Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking

What is -reality-? How do we test the value of any given philosophical system? Can philosophy be -useful-? Why must we reject the notion that there is one concrete -truth-?
American psychologist and philosopher WILLIAM JAMES (1842-1910), brother of novelist Henry James, was a groundbreaking researcher at Harvard University, author of such works as Principles of Psychology (1890) and The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902), and one of the most influential academics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Here, over a series of eight lectures delivered at the Lowell Institute in Boston in late 1906 and at Columbia University in early 1907, he explores these questions as he discusses:
- -The Present Dilemma in Philosophy-
- -What Pragmatism Means-
- -Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered-
- -The One and the Many-
- -Pragmatism and Common Sense-
- -Pragmatism-s Conception of Truth-
- -Pragmatism and Humanism-
- -Pragmatism and Religion-

William James was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist. He was born on January 11, 1842, and died on August 26, 1910. He was the first teacher in the United States to teach a psychology course. James and Charles Sanders Peirce started the philosophical school called pragmatism, and James is also considered one of the founders of functional psychology. James studied medicine, physiology, and biology, and he started teaching in those fields. However, he was drawn to the scientific study of the human mind at a time when psychology was becoming a science. James's knowledge of the work of people like Hermann Helmholtz in Germany and Pierre Janet in France helped him get scientific psychology classes started at Harvard University. In the 1875-1876 school year, he taught his first experimental psychology class at Harvard.