Charles A. Strong

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For the founder of the Australian Church, see Charles Strong

Charles Augustus Strong (28 November 1862 – 23 January 1940), philosopher and psychologist, was the eldest son of the Rev. Augustus Hopkins Strong. In 1865 the Rev. Strong moved the family to Cleveland, Ohio. Here the Strong family became well-acquainted with the family of John D. Rockefeller.

Strong was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts and received education at the Rochester Theological Seminary, where his father was President. He entered the Phillips Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. Strong was a budding student of Latin and Greek, and he served as editor of the school paper. In July 1881 he made his way to Germany, where he studied at the Gütersloh Gymnasium. He returned to America in 1883 and entered the University of Rochester, where he received an AB in 1884 and an LLD in 1919. Strong had longed to be educated at Harvard, and fulfilled this desire and was graduated in 1885 with a second AB. At Harvard he was strongly influenced by the philosopher and psychologist, William James. He also became friends with George Santayana, and together they founded the Harvard Philosophical Club.

From 1885 to 1886 he returned to the Rochester Theological Seminary, which was still headed by his father. In 1886 Strong headed to Berlin with George Santayana on a James Walker Fellowship from Harvard. Strong had lost faith in religion and turned away from the career in the clergy his father had envisioned for him. In Berlin he studied psychology, philosophy, and physiology with professors Karl Stumpf and Friedreich Paulsen. All was not lost for his father, his other son; John Henry went on to become a prominent clergyman and a professor at the Rochester Theological Seminary. On his return to America he worked part-time as an instructor in philosophy at Cornell University. Strong felt the need to go to Europe again in 1889, but this time he went to Paris and Freiburg as well as Berlin. In the same year he made his journey to Europe, he married Bessie, the daughter of John D. Rockefeller.

In 1890 Strong became a docent at Clark University and in 1892 he was appointed associate professor of psychology at the University of Chicago. Chicago's first psychological laboratories were set up by Strong in 1893. Strong moved on to Columbia University, where he lectured in psychology until 1903. From 1903 to 1910 he was a professor of psychology at Columbia.

In 1903 he authored his first work, Why the Mind Has a Body. After the death of his wife he moved to Fiesole in Italy, where he wrote The Origin of Consciousness (1918), Essays in Critical Realism (1920), The Wisdom of the Beasts (1921), A Theory of Knowledge (1923), Essays on the Natural Origin of the Mind (1930), and A Creed for Sceptics (1936).

Strong died in Villa Le Balze, Fiesole, Italy, his villa was left to Georgetown University by his daughter, Margaret Rockefeller Strong de Larraín, Marquesa de Cuevas (1897–1985). He was a member of the Century Club of New York.