Pragmatism's Evolution

Organism and Environment in American Philosophy

Inbunden, Engelska, 2020

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In Pragmatism’s Evolution, Trevor Pearce demonstrates that the philosophical tradition of pragmatism owes an enormous debt to specific biological debates in the late 1800s, especially those concerning the role of the environment in development and evolution. Many are familiar with John Dewey’s 1909 assertion that evolutionary ideas overturned two thousand years of philosophy—but what exactly happened in the fifty years prior to Dewey’s claim? What form did evolutionary ideas take? When and how were they received by American philosophers?Although the various thinkers associated with pragmatism—from Charles Sanders Peirce to Jane Addams and beyond—were towering figures in American intellectual life, few realize the full extent of their engagement with the life sciences. In his analysis, Pearce focuses on a series of debates in biology from 1860 to 1910—from the instincts of honeybees to the inheritance of acquired characteristics—in which the pragmatists were active participants. If we want to understand the pragmatists and their influence, Pearce argues, we need to understand the relationship between pragmatism and biology.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2020-11-23
Mått152 x 229 x 25 mm
Vikt626 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor384
FörlagThe University of Chicago Press
ISBN9780226719887

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Filosofi inom Filosofi och religion

Trevor Pearce is associate professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is the coeditor of Entangled Life: Organism and Environment in the Biological and Social Sciences and a contributor to The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Ethics and The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead. His articles have been published in HOPOS, the Journal of the History of Ideas, the Journal of the History of Philosophy, and many other publications.

List of Tables and FiguresAbbreviations of Manuscript SourcesAbbreviations of Scholarly EditionsNote to the ReaderIntroductionChapter 1: The Metaphysical Club and the Origin of SpeciesChapter 2: Products of the Environment: Spencer’s Challenge Spencerian EvolutionSpencerian PsychologySpencerian SociologyChapter 3: Evolution at School: Educating a New Generation Evolution in CollegeEvolution in Graduate SchoolTeaching EvolutionChapter 4: “Hegelianism Needs to Be Darwinized”: Evolution and Idealism Hegel and EvolutionThe Organism-Environment DialecticEvolutionary StrivingsChapter 5: Weismannism Comes to America: The Factors of Evolution The Reception of WeismannPeirce and Neo-LamarckismDewey and the Spencer-Weismann DebateChapter 6: Pragmatist Ethics: Evolution, Experiment, and Social Progress Fieldwork in EthicsOrganism and Environment in Social ReformSocial Science and Social EvolutionEugenics and CivilizationChapter 7: Pragmatist Logic: Evolution, Experiment, and Inquiry The “Natural History” ApproachEvolutionary ExperimentalismConclusionAcknowledgmentsIndex

“Offers a detailed study of what exactly that connection looked like, adding both breadth and depth through an impressive collection of sources . . . . Pragmatism’s Evolution is about the role of evolution, as a theory, in American pragmatism, as well as the early evolution of pragmatism itself. Although Pearce’s intellectual historical analysis is intentionally held apart from social, cultural, or political considerations, it raises important questions for future projects that might draw on these connections.”