Chauncey Wright (1830—1875)

Chauncey Wright, an American mathematician, philosopher, and
intellectual catalyst of the Septum and the Metaphysical club at
Cambridge, was a great influence on Charles Sanders Peirce, William
James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Nicholas St. John Green.
Unfortunately, Wright's untimely death at the age of forty-five
severed his growing influence on the direction of early-classical
American philosophy, just when his intellectual powers were reaching
their peek. Apart from some recent studies on his work, spearheaded by
the eminent Wright scholar Edward H. Madden, his keen perspectives
have been overlooked by both classical and contemporary American
philosophers. As a thinker of the transition from early to classical
American philosophy, Wright's work captures the best of Scottish
realism, English empiricism, and early science studies, especially in
mathematics, physics, biology, meteorology, psychology, jurisprudence,
and pedagogy, combining to establish his influence as a well-rounded,
critic of system building, metaphysics, theological influence, and the
imprecise use of language. His critical empiricism positioned him
against any fusion of teleology in philosophy and science. He was one
of the first supporters and careful readers of the work of Charles
Darwin in the States, winning praise from Darwin for his clear minded
approach and style, especially in his work on evolutionary psychology.
Wright's letters are the clearest testaments to his dynamic and
personable style. They are exemplary of his patience and depth of
cultural preparedness and prime examples of what he must have been
like as a Socratic dialogue partner and "intellectual boxing master,"
as C.S. Peirce stated. The collected reviews and essays by Wright
demonstrate his range and precision of argument, though many reviews
and scientific essays still remain uncollected. As his friend John
Fiske wrote, "to have known such a man is an experience one cannot
forget or outlive, and to have him pass away, leaving so scanty a
record of what he had it in him to utter, is nothing less than a
public calamity."

1. Life and Work

Chauncey Wright, mathematician, philosopher, was born at Northamptom,
Massachusetts, September 20, 1830. He entered Harvard College in 1848,
where he graduated twenty-seventh in a class of eighty-eight in 1852.
From 1852 to 1870 Wright was employed as a computing machine for the
American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac at Cambridge, turning series
of numbers into logarithms and vice versa, computing charts
(ephemerids) for navigation based on the positions of the fixed stars,
moon, sun and other planets. Wright taught natural philosophy at the
Agassiz School for Girls from 1859 to 1860. He was elected a fellow of
the American Academy of Arts and Science in 1860. In January 1870 he
was offered a lecture series on psychology at Harvard College as part
of the new post-graduate courses. These lectures were based on and
developed from what was found in the work of the Scottish philosopher
Alexander Bain (1818-1903). The lecture series, begun by Harvard's
former president Thomas Hill, had been revitalized by the then
president C.W. Eliot, who also secured lectures from R.W. Emerson,
W.D. Howells, F. Bôcher, C.S. Peirce, O. W. Holmes Jr., and J.Fiske.
In 1874 and 1875 Wright also lectured in theoretical physics. This was
the extent of Wright's college teaching experience, and though not
successful in a classroom setting, his reflections on education and
pedagogy were inspiring to his friend, fellow classmate, and Dean of
Harvard College, Prof. E. W. Gurney. Gurney describes how "[Wright
had] some ten clever sophomores in the course; but his heavy artillery
was mostly directed over their heads. They complained much to me (as
Dean) of their inability to follow him; but Chauncey, with the best
intentions, found it almost impossible to accommodate his pace to
their short stride. His examination-papers, by the way, in this
course, I remember as models of what such papers should be. Chauncey
had as sound views on the subject of education, as fresh and original,
and as little biased by his own peculiar training and deficiencies of
sympathy, as those of anybody I ever listened to, but he has no
adaptability in practice." (Letters 212-213).

Wright's pedagogical talents were better seen in his being a private
tutor, philosophical mentor, and intellectual catalyst of both the
"Cambridge Septum Club" and the "Metaphysical Club" in Cambridge. It
was through the discussions and papers presented at these gatherings
that Wright came to be known and respected as the "intellectual boxing
master" to Charles Sanders Peirce, William James and Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Jr. Also present at these gatherings were Nicholas St. John
Green (1830-1876), Joseph Warner, Frank E. Abbot, and John Fiske. The
scientist-philosophers of The Metaphysical Club were nearly
outnumbered by members who were lawyers (Fisch 1942; Wiener 1948).
Wright died in Cambridge, Massachusetts on September 12, 1875.

Wright published fifty-six articles between 1865 and 1875, the last
published posthumously in 1876 in the American Naturalist. These
ranged from book notices and reviews to longer technical philosophical
and scientific essays. Except for his presentations to the Septum
Club, and the Metaphysical Club, all lost to us except in short
citations and titles mentioned in his letters, these articles are what
remain of his work. He published in The Atlantic Monthly, The
Mathematical Monthly, The North American Review, The Nation, Memoirs
of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, Proceedings of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Naturalist. Eighteen of
his longer articles were collected and published in 1877 by his friend
Charles Eliot Norton under the title Philosophical Discussions. There
exists one generously detailed review, though anonymous, of this text
from The Nation, dated May 17, 1877, vol. 24, n. 620, pp. 294-296. In
it we find written how "[Wright's works] form the most important
contributions which now chiefly engage the attention of the students
of philosophy," and further, how "it was only Mr. Wright's neglect to
preserve his thoughts in writing that prevented him", citing John
Fiske "from taking rank among the foremost philosophers of the
nineteenth century." In a letter of recommendation that William James
wrote on Peirce's behalf to Prof. Gilman of Chicago, dated November
25, 1875, he stated, "I don't think it extravagant praise to say that
of late years there has been no intellect in Cambridge of such general
powers and originality as [Peirce], unless one should except the late
Chauncey Wright, and effectively, Peirce will always rank higher than
Wright" (James, Correspondence, Vol. 4).
a. Letters

Chauncey Wright maintained a lively and inspiring correspondence
throughout his life. It is from these letters that we may approach his
conversational genius. Thanks to his friend from childhood James
Bradley Thayer, these were collected and privately printed in 1878.

