The History Book Club discussion

THIS IS A SPOILER THREAD.

This is a thread to discuss the various themes of the book. You can discuss any theme of the book here and also post ancillary material to prove your point.

You can also post books which would be useful to the group related to these themes. Please make sure to use proper citation format.

Remember no self promotion.

THEME

Science and Religion

During the 19th Century, religion was the basis for everything. Harvard College started as a religiously based school and all of the curriculum was focused around religion.

However, as science began to grow and become more complex, religion started being pushed to the side. Those in philosophy wanted to show science and religion could be integrated without damaging the dogma or findings of the two fields of study.

This belief set off many debates. These debates were only increased with the theories of evolution, natural selection, monogenism and polygenism. Many seemed to try to debunk the religious theories or prove religious theories differently than previously believed.

The believers in science wanted to prove that nature was the force behind all creatures and humans, and that races were biologically, physiologically, and intellectually different.

Many scientists of the time used research to substantiate their theories and beliefs. Agassiz believed that the races were never meant to deal with one another. However, this proved that the Europeans should never have come to the United States. He changed his theory slightly to incorporate why the Europeans were right in coming to America, even though an indigenous people already occupied this land.

Religion tried to stay afloat during this time. There were scientists that worked very hard to keep religion tied to science, even if it was in a non direct way. This was the job of many philosophers of the time. They created theories to link religion and science.

However this almost backfired when philosophy found itself being replaced and being pushed in to the field of religion.
Source: Bookrags

THEME

Philosophy, Psychology, and Sociology

Philosophy was the original study of the mind. However, when science began pushing it into religion, many philosophers changed the definition of philosophy.

The end results were the creation of psychology, sociology, and a redefinition of philosophy.

Psychologists immediately started saying that psychology was the true science of the mind. They used laboratories to conduct research and published findings from their research.

They used this in scientific experiments to prove how the mind of humans and animals worked. They did not use logic in the sense of thinking. However, they used scientific logic with numbers to explain how the mind worked.

Sociology was another science that used poor houses and places like Hull House to run experiments on society, mainly the poor of society. Those in academics did not do the practical part of the research. They used the research of philanthropy to gain insight and publish findings. They were also some of the first social workers to try to help the poor of the United States learn to help themselves.

Philosophers also began using experiments too. Dewey created the Laboratory School to prove how children learn. Others had tried similar experiments at the university level. However, many philosophers were also working to prove that religion still held a place within society and that it was needed by people. They worked to prove that the belief in religion was needed for the human psyche.
Source: Bookrags

THEME

Evolution and Pragmatism

Theories of evolution began before Darwin, but Darwin put the ideas out to the public. He was not truly an evolutionist, but he did believe in the natural selection of the species.

Nature decided what was best for each species and mutated the species to have what was needed. He used his finding of flora and finches to come up with this theory. To him, Nature was religion. Nature decided what species were needed. It also decided what attributes were necessary for each species. Evolution helped many of the scientists theorize that the races were in different stages of evolution or that they were each a completely different species. The theory also did not give any credence to the thoughts and beliefs of the societies. Nature was the only decider. Of course we know that the scientists were incorrect and used faulty hypotheses.

Pragmatism was completely based on how people come to conclusions; how they make decisions.

This was the theory that people make decisions depending on their environments. They use their belief and environments to adapt to the ever-changing world around them.

In pragmatism, God is the force that changes the world, as are the decisions made by the people he created. Religion is a major part of pragmatism. It also helped prove the races were the same species, but not all pragmatists believed the races should integrate. Pragmatism evolved into a theory of decision-making and dual identity that was needed in the 20th Century.

The Science Book: 250 Milestones in the History of Science

by Simon Singh

Synopsis:

From the world's greatest scientists--the world's greatest science book! With a foreword written by critically acclaimed author Simon Singh (Fermat's Last Theorem) and essays by such major writers as Richard Dawkings, Susan Greenfield, and John Gribbin, it presents 250 of the most significant milestones in the history of scientific discovery.

Accompanying this unique perspective on our ever-evolving view of the universe are some of the most visually dramatic illustrations you'll ever see. Short, lucid articles focus on everything from the speculations of the ancient Greeks to today's Nobel Prize winners, from Ptolemy's theory of an Earth-centered universe to the first steps on the moon, and from the dawning of the concept of zero to the cloning of Dolly the sheep. Biology, physics, astronomy, medicine, and mathematics: the breakthroughs in every field are all here and celebrated, in the first truly accessible, fully illustrated story of science.

