Metaphysical Club

There are many books that have been written about American history, but there has never been such a book which combines such intellectualism and is yet still a page turner as The Metaphysical Club (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), Louis Menand. In this book the intellectual life of America post-civil war is described by Menand with exquisite pose. The book is broken into sections in which the ideas of the four main characters, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey, are told and explained. Menand involves the reader in every aspect of the characters mind set, and tells that the ideas of these aforementioned men is the very reason that we act and think in the way we do today.

Oliver Wendell Homes left school at a young age to fight in the civil war. The war impacted him greatly leaving life long scars. From this came his thinking, during the war he questioned and after the wars end he began theorizing. After completing schooling Homes become a justice of the US Supreme Court. As a justice he became one of the best legal thinkers of the time. He was very stubborn with his ideas and rarely compromised this lead to violence.

Charles Peirce a mathematical genius hugely impacted philosophical history. Working for the government in his spare time he would theorize and argue about ideas of nature and other bailiffs of the time. He questioned everything and believed nothing that was told to him, he would not even trust his eye or even the theory of gravity. He believed

Flanagan 2

that nothing should be taken as fact until there is no room for statistical error; he also believed that humans had very limited perception.

William James is introduced into the book as an admirer of Charles Peirce, which also brings the introduction of Pragmatism. Pragmatism was born in America at about this time (1800s) it is a belief system that is supposed to run between absolute belief systems, meaning that Pragmatists believe that theories of beliefs that will no aid or affect mankind are not important. William James is often named as the father of Pragmatism. For, he created many Pragmatic ideas and theories.

John Dewey who was also a pragmatist, while at the university of Chicago Dewey makes his most important contribution. He believed that children should learn by doing, and he thought that a more hands on approach to learning would help kids learn better. By doing so it would provide the children with real world