THE EDUCATION OF WILLIAM JAMES: RELIGION, SCIENCE, AND THE POSSIBILITIES FOR BELIEF WITHOUT CERTAINTY IN THE EARLY INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF WILLIAM JAMES (CHARLES PEIRCE, LOUIS AGASSIZ, CHAUNCEY WRIGHT, CHARLES DARWIN, HENRY JAMES, SR.)

The dissertation explores the early life and thought of William James (1842-1910). Using James's published works as well as his letters, his published but little-known notes and reviews, and his unpublished diaries and notebooks, this dissertation constructs an intellectual biography employing intellectual history, the history of science, philosophy, and religious studies.; William James experienced the culturally shaping influences of his grandfather's wealth and republican values, the eccentric and spiritual ideas instilled by his father in an almost chaotic process of education, and the impact of a scientific education in the 1860's, a time when Darwinism revolutionized both the content and the methods of natural science. As a result of these influences, James began to form the kernels of ideas that would become central to his mature psychology, philosophy, and religious thought. He struggled with the simultaneous uncertainty of his intellectual perspectives and his vocational choices, and he gradually began to accept uncertainty itself as a central theme and goal of his life and thought. His steps in this direction were at first unsure, and indeed, he actually experienced a prolonged crisis of depression and indecision from 1867 to 1872. But even his suffering was a catalyst to his intellectual developments. A major inspiration for his commitment to uncertainty was his realization of the role of probabilities in the science he had been learning since his young adulthood. It inspired his idea that religious beliefs and scientific theories, while unrelated, are parallel in their uncertainty, and that each, if reasonable, can be acceptable as plausible even if not provable. The ultimate result of James's education in freedom was his argument for a pluralistic and non-deterministic view of the universe, his conviction of the possibilities for belief despite uncertainty, and his advocacy of the need for commitment and action to improve this world without reference to another life.