On Art, Religion, and the History of Philosophy: Introductory Lecture 101

by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Synopsis:

From Amazon - Trejo

For years people have asked me what a new student of Hegel should read - what authors provide the best place to start? The sad truth is that I find old and new authors to be lacking in important nuances of Hegel's actual philosophy.

Some authors distort Hegel's philosophy unbearably. I find this to be true even in Encyclopedias that try to reach the novice. For the brand new student, I can recommend very few of them. Perhaps J. Glenn Gray agreed with me, because he has produced an introduction to Hegel in Hegel's own words.

I always recommend reading Hegel directly as soon as possible. The trouble with that is, as most academics know, Hegel's writings are among the most difficult to read. His SCIENCE OF LOGIC is for experts and professionals only. His PHENOMENOLOGY, long touted as the best introduction to Hegel (it was his first published book), is almost as hard to read as his SCIENCE OF LOGIC, and for many reasons I advocate reading this book very late in our studies. Hegel's NCYCLOPEDIA covers every topic in the world, and so that is a fine resource, but it is hardly the best place to start and its style is very formal.

Seek no more. This small volume by J. Glenn Gray is perfect for the student who is ready to start reading some Hegel. It includes three of Hegel's easiest and most relaxed productions, namely, three Introductions to his LECTURE series. Hegel's LECTURES on Art, Religion and Philosophy (composed of his own notes and the notes of some of his well-known students) are more accessible than his
technical writings because his spoken style is more relaxed than his written style.

So, thanks to J. Glenn Gray, only the Introductions to Hegel's key LECTURES have been compiled in one short volume. Here at last the new student has some of the cream of Hegel's thinking, with many important nuances, clearly and concisely stated and accessible to beginners.

Hegel's genius shines forth even in his Introductions to his LECTURES, and J. Glenn Gray deserves much credit for compiling this selection for today's English-reading student. Though some of the translations are a bit older, they are still accessible. J. Glenn Gray's gift to the common reader was a success, and I heartily recommend this book.

An Introduction to the History of Psychology

by B.R. Hergenhahn

Synopsis:

Dreams puzzled early man, Greek philosophers spun elaborate theories to explain human memory and perception, Descartes postulated that the brain was filled with "animal spirits," and psychology was officially deemed a "science" in the 19th century. In AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY, author B.R. Hergenhahn shows you that most of the concerns of contemporary psychologists are manifestations of themes that have been part of psychology for hundreds--or even thousands--of years.

The book's numerous photographs and learning tools, along with its coverage of fascinating figures in psychology, engage you and will help you understand the material in each chapter. Chapter summaries, discussion questions, end-of-chapter glossaries, and a Book Companion Website will all help you prepare for success on your next exam.

A Short History of Sociology

by Maus Heinz (no photo)

Synopsis:

No synopsis available

The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution

by David Quammen

Synopsis:

A fresh look at Darwin's most radical idea, and the mysteriously slow process by which he revealed it.

Evolution, during the early nineteenth century, was an idea in the air. Other thinkers had suggested it, but no one had proposed a cogent explanation for how evolution occurs.

Then, in September 1838, a young Englishman named Charles Darwin hit upon the idea that "natural selection" among competing individuals would lead to wondrous adaptations and species diversity.

Twenty-one years passed between that epiphany and publication of "On the Origin of Species," The human drama and scientific basis of Darwin's twenty-one-year delay constitute a fascinating, tangled tale that elucidates the character of a cautious naturalist who initiated an intellectual revolution.

"The Reluctant Mr. Darwin" is a book for everyone who has ever wondered about who this man was and what he said. Drawing from Darwin's secret "transmutation" notebooks and his personal letters, David Quammen has sketched a vivid life portrait of the man whose work never ceases to be controversial

A Natural History of Pragmatism: The Fact of Feeling from Jonathan Edwards to Gertrude Stein

by Joan Richardson (no photo)

Synopsis:

Joan Richardson provides a fascinating and compelling account of the emergence of the quintessential American philosophy: pragmatism.

She demonstrates pragmatism's engagement with various branches of the natural sciences and traces the development of Jamesian pragmatism from the late nineteenth century through modernism, following its pointings into the present.

Richardson combines strands from America's religious experience with scientific information to offer interpretations that break new ground in literary and cultural history.

This book exemplifies the value of interdisciplinary approaches to producing literary criticism. In a series of highly original readings of Edwards, Emerson, William and Henry James, Stevens, and Stein, A Natural History of Pragmatism tracks the interplay of religious motive, scientific speculation, and literature in shaping an American aesthetic. Wide-ranging and bold, this groundbreaking book will be essential reading for all students and scholars of American literature.

