Young William James Thinking

by Paul J Croce

  religious certainty, in his own time and ever since. Agassiz was a great sci-

  entific investigator and teacher, but he could not abide the Darwinian turn;

  the same was true for most advocates of natu ral theology, who looked to

  science for empirical evidence supporting religious belief. For all their

  differences, the idealistic Agassiz and the followers of natu ral theology

  maintained an earlier type of science with fewer hypotheses, fewer proba-

  bilities, much shorter spans of earth history, and therefore much more cer-

  tainty—in understanding of science and in support of religious belief. While

  many nineteenth- century Evangelical Protestant Christians accommo-

  dated to Darwinism, still more developed increasing antagonism for main-

  First Embrace of Science  35

  stream science and kindred secularities that defied biblical certainties, and

  the most stringent of these believers consolidated into early twentieth-

  century fundamentalism. Despite the irony of their antimodernism emerg-

  ing in modern times, the very extremity of their position has contributed to

  the attention they attract. Current theories of creation science and intelli-

  gent design have drawn upon similar expectations for scientific and empiri-

  cal sanctions for belief to support the case for biblical authority holding the

  line against less deterministic modern scientific theories and methods. Other

  traditional Western religions have perceived less challenge from modern sci-

  ence: Roman Catholicism has for the most part integrated scientific innova-

  tion into its understanding of unfolding revelation comprehended by human

  reason within history, and Judaism has generally embraced theistic evolu-

  tionism, with science as a way to learn about divine creation. 9

  Advocates of scientific certainty, from the scientific naturalists of James’s

  time to current enthusiasts for secular science such as Richard Dawkins, hold

  similarly ardent views about the contrast between science and religion,

  even in their utter disagreement with advocates of religious certainty. Some

  supporters of science, however, have seen no need to leave religion aside, as

  long as the contrasts between science and religion can serve as lessons in

  themselves for keeping their ideas and beliefs strictly separate. In James’s

  circle, Harvard botanist Asa Gray, a committed Presbyterian Christian who

  avidly promoted Darwinism, was part of a sturdy tradition of keeping the

  realms in splendid isolation, for personal belief and social purposes. Reli-

  gious belief would then remain as certain as the individual desired or as the

  church demanded because belief would stay segregated from science, with

  each blessedly untouched by the other. But curiosities would intrude, along

  with practical questions about bound aries in practices, policies, and per-

  sonal orientations. 10

  Since the time of Darwin’s and James’s youth, abundant integrations of

  science and religion have also emerged with a readiness to form compro-

  mises by enlisting meta phorical readings of sacred texts, recognition of

  similarities in methods, hope for lessons to be learned across the bound-

  aries, and other forms of mediation generally based on either adaptation of

  religion to make it relevant to modern knowledge or adoption of scientific

  knowledge for religious visions of the cosmos. Even these compromises, with

  religion bending to science or science to religion, would assume a significant

  gulf between science and religion, while encouraging mediation despite

  those differences. These efforts for renewed harmony of science and religion

  36  Young William James Thinking

  would continue despite their growing separation in practice and the eclipse

  of their intellectual certainties, and despite the accelerating fragmentation

  of specialized knowledge in all fields. The hope for unity of knowledge ran

  deep. Tapping abundant human resources, science and religion since the

  nineteenth century have each thrived, with relations harmonious or in con-

  flict, integrated or separated.11 While young James witnessed these pre-

  dominant forms of interaction between science and religion, and gravitated

  toward forms of integration, he gradually realized that even this position

  assumed their stark contrast. To understand their relations, he probed

  deeper.

  The dynamic bound aries between science and religion have suggested

  large questions about the relation of material and immaterial ingredients of

  life. The most significant claims of religious believers remain generally be-

  yond empirical facts, with abundant references to immaterial realms, in-

  cluding divinity and afterlife beyond this world, grace- filled or idealistic

  expectations, mystical experiences beyond scientific explanation, and nu-

  minous realms at sacred spaces within this world. In addition, as James

  readily noticed in his work and avocational interests, intellectual, ethical,

  artistic, and psychological experiences also seem to operate without explicit

  reference to material parts of life. Nature viewed comprehensively includes

  evidence for both material and immaterial ingredients in apparent interac-

  tion; however, par tic u lar advocates have per sis tently supported the signifi-

  cance of one side or the other and have often used one side to explain the

  other. Spiritual philosophies, as with that of the elder Henry James, reduce

  material to immaterial. By contrast, materialists propose that anything

  claimed to be beyond matter can be explained by its material components;

  mechanistic philosophies extend this impulse in portrayal of the material

  world operating like a machine. These theories assert eliminative authority

  in opposite directions, an eliminative spiritualism and an eliminative mate-

  rialism, respectively. While much commonsense thinking turns to dualism

  with each realm in steady interaction, other dualists claim separation of

  material and immaterial ele ments without interaction. As with science and

  religion, there has been a whole spectrum of views on the relation of mate-

  rial and immaterial parts of the world. Just as James grew impatient with

  the conflict or separation of science and religion, he also rejected the reduction

  of material or immaterial ingredients to each other or their stark separation.

