William James
Author: Unknown
Date: 0100-12-31 18:00:00-06:00

Site Navigation

- Material at this site.

- Essays,
Excerpts, Letters, and Reviews.

- Talks to
Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Life's Ideals.

- The
Principles of Psychology.

- Pragmatism:
A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking.

- The
Meaning of Truth.

- The
Will to Believe.

- Essays in Radical Empiricism.

- On The
Varieties of Religious Experience.

- Other sites on the Internet related to William James.

- Essays about William James.

- Bibliographic
Information.

- Reviews of books about William James.

- Discussion
Groups or Chats about William James.

- Related sites (Dewey, Mead, Peirce).

- Search the
Web for information on William James.

- Translate
Passages or Pages at this Site into one of nine languages.

"It has sometimes crossed my mind that James wanted to be a poet and an artist, and that there lay in him, beneath the ocean of metaphysics, a lost Atlantis of fine arts: and that he really hated philosophy and all its works, and pursued them only as Hercules might spin or as a prince in a fairy tale sorts seeds for an evil dragon, or as anyone might patiently do some careful work for which he had no aptitude."

John J. Chapman, a friend of William
James

Material at this site

- Chronology and photographs of William James.

- Introducing The
Psychologist Malgré Lui, by Morton Hunt.

- First chapter of Linda Simon's Genuine Reality: A
Life of William James.

- Three of his students write their impression of James.

- James defines
Psychology.

- Passages from William James

- on the teaching art,

- on interest,

- on how an individual settles into a new opinion,

- on truth (theory, reality),
- on genius,
- on memory, and,
- of course, on habit.

- A special bit of Jamesian wisdom.

- James, Dewey, beliefs, and knowledge acquisitions - a model.

- A model of truth and pragmatism.

- James on the goal of psychology - a modest little slide show.

- A thought provoking passage on tenderness in education.

- As William James said . . . a few quotable quotes.

- Portion of letter from Carl Jung on meeting James.

- Study questions used at Emory for Chapter 3 of the Jimmy (The Self).

- Some excellent advice for professors and researchers.

- See some of James's sketches.
And some sketches of James.

- And a handwritten letter to
Carl.

Essays, excerpts, letters, and reviews

"Address at the Annual Meeting of the New England Anti-Imperialist League." Boston:
New England Anti-Imperialist League, 1903.

"Are We
Automata?" 1872, Mind, 4, 1-22.

- Response to Huxley's "On the Hypothesis that Animals Are Automata, and Its History", 1874 essay.

"The Chicago
School," 1904, Psychological Bulletin, 1, 1-5. Also here.

"The
Consciousness of Lost Limbs," 1887, Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1, 249-258.

"Does
Consciousness Exist?" 1904, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and
Scientific Methods, 1, 477-491. Mirror.

"The Energies of Men." 1907, Science, N.S. 25 (No. 635), 321-332. [James'
Presidential Address to the American Philosophical Association.] Mirror.

"The Gospel of
Relaxation" - Chapter 1 of Talks to Students on Some of Life's
Ideals.

"Great
Men, Great Thoughts, and the Environment" 1880, Atlantic Monthly,
46(276), 441-459. From Cornell University Library.

- Mirror here. This paper was initially a lecture given before the Harvard
Natural History Society. 1880, October.

- Notes from Prof. J. Wesley Robbins of Indiana U South Bend.

"The
Hidden Self." 1890, Scribner's Magazine, 7(3). From Cornell
University Library.

"Human
Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine." the Ingersall
Lecture, 1897. Click on link at top of page.

"Human
Immortality." Also here.

"The Moral
Equivalent of War." Speech given at Stanford University, 1906. Another copy here.

"On a Certain
Blindness in Human Beings" - Chapter 2 of Talks to Students on Some of
Life's Ideals.

"Oration upon the unveiling of the monument to Robert Gould Shaw", Boston Music
Hall, May 31, 1987.

"The Ph.D.
Octopus," first published in the Harvard Monthly, March 1903 .

"The Philippine
Tangle," Boston Evening Transcript (March 1, 1899).