If you are lost in reading the book - this might help you:

The Metaphysical Club: Two Views
Ted V. McAllister and Thomas Short (from MA 44:4, Fall 2002) - 02/24/09

I. A Pragmatic History of Pragmatism
Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club is a history of ideas, or as he characterizes it in the subtitle, A Story of Ideas in America. The subtitle suggests a humility presumably lost on a previous generation of writers, those who half a century ago could write about “the American mind” or “the conservative mind.”

Menand writes “a story,” not “the history,” of his subject. And the ideas that form the subject of his study hardly constitute a reified “mind.”

The language of a story is useful here, as the author recognizes that one might tell many kinds of stories about the same subject relative to one’s questions, one’s interests, one’s perspective.

But while Professor Menand avoids asserting the kind of authority that comes from claims to a comprehensive history, he nonetheless accepts the canons of historical truth-telling that govern the discipline. This book is a pragmatic history of pragmatism, not a reckless and criterion-less postmodern story.

However revealing the subtitle, the book’s title is misleading. While a small group of people met episodically in Cambridge, perhaps even bearing the label “The Metaphysical Club,” we know little about their meetings and this book is not about that club. Moreover, the subjects of this book all tended in a rather anti-metaphysical direction.
Loosely understood, Menand’s story is about the evolution of an American philosophical tradition called pragmatism.

Menand chooses to tell this story by way of a collective biography of four thinkers: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey.

Underlying the stories that Menand interweaves about these men and their contemporaries is a larger claim about America and modernity.

Menand writes: “The Civil War swept away the slave civilization of the South, but it swept away almost the whole intellectual culture of the North along with it. It took nearly half a century for the United States to develop a culture to replace it, to find a set of ideas, and a way of thinking, that would help people cope with the conditions of modern life.”

This is a startling claim. Menand sees a great rupture in northern intellectual culture that takes place just as the forces of modernity take hold of a previously agrarian nation. Menand does not properly characterize the culture that is sundered, nor does he wonder if the destruction of the southern culture might have allowed the unfettered growth of certain tendencies in northern culture.

Rather, he emphasizes disillusionment, springing from failed ideas, and the creative efforts to craft a new intellectual system to make sense of a new environment.

Of course the new environment was a modern, urban, industrial society where the old habits, verities, and gods of the village no longer “worked.”

The very speed of change in this new age suggested a mutability that warred against older experiences of constancy. Survival in this new context required an ability to change, an ability to anticipate, and a readiness to jettison worn and obsolete ideas. This much is familiar (if debated) territory to historians, but what is unusual about Menand’s account is where he finds the origins of this new intellectual enterprise. The American Civil War destroyed an old and now outdated northern intellectual culture. Really?
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In order to tell this part of the story, Menand introduces the reader to his first subject, Oliver Wendell Holmes. Holmes represents the moral certainty of northern abolitionism and of a more comprehensive intellectual order that presupposed the intelligibility of their moral code.

In antebellum northern culture, science rested comfortably alongside a Protestant (even decayed Puritan) moral passion. For them, the universe was orderly and purposeful. Young Holmes “had gone off to fight because of his moral beliefs, which he held with a singular fervor.

The war did more than make him lose those beliefs. It made him lose his belief in beliefs.”

The horrors of the war, fought for high-minded principles, left Holmes with one lesson: “certitude leads to violence.”

Thus, the war destroyed his principles and replaced them with one universal claim and fear—moral certainty is immoral because it leads to violence.

Holmes’s rejection of claims to moral certainty went beyond a sense of pious limits to human understanding—indeed, it suggested a hubris that went so far as to assert the absence of universal purpose and thereby of any abstract meaning to truth, to right and wrong.

No matter the source of this dogmatic anti-dogmatism (and I doubt the singularity of the Civil War in its development), Menand is clearly correct to assert an enduring legacy for this idea or disposition. Today, we live in a culture (both popular and high) saturated by a naïve skepticism of all things real.

Existence has replaced reality as our intellectual and moral touchstone and, consequently, one is quickly labeled dangerous for even mentioning unchanging principles. Moral idiots hold the moral high ground, utterly certain about the uncertainty of everything else.

Bereft of principles, Holmes came to value skills and expertise. He admired experimentation and the capacity to shape some part of the world to human desires. As one of the leading jurists of his day, he defended civil liberties not because they reflected some inherent right but because they facilitated the “democratic” process of change and adaptation.

Whereas freedom had long been a high ideal because it allowed human beings to act in such a way as to fulfill their (better) natures, Holmes and others now defended freedom relative to one’s will—freedom to do as one wants and to use that freedom to reshape the world to better suit human desires.

