Louis Menard
A sort of charting of the flow of american philosophical though from the end of the civil war up and to the second world war, inspecting numerous characters in history. The 4 principle are Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles Pierce, and John Dewey. The notion of pragmatism, that we assume beliefs for the purpose of dealing with what we perceive as the world, and those beliefs hold according to how well they allow us to cope. The system operates outside of absolutes – we strive to believe in what helps us to deal with the world however we may perceive it.
My thoughts and notes, mostly notes.
The nation blest above all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks. Such nations have no need of wars to save them. William James, 148
[Insert your own quips here, I’ve had it with goddamn politics] But read the speech linked with his name, it really is nice.
Charles Pierce was considered an intellectual elitist:
“Do you follow me?” he is supposed to have asked one of his advanced classes during a lecture. No one did. “I’m not surprised,” he said. “I know of only three persons who could.” 153
All events, even those which, by their insignificance, seem not to follow the great laws of nature, follow them as necessarily as the revolutions of the sun. In our ignorance of the ties that bind these events to the entire system of the universe, we have taken them to depend on final causes or on chance, depending on whether they occur and are repeated with regularity or without apparent order. But these imaginary causes have gradually receded with the widening scope of our knowledge, and they will disappear entirely before a sound philosophy, which sees in them nothing but the expression of our ignorance of the true causes. Pierre-Simon Laplace, 184
Laplace’s Demon:
An intelligence which, for a given instant, could know all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings who compose it, if, moreover, it was sufficiently vast to submit these data to analysis, if it could embrace in the same formula the lightest atom – nothing would be uncertain for it, and the future, like the past, would be present to its eyes. Pierre-Simon Laplace, 196
Determinism, or predestination. You only have to wonder how long it will take for technology to figure out all this elastic metaphysical stuff, cut through all this angsty human deliberation on the world and construct just how things really work. Because we are building some pretty impressive intelligences these days.
He, my brother, and other long-headed youths have combined to form a metaphysical club, where they wrangle grimly and stick to the question. Henry James, 203
I think I have a new motto.
Atheism is speculatively as unfounded as theism, and practically can only spring from bad motives. Chauncey Wright, 212
I think I developed myself into somewhat of a pragmatist early on, I don’t know if it was the influence of anything in particular, but I hold the view that at some point the human mind got too big for its britches, its capacity exceeded what was necessary to find food and procreate. So we took on this whole thinking/reasoning thing, and have vacillated ourselves all over the place ever since. See religion and science over all the years, 100 years don’t go by without nearly every aspect of the world changing (for the better? surely having changed things in such a way, we would have thought so.).
If the foundations of human development are cast as a sort of flopping about, not knowing anything better to do with this new capacity of communication and thought, where does that put us now? (And above anything else, I think at this point in life I’d don the cap of cynicist.)
Belief is only a way to deal with the world. (218) Comes through concretely focusing on John Dewey, having been insinuated by all previous exploration. One of my favorite american figures. The only person within the book I’d really heard of before, I’d studied a bit on his theories of education and really liked them. I’d only heard of him in an educational context, and had no idea he was more than a teacher.
The purpose of all scientific investigation is therefore to push our collective opinions about the world closer and closer to agreement with each other, and thus closer and closer to the limit represented by reality itself. 228
It’s all just a game of influence, whoever can convince everybody of everything wins. The hardest thing about pragmatics to me is that it’s a means justify the ends kind of thing, it removes all final objectives. You don’t have goals, because those goals are actually equivalent to whatever means you use to accomplish those goals, and as a fickle human being you conceive of means and end separately, when really they are all tied up in each other. One of the lines of thought in the book I could only half follow, but it’s fun to think about.
When he was on the Supreme Court, [Oliver Wendell] Holmes used to invite his fellow justices, in conference, to name any legal principle they liked, and he would use it to decide the case under consideration either way. ...When there are no bones, anybody can carve a goose. 340
I love this. Friggin justices, they’re just messing with us.
I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water… The bigger the unit you deal with, the hollower, the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed. So I am against all big organizations as such, national ones first and foremost; against all big successes and big results; and in favor of the eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful way, underdogs always, till history comes, after they’re long dead, and puts them on the top. William James, 372
I haven’t quite digested this quote fully yet, but it struck me. Very 37signals, right under my nose in terms of having minimalist sentiments. Sort of an organic, way to develop, reminding me also of Christopher Alexander’s thinking on architecture (_invisible molecular moral forces_, patterns in a language).
I read this a few months ago and was pretty bowled over, especially by Dewey and Holmes. Am currently reading Bertrand Russell’s sceptical essays, which responds quite nicely to James et al, specifically the argument that belief = truth if it allows us to better cope with the world.
— Tony Jul 24, 04:37 PM #
It’s funny you’d find this and comment on it, your mention of the book is what caused me to grab it from the library in the first place ;) Great thing this internet is!
But thanks for the recommendation, looks like they have it somewhere in the library system around me, and I’ll have to check it out.
(And while I’m at it, holy shit, polar explorers! I watched Will Steger give a talk this spring at my school, Ann Bancroft was the gym teacher at my elementary school (although she was before my time), I read a book on Amundsen at an impressionable age. I’ve had a crush on the whole idea of being out there since forever, which is how I came up with Ben and consequently your blog. Fascinating stuff, can’t wait for october.)
— Kjell Jul 24, 09:01 PM #
Ah synchronicity. Am chuffed that you got the recommendation from me, I like your site (for both its design and content). We’ll have to see if we can get you out on the ice sometime.
— tony Jul 25, 07:41 AM #
Sorry for taking so long in replying, there’s something flawed about conversation through blog comments (and I haven’t habituated myself to fielding them too often).
But thanks, and I probably wouldn’t want to burden you (I’m just some dumb kid), but am honored at the offer even being extended! Awesome, and in the strictest sense of the word, not that of dirtied up 90s slang. Cheers.
— Kjell Jul 28, 08:44 PM #