William James – 1842-1910

A pioneering Harvard psychologist, James emerged as the nation’s leading philosopher when he published in 1907 Pragmatism: A New Name for Old Ways of Thinking, which proposed that the meaning as well as the truth of any idea is a function of its practical outcome. Pragmatism was born of an American culture of action and enterprise and, in turn, exerted a major intellectual influence on subsequent American thought and ethics.