The older freedom presupposed an order to which human beings belong while the newer freedom glorified human will-to-power in the absence of any transcendental meaning.

If Menand is able to trace Holmes’s transformation to the shock of the Civil War, he has a much more difficult time making the connection for his other three protagonists. None of them fought in the war, and Menand supplies little evidence to suggest that it was the war that sent them along intellectual trajectories akin to Holmes’s. Nonetheless, Menand tells a powerful story about the confluence of ideas and beliefs among these very different thinkers and men.

What is most fascinating about this book is the staggering concreteness of the narrative, the utter particularity of the influences and motivations of his subjects. Interwoven with their stories are a wide variety of well-known individuals who figure in the evolution of pragmatism in the most amazing ways. At times the reader wonders if the tale of Charles Peirce’s sexual escapades or an account of the development of the law of errors in astronomy belong in this story. But mostly, one simply does not care—so full of wonder are the stories wedded together by this accomplished stylist. And while Menand sometimes dwells on the tangential, he does an admirable job of weaving the eclectic strands into a single cloth.

This form of storytelling is not simply a matter of style, but part of the philosophy that Menand both explains and employs. This is, as we discovered in the subtitle, a story of “ideas,” and in this book, ideas matter greatly. But these ideas are neither the reified expressions of reality—which suggests a metaphysical orientation—nor the simple creation of an abstracted individual. Rather, ideas have two salient characteristics for Menand and his pragmatists: they are “tools” (“like forks and knives and microchips”) that help people cope with an ever-changing reality, and they are essentially social products.

In Menand’s hands, the working out of this conception of ideas in history is endlessly fascinating. Ideas emerge out of particularity. William James’s personality, his choices and opportunities, all make possible the ideas he crafts. These ideas are expressions of the individual, but the individual is far from discrete or isolated. Presumably, what is believable to him is shaped by his experiences with others and is always in the process of changing. James expressed ideas as only he could, but only because he participated in a social organism that shaped him and his ideas. The ideas that thereby emerge persuade others, shape their thinking, and get adapted or rejected ultimately with regard to their applicability, the degree to which these “tools” do some work.

More:

So to tell the story of pragmatism as a pragmatist should requires that “pragmatic” ideas not be treated as doctrines or as abstract principles, but as expressions of an evolving set of responses to a complex and ever-changing context. Oddly, the story of pragmatism is rarely told this way. Menand’s approach suggests that one understands pragmatism well only by understanding it historically.
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Ideas matter. Or more precisely, it matters greatly how one understands ideas (qua ideas) to function. The pragmatists were hardly original in their belief that ideas are tools rather than expressions of some reality “out there.” But no matter how singular the pragmatists in this area, the transformation in the belief about ideas exposed in this story points to one of the greatest transformations in Western thought and culture. Clearly, the story of the West includes the persistence of essentialism or realism, from Jewish and Christian beliefs in the God beyond the cosmos to the Platonic forms to Enlightenment glorification of human knowledge (and control) of a created reality.

Essentialism stresses the unchanging form behind the constant mutability of existence and holds “ideas” to be expressions of abstract or non-particular truths. Essentialism holds that the universe has a purpose which limits human creativity within a larger cosmos of purpose. The pragmatists rejected this “uni”-verse, and with it the belief in essences or forms or generalized truths. Ideas deal only with particulars—and particulars are in constant flux. For these pragmatists, ideas matter because they assist in change or evolution, not because they point to the unchanging.
The greatest revolution—the revolution that sundered the Semitic cosmology of Genesis—came in the mid-nineteenth century most powerfully and creatively with Charles Darwin. Even limiting oneself to the story as told by Menand, a reader might therefore ask if Darwin is a more substantial starting point than the Civil War. Menand characterizes Darwin’s motives for writing Origin of Species (1857) as to “debunk the concept of supernatural intelligence—the idea that the universe is the result of an idea.” The introduction of natural selection as the mechanism for evolution, and therefore the explanation for variation and change, forced a reorientation in thinking that was cosmos-shattering. Applied broadly, Darwin’s ideas suggested that the universe and all its parts have no stable essence and no unified purpose; therefore, while the abstract language employed by humans may order their experiences, it does so without any genuine reference to a stable reality.

