British Empiricism / American Pragmatism

Locke, Berkeley, Hume → William James, Peirce, Dewey. The empiricist insistence on experience as the ground of knowledge, and the pragmatist extension into action and consequence. James's 'stream of consciousness' (1890) is one of the great metaphors in the history of mind. Bergson's alliance with this tradition — brain as filter not container — was the most radical empiricist claim ever made, and was promptly exiled from respectable philosophy. Polanyi's tacit knowledge (1958) is the tradition's deepest insight: we know more than we can tell.

· 1600– · active · influence 8/10