Abstract

This dissertation examines the relationship between William James' philosophy and several late-nineteenth-century sciences, including psychology, physiology, biology, the new "scientific aesthetics," and "psychical research." Focusing on James's pragmatism, it provides a contextual history of the formation of concepts central to James's epistemology, including his conceptions of truth, evidence, objectivity, and temperament. My analysis reveals that James built into those conceptions not only specific scientific notions, but also the moral and political values that he believed must underlie a "genuine" scientific approach to knowledge. By examining the multiple ways in which James drew from turn-of-the-century science in construing his pragmatist epistemology, I show that James's philosophical work was part of a broader program which sought to retain a link between philosophy and the increasingly separate and professionalized sciences. In particular, I argue that James's position at the boundaries between philosophy and psychology was instrumental in determining the set of concerns on which he focused, and profoundly shaped the course of his philosophical work