Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

 The phrase isn't as easy to define as one might have hoped.... There is an intuitive division of types of history in which a lot of us engage without questioning it much.   If you tell me, " I'm writing a political history of the United States in the late 19th century" I expect you are working on Boss Tweed, Grover Cleveland, Ida B. Wells.   "I'm writing a cultural history of the United States in the late 19th century." Ah, then I would love the chance to quiz you about the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Thomas Nast's cartoons and the music of Victor Herbert. I've posted a photo of Victor Herbert here. To get a bit closer to what I want -- suppose you are tell me you are writing a history of economics, as a field of study, in the US during this period . Delightful! Nothing like a good discussion of Henry George, Herbert Spencer, John Bates Clark and Thorstein Veblen. But then we get back to where we began.  What does an economic histor...

Today is my 66th birthday.  I continue to work steadily, receiving no social security money.  (You are welcome, younger taxpaying workers.) I will celebrate by asking myself an arbitrary question.   "Who are the most influential philosophers of the 18th and 19th century?"  And I will answer it with some context-free listing of philosophers, attributing the choice of names to what unnamed authorities "consider" to be the case. Let's go.  On the continent of Europe? Christian Wolff, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche all come to mind. The British isles? George Berkeley, David Hume, Thomas Reid, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, Thomas Carlyle fit the bill. North America? Ah, there’s Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, R.W. Emerson, Margaret Fuller, C.S. Peirce, and William James. Anywhere else? You pays your money and you takes your choice.  Fuller is the only name among those 18 that might seem a non-canonical intrusio...

Did you fill out a bracket this year for the NCAA tournament, dear reader? I did. I'll report the following three points about the experience: I wasn't even close to winning the billion dollars; I didn't try to predict any of the "first round" games; and I've decided that tournament results exhibit a definite pattern, which I have come to think of as "regression to the chalk." The first of those three points needs no particular explanation. As to the first round, I'll offer this. I am still sentimentally attached to the idea of a 64-team field. Nowadays, though, the Powers that Be have mandated that 68 teams be involved. So they have four "first round" games on Tuesday and Wednesday of the first week of the tournament to eliminate four of those 68. By Thursday morning, we're back to a 64 team field, and that is the best time to fill out the form, IMHO. The "second round" is exactly what the first round was in d...