Wright's letters act as a primer, glossary, and journal to connect and
clarify his published philosophical perspectives, while revealing the
life and dialogue of one of the great pioneers in the history of early
classical American philosophy of science, metaphysics, ethics and
pedagogy. Although Wright mentioned that "letter-writing [was] still
odious to [him]", just two months before his death, he added, "I think
it is, but so that the good of it, the Promethean endurance and
philanthropy of it, is set off on high artistic principles against its
evils, the vexatious stupidities of Cadmean invention" (Letters 344).
It is through these letters, crafted to a high artistic principle that
a study on Chauncey Wright begins in earnest, followed by his
collected works in the volume entitled Philosophical Discussions
(1877). This would, in the words of his friend William James
(1842-1910), allow us to see "his tireless amiability, his beautiful
modesty, his affectionate nature and freedom from egotism [and] his
childlike simplicity in worldly affairs" (Ryan 2000:3, p. 4).
2. The Language and Philosophy of Science

For Wright, the philosophy of science as a general theory of the
universe was not a main concern. He was actually a critic of such
formulations and systems, a critic of anything that began to resemble
metaphysical web-spinning, as seen in the works of Herbert Spencer
(1820-1903). For Wright, science, or "true science", does not base
itself on any "principle of Authority" which would include principles
which are linguistically construed to substitute for dogma and
superstition. Science should not be a substitute system for the lost
innocence of theological speculations, nor be tainted by a
teleological nature. Wright believed "true science deals with nothing
but questions of facts [which] if possible, shall not be determined
beforehand [nor by] how we ought to feel about the facts … nor by
moral biases" (Letters 113). As part of this position he was
interested and critically tuned to the issues of "motives" that
generated theories. As he wrote to F.E. Abbot, "no real fate or
necessity is indeed manifested anywhere in the universe, only a
phenomenal regularity" (Letters 111). Many years later, in 1932,
Justice Oliver W. Holmes (1841-1935) recalls this point, stating
Wright "taught me when young that I must not say necessary about the
universe, that we don't know whether anything is necessary or not. So
I describe myself as a bettabilitarian. I believe we can bet on the
behavior of the universe in its contact with us." Much of Wright's
position and amicable critique of the theories of science (or attempts
at being "scientific") can be seen in his letters to F.E. Abbot
(1836-1903), Mrs. Lesley and Miss Grace Norton, followed by the longer
more technical articles collected in Philosophical Discussions, most
notably "The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer", "Evolution by Natural
Selection", "Evolution of Self-Consciousness", "The Conflict of
Studies", and "A Fragment on Cause and Effect". Many of Wright's
as-of-yet uncollected review articles also contain important
statements regarding his critique of, and position on the philosophy
of science. The study of these articles should clarify Wright's
non-partisan view of the use of science, his accommodation of what
today we would call "complexity", his care for precision in the use of
terms and definitions employed in experimental methods, and his
caution against the metaphysical adaptation of science that haunted
many fanciful theories of the time. Wright was cautious in focusing on
what he saw as the "two uses of language – the social and the
meditative, or mnemonic". Only in their strict exchange and study
would a clear language for science become possible ("Evolution of
Self-Consciousness", in Philosophical Discussions 255). For Wright,
without the developed power of primary perception and attention, the
meditative use of language breeds nothing but trite metaphysical
glossaries, a type of false memory (projected recollections), and
ultimately vague and dogmatic principles product of a faulty,
unchecked use of terms and definitions. Wright sought "scientific
distinctness" over "moral connotations" (Letters 112). As he wrote to
Miss Grace Norton (July 29, 1874), "we suffer from a mental
indigestion. We have not solved the ambiguity of words" (Letters 275).
Here, as the preeminent Wright scholar E. H. Madden stated, "the
concept of substance [which Wright takes to task] arises from
misleading metaphors in the syntax of language [and] is not unlike
modern neo-Wittgensteinian analysis" ("Wright, James, and Radical
Empiricism," The Journal of Philosophy, LI, 1954, 871). The influence
in the philosophy of language is due to in part to Nicholas St. John
Green, a legal scholar, and in how Green believed that "a real
definition is an analysis". This was written during Green's
involvement with the Metaphysical Club.For Wright. Language is not,
nor should be used as a "lying device", which is a "false instinct in
a rational being", a drive to return to pre-linguistic "animal
oblivion" which can be dressed up in the disdain for the science and
clarity of terms as seen in the works of Herbert Spencer (1820-1903),
and especially in those of the Rev. James Martineau (1805-1900).
Wright called this type of philosophizing "poetry under the form of
science, of which Hegelianism is the most notable modern epic"
(Letters 179).

A compelling reflection on the question and power of language is seen
in Wright's letter to Charles Darwin (1809-1882), dated August 29,
1872 (Letters 240-246). With a clear use of terms and a sustained use
of the nature of inference, Wright believed that we could extend,
check, and use our knowledge of the study of nature as tools and
extensions of careful perceptions. For Wright theoretical concepts
should not be used as static summaries of truth, but as ever-active
non-generalized "finders". "Finders" are the use we make of working
hypotheses through testable consequences open to future experiences.
"Finders" are not hardened metaphysical concepts. They are speculative
tools that may arise from experience, intuitions, dreams and
imagination. For Wright the language and philosophy of science must be
passed through the "tools of sensible experience", not be concerned
with "ontological pedigree or a priori character of a theory", and
above all search for the driving motives of research outside fear,
respect and aspiration (Philosophical Discussions 47, 49).

For such an amiable and humble individual, Wright was a very
tough-minded theorist. He cautions us to realize that the positivists
stage of the Theological, Metaphysical and Scientific co-exist at
every level and attempt of humankind's quest for knowledge, as well as
between rival hypotheses that seek to grasp culture and nature. Wright
saw the space for a true scientific attitude based upon the methods of
observation and the testing of rules of investigation, not in an
endless cycle of collecting hypotheses for and against said methods,
rules and facts. Wright clearly followed Bacon's lead in severing
"physical science from scholastic philosophy …" (Philosophical
Discussions 375). In his words, "the conscious purpose of arriving at
general facts and at an adequate statement of them in language, or of
bringing particular facts under explicit general ones, determines for
any knowledge a scientific character" (Philosophical Discussions 205).
This character must always be what Wright called "useful knowledge",
and further, "with connection in phenomena which are susceptible of
demonstration by inductive observation, and independent of diversities
or resemblances in their hidden nature, or of any question about their
metaphysical derivation, or dependence" (Philosophical Discussions
408).

