WILLIAM JAMES

A detailed Summary of WILLIAM JAMES


William James was a philosopher and psychologist but was most well known in the field of Psychology for developing the philosophy of pragmatism, or the Functionalist theory: "Theory of mental life and behavior that is concerned with how an organism uses its perceptual abilities to function in its environment." He was also the first Psychologist to be born in America.

William James was born on January 11, 1842 in New York City. His father, Henry James Sr. was a Swednborgian theologian, and one of his brothers was the great novelist Henry James. Throughout his youth, William attended private schools in the United States and Europe. He later attended the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard University and then Harvard Medical School, where he received his degree in 1869 in the field of Physiology. The way that William got into the field of Psychology was that he got his degree in physiology and also enjoyed studying philosophy in his spare time, in psychology, he found, linked the two together. Before finishing his medical studies, he went on an exploring expedition in Brazil with the Swiss-American naturalist Louis Agassiz an


In the book, he explained the principle of Functionalism as relating to psychology which gave people a new way of thinking about the traditional "branch of philosophy" and labeled it among the laboratory sciences based on experimental method. His essays that were published in the three books dealt with his empirical methods of investigation to philosophical and religious issues. He explored the questions regarding the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, free will, and ethical values by referring to human religious and moral experience.

He taught at Harvard for thirty-five years, during which time; he wrote his first (and only) book; had his essays and lectures published in three different books: The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897), Human Immortality (1898), and The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902); and wrote a sympathetic psychological account of religious and mystical experiences, which was William's last-named work. William James' book was entitled: Principles of Psychology which was published in 1890 and also established him as one of the greatest thinkers of his time.

James grasped the idea of th

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