"Pluralism,
Pragmatism, and Instrumental Truth", 1907, from A Pluralistic
Universe and Pragmatism.

"Remarks at the Peace Banquet," speech given on the closing day of the World Peace
Congress, 7 October 1904. Also here and here.

"Secretary
Taft a Biased Judge," Boston Transcript (May 2, 1904).

"Social
Value of the College-Bred" Adress delivered November, 1907.

Some
Problems in Philosophy, 1911, with review by Doug Renselle.

"The Stream of
Consciousness," 1892, Psychology (chapter XI). Cleveland & New
York, World. Mirror.

"Subjective
Effects of Nitrous Oxide" - essay by James.

"What is an
Emotion?" 1884, Mind, 9, 188-205. Mirror.

"What is an Instinct?" 1887, Scribner's Magazine, 1(3), 355-366. From
Cornell University Library.

"What Makes a Life Significant?" - Chapter 3 of Talks to Students on Some of Life's
Ideals.

"What the Will Effects." 1888, Scribner's Magazine, 3(2), 240-250. From
Cornell University Library.

"A World of
Pure Experience," 1904, Journal of Phil., Psych., and Scientific
Methods, 1, 533-543, 561-570. Mirror.

James's review of "The
Anaesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy," Atlantic
Monthly, November, 1874.

Familiar Letters of William James published by the Atlantic Monthly

- Volume
I - early correspondence.

- Volume
II - written prior to publication of the Principles of
Psychology.

- Volume
III - written during the last ten years of James's life.

From Talks to Teachers

Preface
Chapter
1 - Psychology and the Teaching Art
Chapter 2 - The Stream of
Consciousness
Chapter 3 - The Child as a Behaving
Organism
Chapter 4 - Education and
Behavior
Chapter 5 - The Necessity of
Reactions
Chapter 6 - Native Reactions and
Acquired Reactions
Chapter 7 - What the Native
Reactions Are

Chapter   8 - The Laws of
Habit
Chapter   9 - The Association of
Ideas
Chapter 10 - Interest
Chapter
11 - Attention
Chapter
12 - Memory
Chapter
13 - The
Acquisition of Ideas
Chapter 14 - Apperception
Chapter
15 - The Will

- Excerpts and highlights - chapter by chapter.

- On the role that psychology plays in education.

- "The Gospel of
Relaxation" - Chapter 1 of Talks to Students on Some of Life's
Ideals.

- "On a Certain
Blindness in Human Beings" - Chapter 2 of Talks to Students on Some of
Life's Ideals.

- "What Makes a Life Significant?" - Chapter 3 of Talks to Students on Some of Life's
Ideals.

- Four of the talks were published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1899.
Cornell University provides scans of the original lectures on

- Psychology and the Teaching Art. Vol 83(496), pp. 155-162. February 1899.

- Education and Behavior. Vol 83(497), pp. 320-330. March 1899.

- Interest and Attention. Vol 83(498), pp. 510-518. April 1899.

- The
Will. Vol 83(499), pp. 617-626. May 1899.

- Softcover edition of Talks to
Teachers back in print!!

The Principles of Psychology

Professor Christopher
Green, of York University, has created a Classics in the History of
Psychology internet resource site that includes the full text of The
Principles of Psychology. The Classics Site has a mirror at Arizona State University that also houses The
Principles.

- Introduction to The Principles, by Robert Wozniak. Mirror here.

- Prof. Wozniak's Classics in Psychology:
Historial Essays

- Overview from the
Thoemmes Press.

- Commentary on
The Stream of Consciousness, by Dr. C. George Boeree.

- James defines habit in the Manufacturer and Builder, Vol. 19(5), p. 116,
May 1887.

- William
James's Narrative of Habit, by Renee Tursi

- See the Atlantic Monthly's review of the book, published April 1891,
Vo. 67(402). From Cornell University Library.

VOLUME 1

Chapter 1 - The Scope of Psychology.
Chapter 2 - The
Functions of the Brain.
Chapter 3 - Conditions of Brain Activity.
Chapter 4 - Habit.
Chapter
5 - The
Automaton Theory.
Chapter 6 - The
Mind-Stuff Theory.
Chapter 7 - Methods/Snares of Psychology .
Chapter 8 - Minds to
Other Things.

