The Metaphysical Club
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Metaphysical Club was a philosophical club that Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., psychologist William James, and polymath Charles Sanders Peirce formed in January of 1872 in Cambridge, Massachusetts and dissolved in December of 1872. Upon Peirce's arrival at Johns Hopkins University in 1879, he founded a new Metaphysical Club there. Despite the name, these academic philosophical discussion groups pursued critical thinking of a pragmatist and positivist nature. [1]
[edit] Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club
The Metaphysical Club is a 2001 Pulitzer-Prize-winning book by Louis Menand about Holmes, James, and Peirce. While it ventures into many different directions, covering topics in American history, notable pioneers of American higher education and philosophy, it mainly concerns the erosion of metaphysics and its eventual replacement by pragmatism as a dominant force in shaping American philosophy and its conception of ideas. The title of the book stems from the club formed by Holmes, James and Peirce. It was founded and dissolved in 1872, and has no direct connection with the New Thought movement.
[edit] References
- ^ Menand, Louis. The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (2001), New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, ISBN 0-374-19963-9 (hardcover), ISBN 0-374-52849-7 (paperback) p. 226, 274.
