William James

William James (1842–1910) was born in New York City, the elder brother of the novelist Henry James. He trained first as a painter and then as a physician, and taught at Harvard for thirty-five years — physiology, then psychology, then philosophy. The Principles of Psychology (1890) established the discipline in America; The Will to Believe (1897), The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) and Pragmatism (1907) followed. He took the word pragmatism from Charles Sanders Peirce and made it public. He died at his summer house in New Hampshire.