Chapter 9 - The Stream of Thought.
Chapter 10 - The
Consciousness of Self.
Chapter 11 - Attention.
Chapter
12 - Conception.
Chapter
13 - Discrimination&Comparison.
Chapter
14 - Association.
Chapter
15 - The
Perception of Time.
Chapter 16 - Memory.

VOLUME 2

Chapter 17 - Sensation.
Chapter
18 - Imagination.
Chapter
19 - The
Perception of 'Things.'
Chapter 20 - The
Perception of Space.
Chapter 21 - The
Perception of Reality.
Chapter 22 - Reasoning.

Chapter 23 - The
Production of Movement.
Chapter 24 - Instinct.
Chapter
25 - The emotions.
Chapter 26 - Will.
Chapter
27 - Hypnotism.
Chapter
28 - Necessary
Truths/Experience.

Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking

From the Mead Project at Brock University. Transcribed by Lloyd Gordon Ward and Robert Throop. Table of Contents.

- Author's
Preface.

- Lecture One: The
Present Dilemma in Philosophy.

- Lecture Two: What
Pragmatism Means. Also here.

- Lecture Three: Some
Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered.

- Lecture Four: The
One and the Many.

- Lecture Five: Pragmatism and Common Sense.

- Lecture Six: Pragmatism's
Conception of Truth.

- Lecture Seven: Pragmatism and Humanism.

- Lecture Eight: Pragmatism and Religion.

- First 5 chapters, from Alan Cook.

About Pragmatism

- William
James and Pragmatism, from Purdue University.

- What
Pragmatism Ain't, delightful essay by Philip Nobel. Also here.

- The Pragmatism Cybrary.

- Notes on the lecture and Essays on Pragmatic
Humanism from Prof. J. Wesley Robbins.

- Swedenborgian
Roots of American Pragmatism:The Case of D. T. Suzuki, by Eugene Taylor.

- Early
American Pragmatism, by Prof. Paul Redding, University of Sydney. Includes excellent links.

- What is Pragmatism?, from Tucker's
Consciousness Page.

- Alex Scott on
James's Pragmatism.

- Questions and
Commentary from Prof. William O'Meara of James Madison University.

- You can purchase audiotapes of Prof. James Campbell's William James,
Charles Pierce, and American Pragmatism from Knowledge Products.

The Meaning of Truth

From the Mead Project at Brock University. Transcribed by Lloyd Gordon Ward and Robert Throop. Table of Contents.

Preface
Chapter
1 - The
Function of Cognition
Chapter 2 - The
Tigers of India
Chapter 3 - Humanism and Truth
Chapter 4 - Relation between Knower and Known
Chapter 5 - The
Essence of Humanism
Chapter 6 - A
Word More about Truth
Chapter 7 - Professor
Pratt on Truth

Chapter   8 - Truth and its Misunderstandings
Chapter   9 - The
Meaning of the Word Truth
Chapter 10 - The
Existence of Julius Caesar
Chapter 11 - The
Absolute and the Strenous Life
Chapter 12 - Professor
Hébert on Pragmatism
Chapter 13 - Abstractionism and 'Relativismus'
Chapter 14 - Two
English Critics
Chapter 15 - A
Dialogue

The Will to Believe

- Complete essay from Marc Fonda.

- Complete essay from James Madison University.

- Complete essay from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. [temporarily down]

- The Ethics of
Belief, edited by A. J. Burger (also here), includes

- full text of "The
Will to Believe"

- essay by
William Clifford (also here and here)

- and here are notes on
Clifford and James, and

- commentary by Burger.

- Teaching
James's "The Will to Believe," by Prof. Guy Axtell, University of
Nevada, Reno.

- Notes from Prof. Robbins, Indiana University.

- Notes from Prof. Browning at University of Texas, Austin.

- Notes from Princeton philosophy course.

- "What is This Place?" William
James and Religious Certainty, by Br. Tom.

- William James:
Still Salient After All These Years.