From these considerations many twentieth-century commentators, with
the exception of E.H. Madden, have marked Wright as a pragmatist, or
proto-pragmatist. This is not precise, since for Wright, basic
empirical propositions are not open to the idea of working hypothesis
at the level of matter-of-fact experience common sense beliefs, nor
are long-run results safe from teleological underpinnings. Further,
these basic propositions are not prone to being tested by, nor serve
as, criteria of meaning. Wright avoided offering a meaning of truth,
and did not generalize on the nature of thinking (Letters 325).

Wright's prefiguring of what later came to be known in 1897 as
Jamesian pragmatism and Peirce's more trenchant "pragmaticism," can be
best understood if one relates Wright to his legal minded friends and
fellow members of the Metaphysical Club. This vigor of thought and
stimulus to study was carried into and from the conversations at the
Metaphysical Club due to the presence of the lawyers in the group:
Holmes, St. John Green, Warner and Fiske. It was especially with
Nicholas St. John Green, who also taught at Harvard Law School
(1870-1873), and was an instructor in philosophy, that the shared use
of Alexander Bain's and J.S. Mill's texts would have prompted
conversation on the applicability of facts, actions and rights. This
direction of thought is present in Green's article "Proximate and
Remote Causes", from the American Law Review of 1870. With Green and
Holmes, Wright also shared a closer bond of the care for precision in
the use of language, and in the words of Green, "a frequent cause of
perplexity in law is the loose way in which legal terms are used, the
same term being used to express different things" (Green, Essays and
Notes on the Law of Torts and Crime, p. 146). A similar position on
this precision in the use of language can be seen between Oliver
Wendell Holmes and Wright and in how Holmes saw law as a study of
"prediction, the prediction of the incidence of the public force
through the instrumentality of the courts" (Holmes, Collected Legal
Papers, 167). This was Holmes' position from as early as 1871. Soon
after that C.S. Peirce gave a talk at the Metaphysical Club, (November
1872) where he wished to pool the many conversations and ideas. Six
year later, and two years after Wright's death, Peirce published two
versions of this talk as the articles, "The Fixation of Belief", and
"How to Make Our Ideas Clear."
a. Mathematics and Adequate Nomenclature

Wright published ten articles in the field of mathematics. According
to his friend and fellow mathematician Charles Sanders Peirce
(1839-1914), Wright was a "thorough mathematician" (Ryan 2000: 188).
This was indeed high praise coming from C.S. Peirce who was the son of
Prof. Benjamin Peirce (1809-1880), the great American mathematician of
the nineteenth century and teacher of Wright at Harvard between 1848
and 1852. Prof. Benjamin Peirce also publicly praised Wright at one of
his lectures, and the modest student never appeared in class after
that lecture (Letters 122). There is no doubt that Wright was
influence by Prof. Peirce's view of mathematics as the supreme
science, a science that, in Peirce's words "draws necessary
conclusions." Wright even defended Benjamin Peirce in an article left
unsigned in The Nation, entitled "Mathematics in Court" (September 19,
1867).

Wright's talent for mathematics was seen early on in his years at the
High School and Select High School in Northampton, MA, and at Harvard
College, where he took the elective in mathematics in his junior year.
His essay on "Ancient Geometry" was mentioned in the 1852 Commencement
Program. Wright continually strove for the precision of terms and form
which he found so clearly present in mathematics. In a letter dated
October 1864, (most likely to F.E. Abbot) he stated that
"mathematician are the most exacting of purists, since, having none
but perfectly adequate nomenclature, they are intolerant of, and, as
one may confess, also insensible to any thought not set forth in exact
form." In Wright's substantial review article entitled "The Conflict
of Studies" (Philosophical Discussions 267-295), one may explore
Wright's perspective on the use and abuse of mathematics and its
teaching. We find how Wright championed the imaginative use of memory,
a training that would loosen it from the shackles of projected route
memorization. Wright's coupling of mathematics and pedagogical
techniques with the recreational are telling. It is here that his
influence on friends must have been most powerful, because he believed
that play is a useful character or drive that overcomes the repetitive
and droll "irksome exercises". An example of this exchange exists in a
letter written by C.S. Peirce to Wright dated September 2, 1865 found
at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, PA. Peirce's
letters explains three card tricks, fully described and then explained
by mathematical calculus. This, one quickly realizes is how
mathematical genius is seen at play, and how such exuberance was
transformed into high-level critique and discussion. It is unfortunate
that Wright's response is lost to us.

The earliest of the mathematical works of Wright is on "The Prismoidal
Formula" (The Mathematical Monthly, October, 1858). In April 1859 he
published the article "The Most Thorough Uniform Distribution of
Points About an Axis", a study of the form of distributions found in
the arrangement of leaves around their stem (Phyllotaxis). In October
of 1871, in Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
Wright published a more complete study of this problem entitled "The
Uses and Origin of the Arrangement of Leaves in Plants". Posthumously,
and due to the influence of Prof. Asa Gray (a former professor of his
of natural history at Harvard College) Wright's study "A Popular
Explanation (for those who understand Botany) of the Mathematical
Nature of Phyllotaxis" was published in the American Naturalist (June
1876). Mention of these studies, as well as a wonderful summary for
those who are not very familiar with botany or mathematics, are
included in a letter dated August 1, 1871 to Charles Darwin, who
expressed much interest in Wright's studies on phyllotaxis (Letters
232-233). In June of the same year, he wrote an article on "The
Economy and Symmetry of the Honey-Bee's cells" for The Mathematical
Monthly where he analyses the geometrical properties of the hive-cell,
which as excavation and structures share the angles of the plane of
120 degrees, or four-thirds of a right angle to any other. These
aforementioned articles conclude Wright's contributions to The
Mathematical Monthly.