Darwin’s impact on the pragmatists was profound, suggesting that ideas are part of an evolutionary process that allows organisms to adapt to, and change, their environment. As things change, one is forced to abandon old ideas and find new ones. The pragmatists crafted a philosophical perspective appropriate for a people who could no longer believe in a closed universe. By emphasizing the constant experimentation with ideas to find those that work, they believed they were preparing themselves and others to live “forward” in a rapidly changing society. These ideas took peculiar forms relative to each thinker.
James, the sensitive soul, sought to find a utilitarian ground for religious beliefs, emphasizing that for many people religious beliefs help them to adjust to the world they experience. The shockingly well-adjusted Dewey, having no spiritual longings, focused more on the capacity of a democratic society to experiment with new ways of thinking and organizing. For Dewey and all his followers, mass education became the primary means of helping a democratic society gain the capacity to adjust to novel circumstances.
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Menand’s great strength rests in his power to weave many stories into an engaging narrative. His work is much weaker with regard to analysis. His portraits of the three philosophers—James, Dewey and Peirce—invite correctives from specialists who will dispute nearly every specific about their beliefs. Menand attempts critical distance when discussing each of his subjects, and again here his work is admirable. Dewey is fairly but lovingly portrayed, engendering in this reader a deeper antagonism and even fear (not the author’s intention). But, all of the many and substantial challenges by specialists aside, Menand more clearly than any author I know tells the story of these men and their ideas.

But what is one to do with pragmatism? Menand is not entirely sure, though he writes as a warm friend of this approach to ideas and he clearly accepts the assumption of a universe without cosmic meaning. Still, it appears that pragmatism itself requires a certain kind of context. Menand argues, persuasively, that pragmatism has dramatically shaped the world we have inherited—from legal theory and judicial practice, to educational theory and practice, to a revolution in epistemology. But the pragmatists and their ideas have also been out of favor, particularly in the years after World War II. In the ideological struggle with the Soviet Union, Menand suggests, universal principles had a special utility. Moreover, in the Civil Rights movement, led by Martin Luther King, meaningful change came from taking a stand on natural rights, not pragmatic adjustment.

The return of pragmatism since the late 1970s might suggest a utility appropriate to our age. Menand hints that the pragmatic tolerance of cultural pluralism and of competing claims to truth fits the more chaotic post-1989 world. We live without universally accepted standards and the great dangers of our world are, Menand again hints, the result of people who believe something is always true and right—that is, principled people. The author is far from unambiguous in these areas, but one cannot help believing that Menand concludes his book thinking about the point with which he began it—certainty leads to violence.

But what are we really to think about that claim? Does Menand wish us to doubt the worthiness of fighting the Civil War? What moral crusades are acceptable and why? Is violence the thing most to be avoided, and should we willingly jettison our principles in order to eliminate it? If so, then we have no principles in the first place. Pragmatism offers no assistance for those who pursue moral crusades, as they need an unalterable Good by which to reckon.
Pragmatism may help us live together in a pluralistic society—so long as that society contains only those who accept the values of tolerance. But it is far more likely that a democratic society can only survive if it rests on principles the citizens accept as universal. Pragmatism may encourage freedoms, but only because wide latitude in beliefs and actions provides more opportunities to find expressions of workable ideas for emerging contexts. Pragmatism offers another kind of freedom, to humans as such, since it makes us agents of our destiny, suggesting an escape from the determinism of a closed universe. But to accept this freedom is to accept a petty world where purposes change with the wind and meaning is lost in the swift stream of objectless history. Pragmatists, it seems, want to liberate us from our highest potentials.
—Ted V. McAllister

Opposing View:
http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com...

THEME - CERTITUDE LEADS TO VIOLENCE

"The lesson Holmes [learned] can be put in a sentence. It is that certitude leads to violence. This is a proposition that has an easy application and a difficult one. The easy application is to ideologues, dogmatists, and bullies--people who think that their rightness justifies them in imposing on anyone who does not happen to subscribe to their particular ideology, dogma, or notion of turf. If the conviction of rightness is powerful enough, resistance to it will be met, sooner or later, by force. There are people like this in every sphere of life, and it is natural to feel that the world would be a better place without them...Holmes did have an intense dislike of people who presented themselves as instruments of some higher power. 'I detest a man who knows that he knows'...and he had a knee-jerk suspicion of causes. He regarded them as attempts to compel one group of human beings to conform to some other group's ideas of the good, and he could see no authority for such attempts greater than the other group's certainty that it knew what was best...

Still, Holmes did not think that the world would be better off without people like this, because he thought everyone was like this--and this is the difficult part of his belief about certitude and violence. It is easy to condemn unwarranted certainty in others; we are always confident that people we disagree with would be improved by a little self-doubt. We even remind ourselves, in our better moments, to be skeptical of our own convictions. In the end, though, there just are some things that we are certain about. We have beliefs we cannot help feeling are valid...And when push comes to shove over those beliefs, we are prepared to shove back."