  Starting with the experiences of his youth, he perceived the simultaneous

  coexistence of material and immaterial ingredients, and he identified explic itly

  First Embrace of Science  37

  or tacitly with the integration of philosophy and spirituality within his sci-

  ence: panpsychism, depicting mind within nature; hylozoism, as the belief

  that all worldly things are alive; pantheism, in portrayal of the divine con-

  flated with the world; and its more interactive variation, panentheism, with

  the divine circulating in the world— that is, with immanence, the theologi-

  cal term.12

  James was exposed to this range of perspectives on science and religion

  and related dualisms, and he was particularly concerned with scientific in-

  tellectuals, especially William Clifford, Thomas Huxley, and Herbert Spen-

  cer, who showed limited re spect
for nonmaterial parts of life, using scientific

  theories to comprehend humanity’s intangible experiences by using natural-

  istic explanations. Positivism, with confidence that science would provide

  the only positive knowledge, emerged before its twentieth- century association

  with logical positivism and analytic philosophy. Auguste Comte developed the

  positive philosophy with naturalistic assumptions and very schematic but

  compelling stages of history; especially once pop u lar ized by John Stuart Mill,

  positivism became a general worldview and a cultural reference for science

  claiming intellectual and social authority, in contrast with the less rigorous

  thinking in philosophy or religion, fields relying on immaterial dimensions.

  The philosophy of evolution, or evolutionism, also pop u lar ized in these same

  years after the advent of Darwinism, was associated with Herbert Spencer,

  and with John Fiske within the Metaphysical Club itself; its metaphysical

  naturalism involved the broad application of the biological theory of species

  development to almost every field. Like positivism, the philosophy of evolu-

  tion was based on confidence in science, with nonscientific factors reduced to

  scientific terms. These orientations offered scientific naturalism both for the

  work of science and for a public ethos regarding science as the ultimate

  authority for what could be known about the natu ral world and, through

  technology, what can be done with nature. James took issue with scientific

  naturalism from his first known use of the term positivism in 1868 and in his

  classroom criticisms of philosophies based on evolutionism culminating in

  his 1878 critique “Spencer’s Definition of Mind.” As James started to work in

  science, he was particularly worried that its growing professional expertise

  would make it “quite inaccessible” to nonexperts, yet “possessed of unlim-

  ited control of natu ral forces,” with power to “keep the world in order by

  mere terror. ”13 His fellow scientists did not yet possess these capacities, but

  they already harbored the rudiments of these powers, with ambitions for

  more, which James viewed warily.

  38  Young William James Thinking

  Even with his concerns about science, James admired it and kept working

  at it, attracted by the commitment to material facts and empirical methods

  but also lured by its relationship to immaterial factors, even in the thinking

  of scientific naturalists. Scientific pro gress implied uncertainties not yet

  known, which were greeted either with faith in science for eventually solv-

  ing those riddles or with recognition that some parts of the world would

  remain elusive. Clifford readily referred to the “insights still in the course of

  development,” which would displace humanity’s “confused and uncertain im-

  pressions” with the “certain and immediate . . . intellectual senses” of sci-

  ence. And even though Spencer maintained strong confidence in science,

  he himself identified “The Unknowable,” which despite the “established

  truths” of science and its methods of “rigorous criticism [by] successive

  generations,” remains “utterly inscrutable.” Whether with faith in its future

  or with recognition of the per sis tently elusive, scientific naturalism implied

  a dualism without interaction: scientific work would focus on material ingre-

  dients of the world, while immaterial factors would simply accompany the in-

  vestigations, remaining mostly ignored. James met this noninteractive dualism

  in the psychophysical parallelism of scientific psy chol ogy, whose prac ti tion ers

