“The great field for new discoveries,” said a scientific friend to me the other day, “is always the Unclassified Residuum.” Round about the accredited and orderly facts of every science there ever floats a sort of dust-cloud of exceptional observations, of occurrences minute and irregular, and seldom met with, which it always proves less easy to attend to than to ignore. The ideal of every science is that of a closed and completed system of truth. The charm of most sciences (...) to their more passive disciples consists in their appearing, in fact, to wear just this ideal form. Each one of our various ologies seems to offer a definite head of classification for every possible phenomenon of the sort which it professes to cover; and, so far from free is most men’s fancy, that when a consistent and organized scheme of this sort has once been comprehended and assimilated, a different scheme is unimaginable. No alternative, whether to whole or parts, can any longer be conceived as possible. Phenomena unclassifiable within the system are therefore paradoxical absurdities, and must be held untrue. When, moreover, as so often happens, the reports of them are vague and indirect, when they come as mere marvels and oddities rather than as things of serious moment, one neglects or denies them with the best of scientific consciences. Only the born geniuses let themselves be worried and fascinated by these outstanding exceptions, and get no peace till they are brought within the fold. Your Galileos, Galvanis, Fresnels, Purkinjes, and Darwins are always getting confounded and troubled by insignificant things. Anyone will renovate his science who will steadily look after the irregular phenomena. And when the science is renewed, its new formulas often have more of the voice of the exceptions in them than of what were supposed to be the rules. (shrink)

This essay argues that William James's mature philosophical view is most adequately represented by the integrated, radically empiricist, pluralistically panpsychist position indicated in his last major completed work, A Pluralistic Universe . Arguing that the many facets of James's worldview are systematically interrelated, and considering the historical development of James's metaphysical views in the last two decades of his life, this thesis provides a fresh appreciation of the contours and depth of James's thought, as well as a deeper understanding of (...) the centrality of his understanding of religion to his comprehensive philosophical project. ;Chapter 2 is a systematic interpretation of James's radical empiricism, based on the 1904-5 articles known to contemporary readers as Essays in Radical Empiricism . The analysis divides James's view into seven theses, explicating each while exploring their interrelations. Chapter 3 considers the early historical development of James's radical empiricism. Linking radical empiricism philosophically to James's dissatisfactions with his psychological work in the 1890s, this chapter demonstrates that James engaged the central tenets of radical empiricism by 1895, eight years earlier than has been generally recognized. Chapter 3 also shows the dependence of James's "field theory" on his formally monistic radical empiricism. Chapter 4 is a philosophical interpretation of Varieties of Religious Experience which seeks to reconstruct the "philosophy adequate to normal religious needs" that James promised in his plan for these lectures. Offering a fresh look at this well-known text, the chapter demonstrates close connections between the analysis of Varieties and the central ideas of radical empiricism. Chapter 5 returns to systematic issues, providing an in-depth reading of A Pluralistic Universe that attends to crucial refinements James makes to radical empiricism, most notably his endorsement of "pluralistic panpsychism." This refinement is seen both to solve the critical philosophical problem of the compounding of consciousness that James recognized in radical empiricism, and to make philosophically comprehensible the piecemeal supernaturalism of Varieties. The outcome is a more philosophically detailed understanding of James's integrated worldview, and a deeper appreciation of the close relation between religion and philosophy in James's thought. (shrink)

The ArgumentPsychology has been frequently subjected to the criticism that it is an unreflexive science — that it fails to acknowledge the reflexive properties of human action which influence psychologists themselves as well as their subjects. However, even avowedly unreflexive actions may involve reflexivity, and in this paper I suggest that the practices of psychology include reflexive ones. Psychology has an established tradition of silence about the self-awareness and sell-consciousness of its actors, whether those actors are experimenters, theorists, or participants (...) (subjects) in research, yet this silence has been established and maintained through sophisticated exercises in self-regard — through sustained reflexive work. Historical analysis reveals some of the ways in which psychologists recognized and then neglected, covered over, or denied reflexivity. Study of those instances where psychologists have engaged in self-conscious reflection or have attended to the sell-consciousness of research subjects indicates both the dangers of reflexivity to governing investigative practices and the resilience which psychology has built against reflexive work. Canonized procedures for scientific work reproduce selves of experimenters and subjects alike, selves who acknowledge only part of their reflexive engagements. Historians of psychology have a special opportunity (and obligation) to explore the reflexive dynamics of investigative practices, and, hence, to theorize aboutscientists, along with their actions and interactions, just as we theorize about science, its products, and its evolution. (shrink)

This dissertation examines the relationship between William James' philosophy and several late-nineteenth-century sciences, including psychology, physiology, biology, the new "scientific aesthetics," and "psychical research." Focusing on James's pragmatism, it provides a contextual history of the formation of concepts central to James's epistemology, including his conceptions of truth, evidence, objectivity, and temperament. My analysis reveals that James built into those conceptions not only specific scientific notions, but also the moral and political values that he believed must underlie a "genuine" scientific approach (...) to knowledge. By examining the multiple ways in which James drew from turn-of-the-century science in construing his pragmatist epistemology, I show that James's philosophical work was part of a broader program which sought to retain a link between philosophy and the increasingly separate and professionalized sciences. In particular, I argue that James's position at the boundaries between philosophy and psychology was instrumental in determining the set of concerns on which he focused, and profoundly shaped the course of his philosophical work. (shrink)

"Cotkin provides a gracefully written and consistently intelligent defense of James and pragmatism that deserves a wide audience among intellectual historians and their students."--Robert C. Bannister, American Historical Review.