“The greatest discovery of my generation is
that human beings, by changing their inner attitudes of their minds, can change
the outer aspects of their lives.” William James 1915
William James (January 11, 1842
– August 26, 1910) was a philosopher and psychologist who was also trained as a
physician. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United
States, James was one of the leading thinkers of the late nineteenth century
and is believed by many to be one of the most influential philosophers the
United States has ever produced, while others have labelled him the
"Father of American psychology".
Along with Charles Sanders Peirce and John
Dewey, he is considered to be one of the major figures associated with the
philosophical school known as pragmatism, and is also cited as one of the
founders of functional psychology. He also developed the philosophical
perspective known as radical empiricism. James' work has influenced
intellectuals such as Émile Durkheim, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edmund Husserl,
Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty.
Born into a wealthy family,
James was the son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James Sr and the
brother of both the prominent novelist Henry James, and the diarist Alice
James. James wrote widely on many topics, including epistemology, education,
metaphysics, psychology, religion, and mysticism. Among his most influential
books are The Principles of Psychology, which was a groundbreaking text in the
field of psychology, Essays in Radical Empiricism, an important text in
philosophy, and The Varieties of Religious Experience, which investigated
different forms of religious experience, which also included the then theories
on Mind cure.