  largely bracketed mysterious questions of mind or spirit while diligently ac-

  cumulating knowledge on the empirical side of the proposed duality. Such

  scientific work itself also actually contributed, however, to interactionist

  perspectives, with scientific or religious emphases: many scientific psychol-

  ogists harbored the hope that with enough knowledge, naturalistic inquiry

  would convert immaterial mysteries into investigative prob lems to be solved

  in materialist terms; and even scientific trends that challenged traditional

  religion supported less institutional, more spiritual perspectives with forms

  of panpsychism and panentheism, portraying mental or spiritual ele ments

  operating within the world. 14

  James readily worked within the dualities of scientific practice, just as

  he acknowledged the power of religious convictions. He would describe

  these practices and worldviews with a range of terms: positivism, material-

  ism, scientific naturalism, or even scientificism, in contrast with tran-

  scendentalism, religious belief, apriorism, intuitionism, or rationalism. He

  sometimes even substituted one term for another, highlighting the shared

  dimensions of the terms on each side. Despite their differences, these orien-

  tations all refer to philosophical commitments relying, respectively, on

  material or on immaterial ingredients, which would manifest in diff er ent

  dimensions of life, including during his early experiences. When James

  First Embrace of Science  39

  started his schooling, material and immaterial factors appeared within his

  inquiries into science and religion and in related fields; while learning the

  particulars of each field and the character of their commitments, he also

  sought to understand their relations. The extent of his task contributed to

  the extended length of his years in educational preparation, with both a lot

  to learn and still more to evaluate for choice of direction.15

  Weighing Dif er ent Scientific Disciplines

  Broad contexts for understanding the relation of science and religion,

  including a range of choices for thinking about material and immaterial

  factors in those fields and more, stirred James’s imagination during his

  years of scientific education starting in 1861. This array of choices, and his

  own scientific training made the particulars of his father’s beliefs seem in-

  creasingly less plausible, even as he retained a vocational passion that the

  elder James could appreciate. Yet he still considered ways to reconcile the

  subjects of his study with religion, including some ideas with ironically dis-

  tinct similarities to those of his father. He discovered that the most ardent

  enthusiasts for the authority of naturalistic science held similarly idealistic

  hopes for the promise of science to understand nature’s deepest meanings

  based on hope rather than immediate empirical evidence, albeit with more

  secular ideals in mind. The young James would maintain a similar cultural

  hope for science over the next few de cades, starting with his work at Har-

  vard’s Lawrence Scientific School and Medical School.

  Despite James’s eagerness for scientific study, deciding on which field

  and what approach to adopt would take more than a de cade. He spent his

  twenties moving among many sciences in search of a field for his own work.

  While his schooling was the major taproot of his education, his simultane-

  ous abundant private learning broadened and deepened his education. With

  these private inquiries, he reflected on his own personal direction about the

 
meaning and implications of his scientific education, and although he could

  not know it yet, he also set his mature philosophy in formation. In the caul-

  dron of his private writings, while testing out his personal and intellectual

  directions, he drafted out preliminary versions of his later published work.

  By contrast, earlier diary writers, ranging from the worldly William Byrd to

  the saintly David Brainerd in the eigh teenth century, wrote private compo-

  sitions that remained completely private. By James’s time, the emergence of

  a more robust public sphere and increasing outlets for publication along

  with increased readership created greater opportunities for private thoughts

  40  Young William James Thinking

  to become public. In the second third of the nineteenth century, novelist

  Louisa May Alcott would “simmer novels” in her journals as a first step toward

  putting her mind “in order” on the way toward writing for publication; and

  Ralph Waldo Emerson called his journal writing his “Savings Bank,” where

  he would deposit insights for cultivation into published form. After collect-

  ing folk stories of African Americans in the 1920s and 1930s, Zora Neale

  Hurston used whole phrases from her anthropology field notes within her

  novels.16 James’s diaries, notebooks, and letters were at once private sim-

  merings and steadily growing deposits, which he would also often use di-

  rectly in published work.

  Comments in letters to his family that he wrote during his first semester

  at Harvard indicate that he was working hard at his first study of chemistry,

  even if it was difficult and perhaps not so suited to him as he and his father

  had hoped. And his comments also reveal his steady interests beyond sci-

  ence. A letter from September 1861 includes some Celtic vernacular slang

  from British writer James Stephen, whose words he would also quote years

  later to support his image of the leap of faith at the conclusion of “The Will

  to Believe.” Now he was tapping his own will and strength for a less dra-

  matic task: “This chemical analy sis is so bewildering at first that I am en-

  tirely ‘muddled and bet [beat]’ and have to employ most all my time reading

  up.” In his essay, Stephen reminded the apprentice scientist of the august