In the later years of his life, William James turned his primary focus to philosophy. As a young man, he had joined a group called the “Metaphysical Club”. Within this group, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) introduced a perspective he called pragmatism. According to Peirce, scientific ideas and knowledge can never be absolutely certain; instead, they exist along a spectrum of “pragmatic belief,” meaning their value depends on how effectively they function in helping us navigate the world. Members of the Metaphysical Club embraced Darwinian worldview, which emphasized that no adaptation is ever perfect or permanent but always subject to change, evolution, or replacement by something better suited. Peirce extended this evolutionary framework to ideas and knowledge. Just as a biological trait may be useful in one environment but harmful in another so too can ideas rise or fall in value depending on their context and the alternatives competing with them.
This perspective aligned closely with James’s own beliefs following his personal crisis. His choice to believe in free will, for instance, was “true” in a pragmatic sense because it proved useful and effective in his life. He later applied this same standard to psychological theories in The Principles of Psychology, consistently emphasizing their practical value rather than treating them as abstract truths. James was never interested in facts or theories in isolation; instead, he judged them by their usefulness in specific situations. Although he adopted Peirce’s term pragmatism, he broadened its scope to include emotional, ethical, and religious dimensions alongside scientific thought. Peirce, however, disagreed with this expansion and attempted to distinguish his original concept by renaming it “pragmaticism.” This disagreement led one of James’s biographers to remark that “the movement known as pragmatism is largely the result of James’s misunderstanding of Peirce.”
Source: Fancher, R. E., & Rutherford, A. (2017). Pioneers of Psychology: A History (5th ed.). W.W. Norton And Company
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