William James delivered his now-notorious essay on "The Will to Believe" first as a guest lecturer, a guest of the combined "Philosophical Clubs" of Yale and Brown University in 1896.
That's important to remember because it gives one a sense of who is the "we" is when James talks about what "we" believe. Ivy League students almost all (possibly all) white men from well-off families.
I will contend in what follows that there was an esoteric message in this essay, a message that was likely very clear to many if not most of those in the hall, but the salience of which faded with the passage of time. The pertinence of a key contemporary reference came to seem quaint. So the esoteric meaning has become utterly inaccessible until recovered by -- well, by me. Just now.
In the passage below, James is making the point that we take a wide range of our beliefs on authority - we believe a lot on no evidence or personal consideration of our own. That's the surface level point. The esoterica of it we will discover by-and-by.
James tells the assembled young men:
"Here in this room, we all of us believe in molecules and the conservation of energy, in democracy and necessary progress, in Protestant Christianity and the duty of fighting for 'the doctrine of the immortal Monroe,' all for no reasons worthy of the name."
Wow. He really turns up the temperature on the frog in the pot there! Let's take these items that everybody in that room supposedly believed one by one.
What 'We' Believe
The first example of what "we" believe is the simplest. We believe in molecules. A Berkeleyan would be a skeptic about molecules since in the days before the electron microscope 'we' couldn't see them. But ... otherwise? It might have seemed odd to this audience even to speak of "belief' in connection with molecules. I suspect James deliberately refrained from saying "atoms," here, since atoms have carried philosophical weight since Democritus's day. But "molecules"? What is there even to argue about?
So let's pass on. "Conservation of energy"? This is a reference to the principle that energy can change form but is neither created nor destroyed.A little trickier than "molecules", though only a little. Helmholtz famously expounded this as a principle in 1847. It was quite widely accepted by the late 1890s. By coincidence, around the time James gave this lecture two French scientists, Marie and Pierre Curie, began a series of experiments on radium that would throw the law -- in the sense in which Helmholtz meant it and James referenced it -- into some doubt. Energy seems to be created from within chunks of radium somehow. But it would have been an unusual Brown or Yale undergrad indeed who would have known anything about such work so early on. James himself likely had no idea who the Curies were in 1896.
What he did know was that the law of conservation of energy was well established among physicists, yet that it was a concept or a generalization, not part of the furniture of the world, so it suggests speculation in a way the word 'molecules' does not.
Then we come to the next phrase, "democracy and necessary progress" and we scratch our heads. Where is this headed? The word "democracy" had a variety of different and contentious meanings, then as now. The phrase "necessary progress" may be meant to suggest "inevitable progress," that is, an optimistic view of the human condition as moving upward toward something Utopian. But "necessary" carries another possible meaning -- we can't stay still, so progress is necessary in order to avoid regress. Which of these is what we "all of us" believe?
Then "Protestant Christianity". Really? James himself was raised by a Swedenborgian mystic, his native idea of religion frankly had but little connection to what "Protestant Christianity" historically means. Further, Brown and Yale surely had their share of "free thinkers" in the Philosophical Clubs of the late 1890s, the era of such renowned atheists as Charles Bradlaugh and Robert Ingersoll, (indeed, the rest of the lecture shows that WJ is very aware of this), and likely that room had as well a sprinkling of Catholics. So what does it mean to say that "we all of us believe" in Protestant Christianity"? Surely by this point James expects some of his listeners to be wondering if the lecturer is in the wrong room!
This progression within the above italicized sentence from least to most controversial postulate, from "molecules" through Protestant Christianity, culminates with the duty of fighting for the doctrine of the immortal Monroe. One is reminded of Hearst's campaign at this time for war with Spain over Cuba. In this context I don't think it is too fanciful to suggest, and even to hope, that the placement of this phrase (and the use of scare quotes) may have been a plea to the young men in front of him to resist, and not so easily to allow themselves to be taken in and sent to die for the 'doctrine of the immortal Monroe' after all.
It is right after this reference to the Monroe Doctrine that we're told we have "no reasons worthy of the name" for believing in any of it, just authority.
Was it all a plea for the will to believe in the possibility of anti-colonialism and peace?
Just a thought.
Christopher,
ReplyDeleteAs you write, James tell us that we have "no reasons worthy of the name" for believing any of it, just authority. But authority is a good reason for believing scientific propositions, provided that we are correct in identifying someone as an authority. Not being a scientist, or even reading much about science, I do not have reason to believe that molecules or the conservation of energy exist, other than authority, in the form of all reputable scientists, who themselves believe it based on observation. (I do not, by the way, see molecules as any less tricky than conservation of energy.)
As for democracy, we all know from observation that it exists, although, usually, to say that one believes in democracy is to say not that one believes it to exist, but that one believes it to be a good thing. So James is unclear here; if he means that we believe democracy to be a good thing, then he is using "believe" in a different sense from the way he used it with reference to molecules and the conservation of energy, and he is mixing apples and oranges.
As for "necessary progress," I think that he means "inevitable progress," not that progress is necessary to avoid regress. This is because one might well pair "inevitable progress" with democracy, and because to say that progress is necessary to avoid regress is tautological (if one ignores the possibility of the status quo continuing indefinitely).
As for Protestant Christianity, or any religion that includes a supernatural being or realm, there is no basis for belief in evidence or in authority. Finally, as for fighting for the doctrine of the immortal Monroe, that, like belief that democracy is good, is a matter of opinion. One can argue for it based on evidence, but, ultimately, belief in either depends upon one's moral values.
Thus, James' list of things we believe is a mishmash of incomparable items.
Perhaps James intended his list to be a mishmash of incomparable items, but, from his point of view, they are not incomparable. In the paragraph after the one from which you quote, he writes, "As a rule we disbelieve all facts and theories for which we have no use." If belief is based on usefulness, then the distinctions that I drew between the items on the list are immaterial. James would just ask of each whether it was useful to believe it.
DeleteHenry,
ReplyDeleteI disagree with so much of what you just said I'll have to be selective in this response. But, thanks for making these points. If I ever write something for publication on this passage I will want to take it all to heart. think there is a difference between believing in molecules and believing in the conservation of energy. Let's understand the latter to mean "conservation of mass/energy" so we needn't worry about the Curies. Still ... there is a natural tendency to divide the world in the way one divides sentences, into the subjects and predicates. Molecules are the base subjects of the world, from a chemical point of view. Combining and separating, absorbing or releasing heat -- that is stuff that molecule/subjects do.
I would contend that James found the predicates more philosophically interesting than the subjects, so he likely thought of the transition from believing in molecules to believing in the conservation of energy, the transition from furniture to the subject of how furniture breaks, as an important one, and a natural start for the progression.
As to "necessary progress," I suspect -- judging from some of his writings about Herbert Spencer -- that James probably had a notion of inevitable progress in mind, but he may also have intended to suggest a critique. Progress is not inevitable it is only necessary, and we should be careful which of these we believe in, precisely because the indefinite continuation of the status quo is unlikely.
As for the Monroe Doctrine. What was the pragmatic consequence of it for a young man of college age -- i.e. James audience -- in the 1890s? Belief in it might inspire a trip to the recruitment center, and our believer might get himself sent off to Cuba, in which case the "use" of this idea would prove to be a quite negative one. Another famous James essay, the "Moral Equivalent of War" suggested that the energies of young men ought to be given more constructive outlets than that.
He was already making that suggestion here IMHO.
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