In April 1864, Wright reviewed Prof. Chauvenet's text "A Manual of
Spherical and Practical Astronomy" for the North American Review,
which he praises as a welcomed text for students in astronomical
observation and calculation, replete with a history of the science,
adding also praise for Chauvenet's work on Spherical trigonometry, the
problem of Eclipses, Occultations, and the numerical method of dealing
with the values of observed quantities. Wright was always conscious of
how his desire for precise terms and definitions became strained when,
as a mathematician, he found himself out of his element (Letters 67).
He left us a remarkable statement on this danger, from a letter to
Miss Grace Norton dated January 1874, which is worth quoting in full.
"There is ease and ease – two kinds – in understanding [with the
degree of precision which analytic habits of thought demand].
Mathematics is easy in one way, – cannot be misunderstood, except by
gross carelessness; is no more vague than a boulder; is either out of,
or in, the mind entirely. To make progress among a heap of boulders
is, you know, far from easy, in one way; but it is easier than walking
on water, or than clearing the rough ground by flight. It is easy to
dream of making such a flight, and to have every thing else in our
dream as rational as real things; and it is easy to be actually
carried on the made ways of familiar phraseology over difficulties
which we are interested in only as a picturesque under-view, but which
do not tempt us to explore them with the chemist's reagents, the
mineralogist's tests, or the geologist's hammer" (Letters 254). In
this short statement we may gauge Chauncey Wright's philosophical
position, and his main line of critique against metaphysics, theology,
and fanciful system building, which strove as was previously
mentioned, to "turn[ ] history into mythology, and science into mythic
cosmology" (Ryan 2000:3, p. 61).
b. Cosmology as "Cosmic Weather"

Wright's interest and writings on cosmology are an excellent example
of his approach to the problems of philosophical speculation and
scientific research. The tension between these areas of study is
nowhere clearer than in these writings. From these meditations, Wright
coined the metaphor "cosmic weather", a most apt term to reveal the
continual presence of irregularities as product of the causal
complexity, mixture of law and accident in the continual production of
natural and physical causes unhinged from a teleological framework and
continually prone to what he called "counter-movements" – or the
action and counter-action and cycles of convertible and reversible
mechanical energy. For Wright, "the physical laws of nature are … the
only real type of the general order in the universe … showing at every
turn the ultimate play of action and counter-action in the balanced
forces from which they spring" (Letters 177). These reflections are
also revealed in Wright's conceptual patience and theoretical doubts
on issues seemingly complex, for instance, the nature of volitional
determinations and human actions which he believed were also product
of the law of causation, but more embroiled with metaphors of "good"
and "evil," which raise the level of ambiguity by the increased
reliance on metaphorical characters. For Wright "it is easy to be
actually carried on the made ways of familiar phraseology over
difficulties which we are interested in only as a picturesque
under-view, but which do not tempt us to explore them with the
chemist's reagents, the mineralogist's tests, or the geologist's
hammer" (Letters 254). Wright uses the difficulty of predicting the
weather to focus the problem that "we do not hope to predict the
weather with certainty, though this is probably a much simpler problem
[than those of ethics, metaphysics, and theology]" (Letters 74). For
Wright, phenomena, from the simplest organism to the grander phenomena
of the universe, find observational repose in the complex connections
of the law of evolution (non-teleologically construed), freed from the
metaphorical disputes of faith, morality, and metaphysics. For a view
of Wright's position on this, and on the principle of
"counter-movements" his article "A Physical Theory of the Universe" in
Philosophical Discussions, serves as a prime example. Wright's
position is further clarified in his article "The Genesis of Species",
where he writes, "the very hope of experimental philosophy, its
expectation of constructing the science into a true philosophy of
nature, is based on the 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 meditation"
(Philosophical Discussions 131). Wright's use of "weather" was picked
up by William James in The Will to Believe (1896), for which his
friend C.A. Strong wrote on November 12, 1905, "if external happenings
are weather, then internal happenings … are so too, and they maintain
themselves not primarily because they are true but because they are
useful" (James, Correspondence, 2003: 11).

Contained in Philosophical Discussions there are three major
reflections on the issue of cosmology and a true philosophy of nature,
"A Physical Theory of the Universe" (July 1864), "Speculative
Dynamics" (June 1875), and "A Fragment on Cause and Effect" (1873). In
Wright's uncollected articles, one may also profit from reading "The
Winds and the Weather" (The Nation, January 1858), "Ennis on the
Origin of the Stars" (The Nation, March, 1867), "The Correlation and
Conservation of Gravitation and Heat, and the some of the effect of
these Forces on the Solar System" (North American Review, July 1867),
and "The Positive Philosophy" (North American Review, January 1868).

From Wright's earliest piece, "The Winds and the Weather" (1858), an
essay-review of three texts, he states that "the study of climates is
… the first step towards the solution of the problem of the weather",
yet, he adds "the weather makes the most reckless excursions from its
averages…" Weather is nothing but the "perturbations of climate" where
one must track the periodic and prevailing winds, a first feature of
regularity noticed by Halley as trade-winds, and product of the
"unequal distribution of the sun's heat in different latitudes". Where
Wright's forward looking view of cosmology enters his review-essay is
when he notes the "disturbing [second-order] accidents", namely,
"effects of the distributions themselves upon the action of the
disturbing agencies." As part of the idea of "counter-movements",
Wright believes that "some of the outward changes of nature are
regular and periodic, while others without law or method, are
apparently adapted by their diversity to draw out the unlimited
capacities and varieties of life … as organic nature approaches a
regulated confusion, the more it tends to bring forth that perfect
order, of which fragments appear in the incomplete system of actual
organic life." In a similar vein, Wright saw the vast expanse of the
nebulae and stars, in the "operations of secondary causes" that works
with, yet as a check on, the simplistic theory of spiritualistic
cosmic evolution most always prefaced by the ever deceptive yet
charming metaphor: "In the beginning…."

