useful sensible termini. They lead to 
consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse" but "all 
true processes must lead to the face of directly verifying 
sensible experiences somewhere," he wrote.

Pragmatism as a view of the meaning of truth is considered 
obsolete in contemporary philosophy, because the predominant 
trend of thinking in the years since James' death (1910) has 
been toward non-epistemic definitions of truth, i.e. definitions 
that don't make truth dependent upon the warrant of a belief.

A contemporary philosopher or logician will often be found 
explaining that the statement "the book is on the table" is 
true if and only if the book is on the table.

Pragmatism remains an important contribution, though, to 
discussions of the theory of knowledge, i.e. the question of 
when we can be said to know.


Philosophy of Religion

James also did important work in his study in the area 
philosophy of religion, providing a wide-ranging account of 
The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) and interpreting 
them according to his pragmatic leanings. Some of the 
important claims he makes in this regard:

    * Religious genius should be the primary topic in the 
    study of religion, rather than religious institutions--
    since institutions are merely the remnant of genius.
    * The intense, even pathological varieties of experience 
    (religious or otherwise) should be sought by 
    psychologists, because they represent the closest thing 
    to a microscope of the mind--that is, they show us in 
    drastically enlarged form the normal processes of things.
    * In order to usefully interpret the realm of common, 
    shared experience and history, we must each make certain 
    "over-beliefs" in things which, while they cannot be 
    proven on the basis of experience, help us to live fuller 
    and better lives.


Theory of Emotion

James is one of the two namesakes of the James-Lange theory of 
emotion, which he formulated independently of Carl Lange in 
the 1880s. The theory holds that emotion is the mind's 
perception of physiological conditions that result from some 
stimulus. In James' oft-cited example; it is not that we see 
a bear, fear it, and run. We see a bear and run, consequently 
we fear the bear. Our mind's perception of the higher adrenaline 
level, heartbeat, etc., is the emotion.

This way of thinking about emotion has great consequences for 
the philosophy of aesthetics. Here is a passage from his great 
work, "Principles of Psychology," that spells out those 
consequences.

"[W]e must immediately insist that aesthetic emotion, pure 
and simple, the pleasure given us by certain lines and masses, 
and combinations of colors and sounds, is an absolutely 
sensational experience, an optical or auricular feeling that 
is primary, and not due to the repercussion backwards of other 
sensations elsewhere consecutively aroused. To this simple 
primary and immediate pleasure in certain pure sensations and 
harmonious combinations of them, there may, it is true, be 
added secondary pleasures; and in the practical enjoyment of 
works of art by the masses of mankind these secondary pleasures 
play a great part. The more classic one's taste is, however, 
the less relatively important are the secondary pleasures felt 
to be, in comparison with those of the primary sensation as it 
comes in. Classicism and romanticism have their battles over 
this point. Complex suggestiveness, the awakening of vistas of 
memory and association, and the stirring of our flesh with 
picturesque mystery and gloom, make a work of art romantic. 
The classic taste brands these effects as coarse and tawdry, 
and prefers the naked beauty of the optical and auditory 
sensations, unadorned with frippery or foliage. To the romantic 
mind, on the contrary, the immediate beauty of these sensations 
seems dry and thin. I am of course not discussing which view is 
right, but only showing that the discrimination between the 
primary feeling of beauty, as a pure incoming sensible quality, 
and the secondary emotions which are grafted thereupon, is one 
that must be made."


Philosophy of History

One of the long-standing schisms in the philosophy of history 
concerns the role of individuals in producing social change.

One faction sees individuals ("heroes" as Thomas Carlyle called 
them) as the motive power of history, and the broader society 
as the page on which they write their acts. The other sees society 
as moving according to holistic principles or laws, and sees 
individuals as its more-or-less willing pawns. In 1880, James 
waded into this controversy with "Great Men and Their Environment," 
an essay published in the Atlantic Monthly. He took Carlyle's side, 
but without Carlyle's one-sided emphasis on the political/military 
sphere, upon heroes as the founders or over-throwers of states and 
empires.

"Rembrandt must teach us to enjoy the struggle of light with 
darkness," James wrote. "Wagner to enjoy peculiar musical effects; 
Dickens gives a twist to our sentimentality, Artemus Ward to our 
humor; Emerson kindles a new moral light within us."


List of major works

    * The Principles of Psychology, 2 vols. (1890)
    * Psychology (Briefer Course) (1892)
    * The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular 
    Philosophy (1897)
    * Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the 
    Doctrine (1897)
    * Talks to Teachers on Psychology: and to Students on 
    Some of Life's Ideals (1899)
    * The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in 
    Human Nature (1902)
    * Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of 
    Thinking (1907)
    * A Pluralistic Universe (1909)
    * The Meaning of Truth: A Sequel to "Pragmatism" 
    (1909)
    * Some Problems of Philosophy (1911)
    * Memories and Studies (1911)
    * Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912)
    * Letters of William James, 2 vols. (1920)
    * Collected Essays and Reviews (1920)
    * Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of 
    William James, 2 vols. (1935) [Contains some 500 letters 
    by William James not to be found in the earlier edition 
    of the Letters of William James]
    * William James on Psychical Research (1960)
    * The Correspondence of William James, 12 vols. (1992-2004)

Collections

    * William James: Writings 1878-1899, Library of America, 
    1212 p., (1992) ISBN 0940450720

Psychology: Briefer Course (rev. and condensed Principles of 
Psychology), The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular 
Philosophy, Talks to Teachers and Students, Essays (nine others)

    * William James: Writings 1902-1910, Library of America, 
    1379 p., (1987) ISBN 0940450380

The Varieties of Religious Experience, Pragmatism, A Pluralistic 
Universe, The Meaning of Truth, Some Problems of Philosophy, 
Essays


Note: In 1975, Harvard University Press began publication of 
a standard edition of The Works of William James.