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Title: The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand ISBN: 0-374-52849-7 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 10 April, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.38 (52 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Great Biographical Tale Of Intellectual Giants & Ideas
Comment: The Metaphysical Club is a fascinating and fun book. While it deals with the lives and ideas of some of the 19th century's greatest intellects, it is exceptionally well written and completely accessible to all readers.
If you enjoy American history, you will probably enjoy this book. If you are a history buff who also enjoys philosophy or law, you will absolutely love this.
The author, Louis Menand, is a first rate journalist. His style is smooth and clear. He is skilled at presenting complex people and ideas in an easy-to-understand manner. The book reads like a novel. Academics may like this book because it is a history of ideas. But it is also a highly entertaining biography of such great thinkers as Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, John Dewey and Charles S. Pierce (pronounced "purse").
Because this book is so well written, it will probably appeal to anyone who enjoys reading. Those who like history, law or philosophy will consider it an absolute joy.
Rating: 2
Summary: Oh, come on
Comment: Didn't anyone find this book overwritten and pedantic, not to mention highly unfocused and rambling? A good editor would have lopped 200 pages off, including the completely irrelevant long opening descriptions of Holmes' Civial War escapades. A better title: Name Dropping Through History.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Philosophy For Our Times
Comment: The Metaphysical Club is "a story of ideas in America". However, it traces these ideas back to England in the early 19th century and shows how America contributed to the international development of philosophy and natural science. Its theme is the importance of free exchange of ideas within a society, thereby supporting "indiviual rights" as a social necessity.
The origin of this story occurred in the 16th century in Uraniborgin, a Danish city on the island of Hven. Founded by the astrologer, and later astronomer, Tycho Brache, this city was dedicated to the free exchange of ideas in the advancement of natural philosophy. Tycho was plagued with inaccuracies in astronomical observations made by his assistants. Others had suffered the same problem, but Tycho analyzed the errors, performed experiments, and determined that each assistant, and he himself, had an individual reaction pattern, each of which centered around a norm. This was the first physiological psychology study in recorded history and it became the first of many statistical analyses within the field of astronomy. This experiment eventually led to the concept of individual differences in every attribute of humans (and animals).
Later, it was the basis for the doctrine of the average man, but it first *proved* that differences prevail in nature. It became the foundation of evolutionary theory. The Origin of the Species is an argument that diffentiation contributes to survival of each species.
This book shows the influence of such thinking on four men: Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey. Three of these men were briefly members on the Metaphysical Club in 1872, but the Metaphysical Club has become a metaphor for the extended network of various American, and foreign, thinkers who interacted as a social organism (so to speak) to produce a new way of thinking about nature and mankind. This new approach -- named Pragmatism by James -- discarded the Platonic Ideal and adopted uncertainty as the basis of nature itself. Obviously, this notion underlies the later development of quantum theory in Physics, but also contributed greatly to the behaviorial and social sciences. It tremendously expanded the role of statistics in science and other areas, while at the same time it undermined the philosophic basis of determinism.
This book also points out that Pragmatism was intended as a way to reconcile differences without violence. It was born in the violence of the American Civil War and faded during the violence of the twentieth century. However, it has become more popular as the world faces the task of uniting thousands of social groups with contradictory mores, customs, folkways and traditions. Once again the world is interested in reconciliation.
Highly recommended for all students of ideas and the history of science.
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Title: Pragmatism : A Reader by Louis Menand ISBN: 0679775447 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 07 October, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: American Studies by Louis Menand, Louis, III Menand ISBN: 0374104344 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 13 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Wittgenstein's Poker : The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers by David Edmonds, John Eidinow ISBN: 0060936649 Publisher: Ecco Pub. Date: 17 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Pragmatism by William James ISBN: 0486282708 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 02 June, 1995 List Price(USD): $2.00 |
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Title: Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford History of the United States, Vol 9) by David M. Kennedy ISBN: 0195144031 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: April, 2001 List Price(USD): $22.50 |
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