In "Ennis on the Origin of the Stars" (The Nation, March 1867), Wright
questions the facile understanding of the "law of motion" and the
misstep of writers in seeking the origin of such laws from the nebular
hypothesis and the interaction of its parts; a fault, he believes, of
the author's failure to employ previous accomplishments in the history
of science. This is a similar criticism he leveled against Ethan
Chapin's "The Correlation and Conservation of Gravitation and Heat"
(North American Review, 1867). This reveals Wright's belief in the
"guidance of results already reached", which would eliminate the many
false moves in "retracing our steps, and remodeling our fundamental
ideas". Upon the path of results already reached, Wright would add
that "no one is bound to maintain any hypotheses to the exclusion of
any other, until it is proved to be true", and as part of his
principle of "counter-movements" adds that "enlightened faith … does
not demand as the condition of assent the force of irresistible
demonstration, nor does it deceive itself with fallacious arguments"
("The Positive Philosophy" in North American Review, January 1868). In
Wright's review of Fendler's "The Mechanism of the Universe and its
Primary Effort-exerting Powers" (The Nation, June 1875), we find a
more sustained criticism of the abuse of nomenclatures when
mathematical definitions are allowed to slide into speculative
metaphysics. These processes, as Wright mentions in "A Fragment on
Cause and Effect" (1873) are always "causes [as] a continuation of
conditions, or a concurrence of things, relations and events."
Throughout his writings on cosmology, Wright maintained a healthy
tension with his non-developmental, ateleological view of
"counter-movements". It was no doubt a source of conceptual worry for
the builders of philosophical systems of the time, H. Spencer, J.
McCosh, F. Bowen, F.E. Abbot, J. Fiske, and C.S. Peirce.
c. Evolution as Theory of Natural Selection

Of all the articles of Chauncey Wright we find the most sustained flow
in his reflections on the structure of evolutionary thought, which he
saw and defended as Darwin's theory of natural selection, a theory
stripped of any a priori grounds or teleological ends, and as an
on-going cumulative use of experiment, observation and argument.

The essay articles that cover Wright's reflection on evolutionary
theory are "Limits of Natural Selection", "The Genesis of Species",
"Evolution by Natural Selection", and "Evolution of
Self-Consciousness", all of which are collected in the volume
Philosophical Discussions. An earlier article entitled "Natural
Theology as a Positive Science" sets the stage for understanding
Wright's elimination of all religious dogmatism from the work of
science, especially the latter's misuse of final causes, ends, and
intelligent design, which amount to the "theologian's perversion of
language." "Evolution by Natural Selection" was a critique of the
English Jesuit Naturalist George Mivart (1827-1900), which Wright had
sent to Darwin on June 21, 1871, and which Darwin mentions and praises
in The Descent of Man, stating that "nothing can be clearer than the
way in which you discuss the permanence and fixity of species"
(Letters 230-231). The article "Genesis of Species" was so admired by
Darwin that he took it upon himself to publish it in England. Darwin
wrote, "Will you provisionally give me permission to reprint your
article as a pamphlet?" In a following letter Darwin added "I have
been looking over your review again; and it seems to me and others so
excellent that, if I receive your permission, with a title, I will
republish it, notwithstanding that I am afraid pamphlets on literary
or scientific subjects never will sell in England" (Letters 231).
Together with these studies, Wright also provided us with two brief
book notices, one entitled, "Books Relating to the Theory of
Evolution" (The Nation, February, 1875), which serves as a primer to
the literature surrounding the "unsurpassable quality" of Darwin's
1872 edition of The Origin of Species. In the words of Wright's friend
James Bradley Thayer, "Darwin was a thinker who fairly drew from
[Wright] an unbounded homage; and this lasted till his death; I never
heard him speak of any one with such ardor of praise" (Letters 30).
Wright met Charles Darwin in London on September 5, 1872 (Letters
246-247), and exchanged many letters with Darwin, the most revealing
written on August 29, 1872, September 3, 1874, and February 24, 1875
(Letters 240-246, 304-318, 331-338).
3. Theory of Knowledge

None of Wright's essays or reviews contains a full account of his
theory of knowledge (epistemology). Wright did not generalize on the
nature of thinking or on cosmology as generalized evolution. One can
see his theory of knowledge as weighing in on the side of an empirical
view, one that must be tested towards more precise types of
verification, and at all costs avoiding any metaphysical trapping of
"origins". In combining his letters and the mention of the problems of
knowledge throughout his published articles, one may gain a picture of
his leaning towards empirical verification, that is, where beliefs are
continually tested by shared concrete experiences. A primer to
Wright's view of the problems of knowledge and its shifts from ancient
to modern science is seen in the first eleven pages of his 1865
article "The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer" (Philosophical Discussions
43-96). While verification is essential to scientific method, Wright
believed that "there is still room for debate as to what constitutes
verification in the various departments of philosophical inquiry"
(Philosophical Discussions 45). Even as an empiricist, from but not
blindly wedded to, the tradition of David Hume, Wright would not
settle for an undisputed base of knowledge, but was more convinced
that, in shared common experience (working hypotheses), and the study
of how other individual perspectives interact, one would be allowed
more profitable hypotheses. On this issue of hypotheses one must
carefully follow what Wright says in reference to Darwin, that is,
that he was "no more a maker of hypotheses than Newton was", and that
hypotheses have "no place in experimental philosophy" (Philosophical
Discussions 136). For Wright, hypotheses are "trial questions …
interrogations of nature; they are scaffolding which must be taken
down as they are succeeded by the tests, the verifications of
observation and experiment" (Philosophical Discussions 384).

A fairly detailed view of Wright's position on the theory of knowledge
is seen in his letter to F.E. Abbot, dated Oct 28, 1867 (Letters
123-135), where Wright argues that an "impression is cognized only
when brought into consciousness", and sees consciousness as a process
of accumulated, shifting, and comparative laws. In "Limits of Natural
Selection" (October, 1870), Wright states, "Matter and mind co-exist.
There are no scientific principles by which either can be determined
to be the cause of the other." Consciousness is co-operative memory
(or trained imagination), which interacts with the senses and works
its laws as "grounds of expectation" (Letters 131). This allows Wright
to circumvent both the closed question of the finality of knowledge,
and the specter of relativism. While he believed in grounds, he was
opposed to asserting and defending them dogmatically. Two important
articles that touch on this through the mention of various theories
are Wright's "The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer" and "McCosh on
Tyndall" in Philosophical Discussions 43-96 and 375-384. Wright also
focuses on the "form of truth" (Letters 300), where accurate
statements lead us to shared and testable accounts of knowledge.
Wright mentions Socrates' attitude, that "there is no merit in any
really known truth, however sacred to any one, greater than clearness
and adequacy of expression" (Letters 300), for "I wonder whether you
get any adequate idea from [an] inadequate sentence" (Letters 270).