- An outline with commentary provided by Bob Corbett.

Essays in Radical Empiricism

From the Mead Project at Brock University. Transcribed by Lloyd Gordon Ward and Robert Throop. Table of Contents.

Editor's
Preface - Ralph Barton Perry.
Chapter 1 - Does
'Consciousness" Exist?.
Chapter 2 - A
World Of Pure Experience.
Chapter 3 - The
Thing and Its Relations.
Chapter 4 - How
Two Minds Can Know One Thing.
Chapter 5 - Affectional
Facts/Pure Experience.
Chapter 6 - The
Experience of Activity.

Chapter   7 - The
Essence of Humanism.
Chapter   8 - La
Nocion de Conscience (in French).
Chapter
9 - Is
Radical Empiricism Solopsistic.
Chapter 10 - Mr.
Pitkin's Refutation.
Chapter 11 - Humanism and Truth Once More.
Chapter 12 - Absolutism and Empiricism.

- As a complete text file. Also here.

On The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study of Human Nature

- Concordance for the
Varieties.

- Full text from
Psych Web by Prof. Michael Nielsen.

- Hypertext
Version from American Studies at UVA.

- Full text from byGosh.com.

- Full text from Against All Reason.

- Lecture
Summaries, by John Durhan.

- New Age, New Thought [currently down].

- A fine annotated outline by Marc Fonda.

- Notes from Marc Fonda - Part 1 and Part 2.

- Commentary on the Varieties, by Carol Zaleski, Smith College.

- The Science of
Religion, a lecture by Russell McNeil also from Malaspina.

- James's Gifford
Lectures on Natural Religion, delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902, are provided by the Council on Spiritual Practices. As with previous sites, these lectures also comprise the entire text of The Varieties of Religious
Experience, but they are very nicely organized.

- The Council on Spiritual Practices offers The William James Awards,
Funding for Masters' Theses and Doctoral Dissertations on Primary
Religious/Spiritual Experience.

- A brief commentary by Sandra Stahlman.

- Commentary by Craig
Chalquist [temporarily down].

- Introductory lecture to the Varieties by Ian Johnston, Malaspina University.

- You can purchase audiotapes of The Varieties from Knowledge Products.

Other sites on the Net related to William James

William
James entries from xrefer, a superb literary search engine. Numerous links. A Must Visit.
Includes links to the Oxford Companion of English Literature, Bloomsbury Quotations,
Oxford Encyclopedia, and more.

James site from Garth
Kemerling with excellent links.

James page from
Matthew Ou.

Episteme has fine links to philosophy-related sites. Here is the link to James.

Links to
James sites on the Web from the Alliance for
Lifelong Learning.

More links, these from Mythos and Logos. These pages are worth checking in case I miss something.

William
James page from ErraticImpact.com. Check out their Philosophy Research Base.

William James page from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Excellent overview.

European
William James Project, from the Pragmatism Cybrary.

William
James, from Top-Biography.com.

William James: Still
Salient After All These Years.

William James
Writ Large, by Jonathan Schull.

From Britannica.com.
Searching for James on Brittanica on Line requires registration.

Search for William James at FindArticles.com.

And here is the entry on on James from MSN's
Encarta.

The Philosophy of
William James, from The Radical
Academy.

William
James, from Genius in the Family Cameo Biography, PBS.

The Philosophy
Behind Ordinary Consciousness from The Brain Project. Great collection of links on Consciousness
Studies.

The William
James Lecture Series at Harvard Divinity College.

Some quotes by
James. More here.
And some more. Still more.
Even more. A few more.
No end to them.
Ane here is a nice set from the Philosopher's Magazine.

Blurb for Jason Gary Horn's book, Mark Twain and William James.

Biographical sketches

- from The
Value of Knowledge, a nice site.

- from Ron.

William
James Award Competition, from APA Eastern Division.

The William James
Society.

A bit macabre, but here is James's tombstone at the Cambridge Cemetery.

Essays about William James

- Biological
Consciousness and the Experience of the Transcendent: William James and
American Functional Psychology, by Eugene Taylor.

- Professor Taylor's essay in Spanish.

