William James

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William James (January 11, 1842 – August 27, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist and the first educator to teach a psychology course in the United States.

James is regarded as one of the twentieth century's most influential thinkers, as well as the "Father of American psychology" and is also cited as one of the early modern psychology's key thinkers.

A Review of General Psychology, which was published in 2002, ranked James as the 14th most influential psychologist of the twentieth century.

According to a report published in American Psychologist in 1991, James' name came in second place, after Wilhelm Wundt, who is widely recognized as the originator of experimental psychology.

James also developed a critical empiricism.

Edward James' work has inspired scholars and researchers such as Émile Durkheim, W.E.B.Du Bois, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty. James was the son of Swedish scholar Henry James Sr. and the nephew of both the influential novelist Henry James Sr. and the niece of diarist Alice James.

At Harvard, James qualified as a physician and taught anatomy, but never practiced medicine.

Rather, he pursued his interests in psychology and then philosophy.

James wrote extensively on various topics, including epistemology, education, metaphysics, psychology, religion, and misticism.

The Principles of Psychology, a groundbreaking text in psychology; Essays in Radical Empiricism, an important text in philosophy; and The Varieties of Religious Experience, an examination of various aspects of religious experience, including theories on mind-cure.

Early life

William James was born in New York City on January 11, 1842. He was the son of Henry James Sr., a prominent and wealthy Swedish scholar who was well-acquainted with the literary and intellectual elites of his day. The James family's intellectual bribe and the remarkable epistolary skills of several of their members have made them a point of continuing curiosity for historians, biographers, and commentators.

William James was born in an eclectic trans-Atlantic environment, with fluency in both German and French. Cosmopolitanism was engendered by education in the James household. When William James was still a boy, the family took two trips to Europe, setting a pattern that culminated in thirteen more European journeys over his lifetime. James wanted to pursue painting but his early artistic interests led to an apprenticeship in William Morris Hunt's studio in Newport, Rhode Island, but his father encouraged him to become a doctor instead. Since this did not align with James's aspirations, he said he wanted to specialize in physiology. Once he knew it wasn't what he wanted to do, he revealed that he'd be specialized in nervous system and psychology. In 1861, James switched to scientific studies at Harvard University's Lawrence Scientific School.

James suffered with a variety of health problems in his early adulthood, including those of the eyes, back, stomach, and skin. He was also tone deaf. He was suffering from a variety of mental disorders that were diagnosed as neurasthenia at the time, and whose course included bouts of anxiety during which he contemplated suicide for months on end. Garth Wilkinson (Wilky) and Robertson (Bob) were two younger brothers who served in the Civil War. James himself was a supporter of peace. Instead of serving in the military, he said, "to get the childishness knocked out of them." William, Henry, and Alice James, three other three siblings, all suffered from periods of infirmity.

In 1864, he began medical studies at Harvard Medical School (according to his brother Henry James, the author). He took a break in 1865 to join naturalist Louis Agassiz on a scientific expedition up the Amazon River, but the expedition was postponed after eight months due to severe seasickness and mild smallpox. In April 1867, his studies were interrupted once more due to sickness. He came to Germany in search of a cure and remained there until November 1868, when he was 26 years old. He began to publish during this period; reviews of his books appeared in literary journals, such as the North American Review.

James obtained his MD degree in June 1869, but he had never studied medicine before. After an extended period of philosophical inquiry, what he called his "soul-sickness" would only be answered in 1872. In 1878, he married Alice Gibbens. He joined the Theosophical Society in 1882.

James' stay in Germany was extremely enriching, revealing that his true passions lay not in medicine but in philosophy and psychology. "I started studying medicine in order to be a physiologist," he later wrote, "I later drifted into psychology and philosophy from a place of tragicity." I never received any philosophic education, although the first one I ever heard being the first I ever gave.

James Pickering Bowditch (1840–1911), and James Jackson Putnam (1846–1918), both 1875–1918), founded the Putnam Camp in St. Huberts, Essex County, New York.

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Career

Throughout his life, James spent time with a variety of writers and scholars, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, his godson William Sidis, Josiah Royce, Ernst Mach, John Dewey, Macmoel, Gertio Fernández, Walter Lippmann, G. Stanley Hall, Henri Bergson, Carl Jung, Jane Addams, and Sigmund Freud.

James spent the majority of his academic career at Harvard. He was named professor of physiology for the spring 1873 term, assistant professor of psychology in 1882, endowed chair in philosophy in 1889, and emeritus professor of philosophy in 1907.

James studied medicine, physiology, and biology and began to teach those fields, but he was drawn to the scientific study of the human brain at a time when psychology was still regarded as a science. James' acquaintance with the careers of people like Hermann Helmholtz in Germany and Pierre Janet in France aided in the development of scientific psychology at Harvard University. In the 1875-1876 academic year, he taught his first experimental psychology course at Harvard.

During his Harvard years, James participated in intellectual dialogue and debates with Charles Peirce, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Chauncey Wright, who merged into The Metaphysical Club in 1872. Louis Menand (2001) said that this Club would serve as a foundation for American intellectual thought for decades to come. In 1898, James formed the Anti-Imperialist League, opposing the Philippines' annexation by the US.

Boris Sidis, Theodore Roosevelt, George Santayana, W.E. B. were among James' classmates at Harvard University. Du Bois, G. Stanley Hall, Ralph Barton Perry, Gertrude Stein, Horace Kallen, Morris Raphael Cohen, Walter Lippmann, Alain Locke, C. I. Lewis, and Mary Whiton Calkins. Gabriel Wells, the antiquarian bookseller, studied under him at Harvard in the late 1890s.

His students adored his brilliance, and his teaching style was devoid of personal pride. His children remembrance and humble demeanor. His caring towards them reveals a great deal about his persona.

Following his Harvard graduation in January 1907, James continued to write and lecture, releasing Pragmatism, A Pluralistic Universe, and The Meaning of Truth. During his last years, James was increasingly afflicted with heart disease. It grew in 1909 while he was writing a philosophy text (unfinished but posthumously published as Some Problems in Philosophy). He sailed to Europe in 1910 to receive experimental therapies that were unsuccessful, and then returned home on August 18. On August 26, 1910, he died at his home in Chocorua, New Hampshire. In Cambridge Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts, he was buried in the family's plot.

He was one of the most influential proponents of the philosophy of functionalism and pragmatism in philosophy. He was a founder of the American Society for Psychical Research, as well as a promoter of alternative approaches to healing. He served as president of the British Society for Psychical Research in 1884 and 1885, writing in Mind and in the Psychological Review. He pleaded with his colleagues not to allow a narrow mindset to prevent an honest assessment of those beliefs.

Haggbloom et al.'s empirical investigation showed that they were not alone. James was discovered to be the 14th most influential psychologist of the twentieth century by using six criteria, including citations and recognition.

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