Another telling letter on issue and upshots of theories of knowledge
is Wright's letter to Miss Grace Norton dated August 12, 1874. There
he writes, "… the human heart is a gallery of the future, illuminated
by the light of its instincts and experience reflected from pictures
and images of the future and the universal. As the repository and
agency of all rationally conceived ends, it is the only rational final
cause to itself, however serviceable it may be incidentally to other
forms of life or living beings. The uses of other forms of life to the
human are not final causes, though the uses of any forms of life to
the universe would properly be final, if it were true that the
universe is served by them in any other way than to make it up, or be
among the threads that are woven in its endless combinations – its
formal rather than its final causes" (Letters 292). Along with this
telling vision, Wright also warns that "to demand the submission of
the intellect to the mystery of the simplest and most elementary
relation of cause and effect in phenomena, or the restraint of its
inquisitiveness on reaching an ultimate law of nature, is asking too
much, in that it is a superfluous demand", and adds that "explanation
cannot go, and does not rationally seek to go, beyond such facts [the
connection of elements in phenomena] …" ("The Evolution of
Self-Consciousness" in Philosophical Discussions 247).

"The Evolution of Self-Consciousness" (April, 1873) was Wright's most
accomplished study, and one personally prompted by Darwin, and the
question of the links and differences in animal instinct and human
intelligence. Wright called this field of study "pyschozoology", where
he set out to show how there was "no act of self-consciousness,
however elementary [that] may have realized before man's first
self-conscious act in the animal world …" (Philosophical Discussions
200). In this study Wright was clearly opposed to any mysticism in
theory or religious application, seeing how it leads to vagueness, and
teleological assumptions. He instead focused on the difference in
degree between the stimulus and use of signs in physical and
phenomenal experience, a direct application of Darwin's
stimulus-response conception. Wright saw the desire to communicate in
both animal and humans; though by degree, the animal's activity grasps
the "signs" without knowledge of the sign as a sign, thus relying on
"outward attention" as the main support of its common-sense nature.
Humans form "reflective attention", that is, signs that are recognized
and related to what they signify, both in past use and as projected
future use. This is possible when signs are recognized and manipulated
through memory able to distinguish between outward and inward signs,
thus as "representative imaginations of objects and their relations
[kinds]" (Philosophical Discussions 208). It is through this double
attentiveness that the "germ of the distinctive human form of
self-consciousness" was planted (Philosophical Discussions 210).
4. History of Philosophy

Wright was by no means a historian of philosophy in the tradition of
those influenced and trained in Germany, as seen years later in the
Harvard professor Josiah Royce (1855-1916). However, as a catalyst for
the "Cambridge Septum Club" and the "Metaphysical Club" there were
ample occasions throughout the meetings to mention figures and
theories that pertained to the history of philosophy. As early as
1857, C. S. Peirce recalls how he would debate philosophy almost daily
with Wright, and most regularly on the work of Mill (Menand 2001, 221,
477n.42). From what we have in Wright's letters, figures from the
history of philosophy were mostly focused upon a desire to point out,
question, or resolve a conceptual problem or misgiving, rather than
spin a narrative of historical schools and conceptual debts. As a case
in point, and to show how Wright maintained a similar position
throughout the areas of intellectual interest, it is worth pointing
out that Wright, using a term in David Masson's "Recent British
Philosophy", which he reviewed in 1866, believed that "the ontological
passion" is "very nearly akin to what, in the modern sense of the
word, is expressed by 'dogmatism' [which when coupled with] his
[Masson's] scheme of classification … discovers the relations between
opinions of [the] philosophers [in question]" (Philosophical
Discussions 344). It is clear that Wright would see any history of
philosophy as a drive to classify prone to a motive of justification.
The unfolding of the history of philosophy in itself was not a
necessary technique for Wright, mostly due to his non-academic
employment, yet also by the nature of his wide scope of interests, of
which philosophy proper was but another tool and set of problems. One
possible reason for this critical position and avoidance of such
"histories" is that, for him, "the mythic instinct slips into the
place of chronicles at every opportunity," so much so that he claims,
"all history is written on dramatic principle" (Philosophical
Discussions 70-71). Wright was not prone to enchantment over
explanation, and thus not susceptible to a philosophy of history as an
inexorable philosophical progression. Yet, through his letters and the
Philosophical Discussions, and in uncollected publications, he did
mention many figures that make up a telling configuration of
philosophers. As part of the configuration we find a portion of a
reading list and Wright's favorites beginning with Emerson, who he
also heard lecture on the poets at Harvard, then Sir Henry Maine's
Ancient Law, Bacon's Novum Organum, Whewell's History of the Inductive
Science, List's, Political Economy, Hamilton's Lectures on
Metaphysics, Lectures on Logic, and Philosophy of the Conditioned,
Mill's Logic, and Examination of Sir William Hamilton, Alexander Bain,
(on which Wright based his lectures on psychology at Harvard) and of
course Darwin's Origin of Species and the Descent of Man. Among the
philosophers mentioned in his Letters, not including Wright's
contemporaries, one finds, Bacon, Bain, Fichte, Hamilton, Hegel, Kant,
J.S. Mill, Occam, Plato, and by far with the most mentions, Socrates.
With the addition of Aristotle, Locke, and Zeno, the mentions are
fairly similar in his Philosophical Discussions.

The following citation could be read as Wright's caution in
approaching the history of philosophy as a meta-narrative, and as a
critique of the undertow of a Hegelian brand of mythic history. "All
cosmological speculations are strictly teleological. We never can
comprehend the whole of a concrete series of events. What arrests our
attention in it is what constitutes the parts of an order either real
or dramatic, or are determined by interests which are spontaneous in
human life. Our speculations about what we have not really observed,
to which we supply order and most of the facts, are necessarily
determined by some principle of order in our minds. Now the most
general principle which we can have is this: that the concrete series
shall be an intelligible series in its entirety; thus alone can it
interest and attract our thoughts and arouse rational curiosity" ("The
Philosophy of Herbert Spencer" in Philosophical Discussions 71).
Wright's sharpest critique of the metaphysical pretensions of order
can be seen in his essay "German Darwinism" (September 9, 1875 in
Philosophical Discussions 398-405).