- Foundations:
William James and Functionalism, from Psyche's Child, a wonderful site.

- Mind and Body:
Descartes to William James, by Robert Wozniak of Bryn Mawr.

- "The
Nitrous Oxyde Philosopher" by Dmitri Tymozko. Interesting reading.

- Introduction to The Principles of Psychology, by Robert Wozniak. Mirror here.

- Pure
Experience, the Response to William James: An Introduction, by Eugene
Taylor and Robert Wozniak.

- A
Review of James' Some Problems of Philosophy, by Doug Renselle.

- Sartre and
James on Freedom, by William O'Meara.

- "Speaking Terms": William
James on Intelligence, by Tom Murphy.

- "What is This Place?" William
James and Religious Certainty, by Tom Murphy.

- What
William James Missed: The Religious Insights of Josiah Royce, by Richard
P. Mullin of Wheeling Jesuit University.

- Wilhelm Wundt and
William James, by Dr. C. George Boeree. And see this commentary on The
Stream of Consciousness.

- William
James, an obituary published in the Atlantic Monthly by James
Jackson Putnam, 1910.

- The New
York Times obituary.

- William James and Individual Spirituality - from Susan Landau at Wesleyan.

- William
James and the Tradition of American Public Philosophers, by Cushing
Strout, for the Partisan Review.

- William
James on an Unseen Order, by Wayne Proudfoot, from Harvard Theological
Review. Is the universe moral or unmoral?

- William
James's Narrative of Habit, by Renee Tursi, from findarticles.com.

- William
James's Selective Individualism, by James O. Pawelski, Albright College.

- William
James et la psychologie expérimentale, by Vincent Guillin (in French).

Bibliographic information

- Russell McNeil keeps a superb William James Consolidated
Database at Malaspina University-College, British Columbia. It includes the Library of Congress Catalog and HTML citations, National Library of Canada
Citations, the UK's COPAC citations, and tie-ins to Amazon, Blackwell's, and
AAUP. One-stop bibliographic information. Visit their Great Books site.

- Amazon list of available books about William James.

- Here is my list of books about James (more carefully alphabetized than Amazon's).

- New books about William James

- William James &
Education, Teachers College Press.

- Gerald Myers's William James: His Life and Thought just out, Yale University Press.

- The
Correspondence of William James, Volume 9, from University Press of
Virginia.

- Prof. Phil Oliver has a new book entitled William James's
"Springs of Delight". It may be ordered from Amazon.com or from Barnes and Noble.

- AddAll Book Search and Bublos.com will compare prices of new books. So will DirectTextbook.com.

TITLE

AUTHOR

KEYWORD

ISBN

- AddAll.com will also compare prices of used books. Excellent. Nope, I don't get a commission. Just trying to be helpful.

Author: |
Title: |
Keyword: |

- Book collector or interested in rare books and first editions? Visit the following.

- Advanced Book Exchange Inc.,
(ABE). My favorite.

- Alibris - nice selection of out-of-print books.

- Antiquarian Booksellers Association of
America (ABAA).

- Bibliofind, in conjunction with
Amazon.com.

- Bookfinder.com.

- Scholarly
Books.com.

- UsedBookSearch in the UK.

Some Book Reviews

- Robert Coles, Harvard, on Barzun's A Stroll with William James.

- Eugene Taylor, Harvard, on James's Manuscript
Lectures.

- Macho men - Tom Lutz on Kim Townsend's Manhood at Harvard.

- An
American Constellation - Sergio Perosa on Lewis's The
Jameses.

- Passionate
Tolerance, P. H. Rosenberg on Miller's Democratic Temperament:
The Legacy of William James.

- Timothy Kaufman-Osborn also on Democratic
Temperament, for American Political Science Review.

- The
Belief that Works Best, Phillip Johnson on Paul Croce's Science and Religion in the Era of William James.

- Peter Ochs on Bennett Ramsey's Submitting to Freedom: The Religious Vision of William James.

- Michael Raposa on Richard Gale's The
Divided Self of William James.

- Scott Stossel on Linda
Simon's Genuine Reality for the Boston Phoenix [also here].

