William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, he is considered to be one of the leading thinkers of the late 19th century, one of the most influential philosophers and is often dubbed the "father of American psychology".
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 trained as a physician and taught anatomy at Harvard, but never practiced medicine. Instead, he pursued his interests in psychology and then philosophy. James wrote widely on many topics, including epistemology, education, metaphysics, psychology, religion, and mysticism. Among his most influential books are The Principles of Psychology, a groundbreaking text in the field of psychology; Essays in Radical Empiricism, an important text in philosophy; and The Varieties of Religious Experience, an investigation of different forms of religious experience, including theories on mind-cure.
Along with Charles Sanders Peirce, James established the philosophical school known as pragmatism, and is also cited as one of the founders of functional psychology. James also developed the philosophical perspective known as radical empiricism. A Review of General Psychology analysis, published in 2002, ranked James as the 14th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century. A survey published in American Psychologist in 1991 ranked James's reputation in second place, after Wilhelm Wundt, who is widely regarded as the founder of experimental psychology. James's work has influenced philosophers and academics such as Hilary Putnam, Richard Rorty, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
William James was born at the Astor House in New York City on January 11, 1842. He was the son of Henry James Sr., an independently wealthy Swedenborgian theologian well-acquainted with the literary and intellectual elites of his day, and Mary Robertson Walsh. He had four siblings: Henry (the novelist), Garth Wilkinson, Robertson, and Alice (diarist).
James received an eclectic and transatlantic education, where he developed fluency in both German and French. The family made two trips to Europe while James was still a child, setting a pattern that resulted in thirteen more European journeys during his life. His education encouraged cosmopolitanism.
Initially, James wished to pursue painting, which led him to pursue an apprenticeship in the studio of William Morris Hunt in Newport, Rhode Island. However, his father urged him to become a physician instead. In response, James said that he wanted to specialize in physiology. However, once he figured this was also not what he wanted to do, he announced he was going to specialize in the nervous system and psychology. In 1861, James then switched to scientific studies at the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard College.
In his early adulthood, James suffered from a variety of physical ailments, including those of the eyes, back, stomach, and skin. He was also tone deaf. His various symptoms were diagnosed at the time as neurasthenia, and included periods of depression during which he contemplated suicide for months on end.
Howard Feinstein, in Becoming William James (1984), wrote that William and his sister Alice had a close relationship that has been argued to consist of eroticism. He wrote her sonnets, declaring love, and made several paintings of her.
James' two younger brothers, Garth Wilkinson (Wilkie) and Robertson (Bob), fought in the American Civil War. James himself was an advocate of peace, suggesting that instead of youth serving in the military, they should serve the public in a term of service "to get the childishness knocked out of them".
In 1864, James took up medical studies at Harvard Medical School. In the spring of 1865, he took a break to join naturalist Louis Agassiz on a scientific expedition up the Amazon River, but aborted his trip after eight months, as he suffered bouts of severe seasickness and mild smallpox. His studies were interrupted once again due to illness in April 1867. Aged 26, James traveled to Germany in search of a cure and remained there until November 1868. His time there proved intellectually fertile, helping him find that his true interests lay not in medicine but in philosophy and psychology. Later, in 1902 he would write: "I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave". During this period, he began to publish; reviews of his works appeared in literary periodicals such as the North American Review. What he called his "soul-sickness" would only be resolved in 1872, after an extended period of philosophical searching. In June 1869, James finally earned his MD degree, but he never practiced medicine.
James interacted with a wide array of writers and scholars throughout his life, including his godfather Ralph Waldo Emerson, his godson William James Sidis, Charles Sanders Peirce, Bertrand Russell, Josiah Royce, Ernst Mach, John Dewey, Macedonio Fernández, Walter Lippmann, Mark Twain, Horatio Alger, G. Stanley Hall, Henri Bergson, Carl Jung, Jane Addams, and Sigmund Freud.
James spent almost all of his academic career at Harvard. He was appointed instructor in Physiology for the spring 1873 term, instructor in Anatomy and Physiology in 1873, Assistant Professor of Psychology in 1876, Assistant Professor of Philosophy in 1881, full professor in 1885, Endowed Chair in Psychology in 1889, Return to Philosophy in 1897, and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy in 1907.
Whilst James had studied medicine, physiology, and biology, and taught in those subjects, he was drawn to the scientific study of the human mind at a time when psychology was constituting itself as a science. He began to introduce courses in scientific psychology at Harvard, informed by the work of figures like Hermann Helmholtz and Pierre Janet. He taught his first experimental psychology course at Harvard in the 1875–1876 academic year.
James was one of the strongest proponents of the school of functionalism in psychology and of pragmatism in philosophy. He was a founder of the American Society for Psychical Research, as well as a champion of alternative approaches to healing.
During his Harvard years, James joined in philosophical discussions and debates with Charles Peirce, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Chauncey Wright that evolved into a lively group informally known as The Metaphysical Club in 1872. Louis Menand (2001) suggested that this Club provided a foundation for American intellectual thought for decades to come.
Among James's students at Harvard University were Boris Sidis, Theodore Roosevelt, George Santayana, W. E. B. Du Bois, G. Stanley Hall, Ralph Barton Perry, Gertrude Stein, Horace Kallen, Morris Raphael Cohen, Walter Lippmann, Alain Locke, C. I. Lewis, and Mary Whiton Calkins. Antiquarian bookseller Gabriel Wells tutored under him at Harvard in the late 1890s. His students enjoyed his brilliance and his manner of teaching was free of personal arrogance. They remembered him for his kindness and humble attitude.
In 1882, James joined the Theosophical Society.
In 1884 and 1885, James became president of the British Society for Psychical Research for which he wrote in Mind and in the Psychological Review.