It is likely that the most discussed critical position of Wright on
the history of philosophy would have been a study not only of concepts
and methods, but also motives. "The questions of philosophy proper are
human desires and fears and aspirations – human emotions – taking an
intellectual form" (Philosophical Discussions 50). This reveals
Wright's more sociological and psychological interest in the
conditions for the pursuit of certain theories and methods over
others. "We do not", he wrote, "inquire what course has led to
successful answers in science, but what motives have prompted the
pertinent questions" (Philosophical Discussions 48). Further he adds,
"philosophy proper should be classed with the Religions and with the
Fine Arts, and estimated rather by the dignity of its motives, and the
value it directs us to, than by the value of its own attainment"
(Philosophical Discussions 52). This is again clearly stated in
Wright's review-essay "Lewes's Problems of Life and Mind" in
Philosophical Discussions, pages 366-368, where he mentions issues
with "method" from Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Bacon, Leibniz, Locke
and Newton. What Wright shows us is that "those who take the most
active part in the philosophical discussions of their day have
enlisted early in life in one or the other of two great schools
[Platonic or Aristotelian], inspired predominately by one or the other
of two distinct sets of philosophical motives, which we may
characterize briefly as motives of defense in questioned sentiments,
and motives of scientific or utilitarian inquisitiveness"
(Philosophical Discussions 367).

For Wright, a history of philosophy would be an exacting engagement in
discussion seeking to make the study of other minds part of the
particular goods of human life, and as such would need to study how
"philosophical stand-points" are but a parallax of previous doctrines
(see Letters 124). Such a discursive history of philosophy (perhaps
even "dialogical") would require a "clearness and adequacy of
expression" (Letters 300).
5. Pedagogy and the Philosophy of Education

Chauncey Wright's "The Conflict of Studies" is a long review article
of Isaac Todhunter's (1820-1884) The Conflict of Studies, and Other
Essays on Subjects connected with Education (1873). Todhunter was a
mathematical lecturer at St. John's College, Cambridge. The review
appeared in The North American Review, July 1875, and is collected in
Philosophical Discussions. Wright's review was part of the ongoing
debate on American educational reform during the mid-nineteenth
century. Wright was privy to some of these changes, first as a student
of Harvard College from 1848 to 1852, and then in 1870-1871 and
1874-1875 of Harvard's early experiments in invited professional
lecturers, under its then president and advocate of the Elective
system, Charles W. Eliot.

Isaac Todhunter's essay "The Conflict of Studies" notes the call for
"useful knowledge" current in higher education, framing it as
diffusion for and among the "humbler classes" (Todhunter 1873, 1).
Todhunter, a conservative in the eyes of Wright, belongs to the line
of Oxford and Cambridge masters who looked upon the growth of useful
knowledge and the experimental sciences as inferior to what was taught
at the 'wealthy college or university". Todhunter saw this difference
reflected in the structures and rigor of competitive examinations,
remarking that "we must not expect boys from the humbler classes to
excel in the more expensive luxuries of education" (Todhunter, 1873,
21). Together with his marginalizing of the new experimental sciences,
his dislike of the inclusion of any practical focus on the success or
influence of mathematical study in practical life, and his disbelief
in the powers of natural history or natural philosophy in raising a
student's attention to related pursuits, Todhunter stands in an
opposite camp from Chauncey Wright. Wright responds to this with an
insightful characterization of a letter of a young Union officer.
"Command of the lower memory is doubtless improved by the mastery of
some one or two subjects; the more special and narrow they are, the
better, perhaps, for saving time, and even if they do not belong to
what is commonly accounted essential to a liberal education. […] A
young officer of the Union army in our late struggle, in a letter
written on the evening before the battle in which his life was
sacrificed, attributed his previous successes, and rapid promotion to
responsible duties, to a six months' study of turtles at the
Zoölogical Museum of Harvard University, which was undertaken merely
from the youthful instinct of mastery, or appreciation of the value of
discipline, and was interrupted by the breaking out of the war and the
young man's enlistment in the service. Perhaps, however, the
independence of character which determined this choice of means for
discipline was the real source of the success which the youth too
modestly attributed to the discipline itself" (Philosophical
Discussions, 294).

The conflict of studies can be understood not only as the contrast
between old curriculum and the more modern elective studies, but more
profoundly as the conflict of the employment of types of memory, which
Wright is clear in pointing out. "Writing and artificial memory are
often, I think, in the way of a better sort of memory which holds what
is worth retaining by more real ties" (Letters 201).

Wright unfolds what he considers to be aspects of a liberal education,
and how a philosophy of mathematics can be re-employed towards a
reform of general liberal education. The areas would be: i) the
perfection of symbolism, ii) the use (applicability) of notation
(symbols) to other sciences, iii) usefulness as the "objective
ulterior value" of modern mathematics, and iv) where "useful
knowledge" is that which is free from the mimicry of facts (cramming)
and instead, focused on the moment of 'selection" or the "utility of
non-utilitarian motives." For Wright, always cautious of his
definitions, cramming is "a given amount of studious attention, either
rational or merely mnemonic, given to a subject exclusively and for a
short time" and this "gives the mind a different and a less persistent
or valuable hold on the subject than the same amount and kind of
attention spread over a longer time and interrupted by other pursuits"
(Philosophical Discussions, 288). The focus on "selection" spread over
a longer period of time, combines Wright's evolutionary studies with
the vision of keeping philosophy alive as the love of study, and as a
"guest" not an "inmate" of the corporate spirit of the university or
the "pittances of schoolmasters."