- Richard Wakefield on Simon's Genuine
Reality.

- Pat Hoy on The
Manly Ideal, for Harvard Magazine.

Discussion Groups or Chats about William James

- Yahoo
Discussion Group on William James.

- You can subscribe to an e-mail discussion group on William James by sending an email message to LISTSERV@austin.cc.tx.us. In the message, write: SUBSCRIBE WILLIAMJAMES-L [Your-First-Name Last-Name]

- You can also subscribe to an e-mail discussion group on William, Henry,
Alice, and other members of The James Family. To do this, send an e-mail message to: listserv@wvnvm.wvnet.edu. In the message area, write: SUBSCRIBE JAMESF-L [Your-First-Name Last-Name]

- You will receive instructions about accessing the archive and posting your own messages.

- The William
James Lecture Hall is "devoted to all contemplations, musings, and queries concerning William James." It's a discussion group.

- Join the William
James Live Recitation.

Related Links

- The Online Books Page (mirror at
UPenn) offers selections from William and from Henry.

- Be sure to stop by the Center for
Dewey Studies.

- Full text of Dewey's Democracy and Education

- Arisbe, a terrific website devoted to Charles Sanders Peirce. Includes over 30 papers by Peirce.

- Another fine site devoted to Charles S.
Peirce.

- Welcome to George, a site devoted to George Herbert Mead.

- A site devoted to Patrick
Geddes, great social thinker of the late 19th and early 20th century.

- The Philosophy
Pages from Garth Kemerling is as good a site on philosophy as you will find on the Web.

- Philosophy Links, a great site filled with links to philosophy. From The Netherlands no less.

Search the Web, Emory University, York University, Brock University,
PsychWeb

Search
Hints: Use key words, and place quotation marks around terms you do not want separated: "william james" avoids meaningless returns for "william" and for "james." You do not neet to type articles or most prepositions. Simply specify the key terms: "william james" habit. If you want to know when
William James was born: "william james"
born. Google's smart and usually places the most relevant pages up front. Questions work, but only because key words are read by the search engine. Better just to use key terms. If you're looking for passages, enter, within quotation marks, the piece of the passage you think you know. For example, what was it James said about "becoming perfect teachers"? There is no need to use capitals. Searching the various universities will include the full domain, so please be as specific with your search terms as possible.

Search for information on
William James

This site houses Talks to
Teachers and various essays
Search WWW Search this site

York houses The Principles and Classics in the History of Psychology;
Brock houses Pragmatism, Meaning of Truth, and Radical
Empiricism
Search York University Search Brock
University

PsychWeb houses The Varieties of
Religious Experience
Search PsychWeb

Translate Passages or Complete Pages at this Site

Translate pages at this site. Use the excellent AltaVista Translation service to translate any pages found at this site. Simply copy and paste a particular passage or a URL and the passage or page will be translated from English into one of 9 languages. Note that you can translate passages of text (by typing in/copying the passage you want translated) or full pages (by typing in/pasting the complete URL of the page you want translated).
This is still an "inexact"science at this stage, so the translation you receive may be less than a perfectly accurate reflection of the passage or page you submit. On the whole, however, it will serve you relatively well.

Type or
Paste text or Web address (beginning with http://) here:

Translate from:

English to
Spanish

English to French

English to German

English to
Italian

English to Japanese

English to Korean

English to
Portuguese

English to Chinese

Chinese to English

French to
English

French to German

German to English

German to
French

Italian to English

Japanese to English

Korean to
English

Portuguese to English

Russian to English

Spanish to
English

This web site was updated on Friday, August
8, 2003 (all the links worked then). Pages are designed for Internet Explorer
5.5+, for a screen resolution of 1024x768, and for high color. Results may be disappointing with earlier versions/other browsers, at other resolutions, or with 256 colors. Pages at this site look nice if you use
IE 5.5+; they don't always look nice on other browsers. I pay no attention to WC3 guidelines (if your colors look peculiar, it's because I use color names). A note about copyright.

Today is

Home | Albert Bandura | Italo
Calvino | Self-Efficacy | So long

"On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux."