Chauncey Wright (September 10, 1830 - September 12, 1875), American philosopher and mathematician, was born at Northampton, Massachusetts.
In 1852 he graduated at Harvard, and became computer to the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac. He made his name by contributions on mathematical and physical subjects in the Mathematical Monthly. He soon, however, turned his attention to metaphysics and psychology, and for the North American Review and later for the Nation he wrote philosophical essays on the lines of Mill, Darwin and Spencer.
In 1870-71 he lectured on psychology at Harvard. Although, in general, he adhered to the evolution theory, he was a free-lancer in thought. Among his essays may be mentioned The Evolution of Self-Consciousness and two articles published in 1871 on the Genesis of Species. Of these, the former endeavors to explain the most elaborate psychical activities of men as developments of elementary forms of conscious processes in the animal kingdom as a whole; the latter is a defense of the theory of natural selection against the attacks of St George Mivart, and appeared in an English edition on the suggestion of Darwin. From 1863 to 1870 he was secretary and recorder to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in the last year of his life he lectured on mathematical physics at Harvard.
In 1872, Wright helped found The Metaphysical Club with other Harvard intellectuals such as Charles Sanders Peirce, William James and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. His views on Darwinism played a significant role in shaping the ideas of the other members of the club. Pragmatism--a philosophy largely developed by Peirce and James--has often been understood as a post-Darwinian philosophy.
His essays were collected and published by CE Norton in 1877, and his Letters were edited and privately printed at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1878 by James Bradley Thayer.
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Famous quotes by chauncey wright:
“A fact is a proposition of which the verification by an appeal to the primary sources of our knowledge or to experience is direct and simple. A theory, on the other hand, if true, has all the characteristics of a fact except that its verification is possible only by indirect, remote, and difficult means.”
—Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)
“We receive the truths of science by compulsion. Nothing but ignorance is able to resist them.”
—Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)
“The accidental causes of science are only ‘accidents’ relatively to the intelligence of a man.”
—Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)
“The very hope of experimental philosophy, its expectation of constructing the sciences into a true philosophy of nature, is based on induction, or, if you please, the a priori presumption, that physical causation is universal; that the constitution of nature is written in its actual manifestations, and needs only to be deciphered by experimental and inductive research; that it is not a latent invisible writing, to be brought out by the magic of mental anticipation or metaphysical mediation.”
—Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)