Wright suggests a healthy dose of repetition, understood as a second
mode of memory which would entail: i) the repeated acts of direct
attention, (as repetition and intensity of impressions), ii) the
repeated recalls or recollection, which has the variety of
association, and repeated acts of voluntary recollection, or the
active exercise of memory. This last mode needs "interposed intervals
and diversions of attention," which strengthen the more far-reaching
constructive associations of thought (essential/rational), allowing
the growth of reason. Such an understanding of the growth of reason
and the re-tooling of the use of memory is directed against
Todhunter's idea that students should not question the statements of
tutors, which for Wright entails shying away from appreciating
evidence and learning from how experiments might also fail.
Todhunter's antiseptic vision of examinable experiments, where failure
is seen as a static component, runs counter to the manifold processes
involved in the love of study championed by Wright. "I venture to
volunteer the advice that, in teaching philosophy, it is well to call
in question and refute every thing you can, with the aid of collateral
reading, in order that the young [students] may never forget that they
are not studying their catechisms,–not merely studying to acquire true
and settled doctrines, but mainly to strengthen their understanding,
to learn to think, and doubt, and inquire with equanimity" (Letters
120).

Wright champions the "far-reaching constructive association of
thought" (retentive memory), not as Todhunter believed, simple memory
as exercised and practiced in the repetition of examinations as
"temporary associations" (or recollection). The lower order of simple
memory is not conducive to what Wright saw as the complex ends of
study, that is, the "satisfaction of thought itself as a mental
exercise." What Wright grants as a testing of memory in conjunction
with intuition, is raised by his example of the child's memory of
stories via contiguity and consecutiveness (retentiveness), versus a
student's memory for isolated facts in comparative mythology
(recollection).

Wright suggests that the student be freed from the mere exercise of
"simple memory" (or simple faith) by working with the "direct effect
of illustrations … to aid the understanding and imagination," which as
part of the "ladder of the intellect" is made of the movement and
counter-movements from the general to the particular, the abstract to
the concrete and "to return again" (which includes the particular seen
in the stages of experimental practices). "Only enough of discipline
in the actual practice of experiments to enable the student to study
his text-book intelligibly seems to us desirable for the purposes of a
general education" (Philosophical Discussions 276).

Part of what this experimental practice entails is the use of what is
recreational, that is, the fondness or love of study construed by a
play-impulse. This is firmly opposed in Todhunter's position. Instead,
Wright (in Darwinian fashion) sees the aspect of the recreational (or
re-associative) as what will have "habit to secure attractiveness,"
where play is a useful character, or drive that overcomes the
repetitive and droll "irksome exercises" (Letters 201).

The larger arena of debate, as Wright saw it, centered on the
University's duties to "mankind or to their several nations," which
entailed five related problems. The first is whether higher general
university education should take on the form of a simple curriculum,
or a variety of courses. The next problem must address the question of
what constitutes a liberal education, which in turn will prompt the
problem of the ends of a liberal education, which will lead to the
fourth problem, that is, how these ends are to translate through a
general education or specific studies found in lower school training.
Wright's perspective becomes clear in questioning the rather
simplistic use of "ends," geared, as he saw it, more by the "customs
and institutions" within which the writers of reform (and the
conservatives) are caught. Wright suggests that the problem of
manifold ends requires a "scientific analysis of the experience,"
which is a very sociological view. "It is quite true that the great
qualities required and developed in philosophers by original research
in experimental sciences are not product, or even approached, by the
repetition of their experiments … Nevertheless we attribute much more
value to a first-hand acquaintance with experimental processes than
[Todhunter] appears to do. [Even] failures have in them an important
general lesson, especially useful in correcting impressions and mental
habits formed by too exclusive attention to abstract studies …"
(Philosophical Discussions 274).
6. Recollections, Influence, and Critical Reception

A notice in the Hampshire Gazette, dated October 5, 1875, honoring
Wright, mentions how his teacher at the Select High School from
Northampton, Prof. David S. Sheldon "kindly and successfully
suppressed [Wright's rather deplorable early literary-poetic essays]
and so it seems turned a very bad poet into a very great philosopher."
In Wright's Letters J.B. Thayer, a classmate at Northampton High
School shares what was reported in the notice, by yet another
classmate, which describes how Prof. Sheldon "led all his pupils out
into the fields and woods and taught them to observe the facts of
nature, the life of plants and habits of birds, and insect, the
movements of the heavenly bodies, the phenomena of the clouds …"
Wright remembered this fondly, and in his Harvard College class-book
of 1858 wrote of his inspired and zealous teacher and the specimens
collected on these excursion through the wilds of Northampton. Though
the collection has been lost, Wright retained the care and detail for
these observations from Nature, especially seen in his letter to the
daughter of Mr. Norton, Sara, dated September 1, 1875, eleven days
before he died (Letters 353-354).

Wright was remembered with great affection by each of his friends, due
to his good nature and talent for Socratic dialogue. Through the
Letters this quality comes alive. A perceptive description of Wright's
person and style is found in John Fiske's essay "Chauncey Wright"
(Ryan 2000:3). Fiske writes, "his essays and review-article were
pregnant with valuable suggestions, which he was wont to emphasize so
slightly that their significance might easily pass unheeded; and such
subtle suggestions made so large a part of his philosophical style
that, if any of them chanced to be overlooked by the reader, the point
and bearing of the entire argument was liable to be misapprehended."
Further he adds, "there was something almost touching in the endless
patience with which he would strive in conversation to make abstruse
matters clear to ordinary minds … [and] one of the most marked
features of Mr. Wright's style of thinking was his insuperable
aversion to all forms of teleology … [and] more often he called
himself a Lucretian [and] sharply attacked Anaxagoras for introducing
creative design into the universe in order to bring coherence out of
chaos. What need, he argued, to imagine a supernatural agency in order
to get rid of primeval chaos, when we have no reason to believe that
the primeval chaos ever had an existence save as a figment of the
metaphysician!" In conclusion, Fiske wrote that "to have known such a
man is an experience one cannot forget or outlive. To have had him
pass away, leaving so scanty a record of what he had it in him to
utter, is nothing less than a public calamity" (Ryan 2000:3, pp.
5-19).

William James also contributed a piece in The Nation upon Wright's
death, where he wrote that "Mr. Wright belonged to the precious band
of genuine philosophers, and among them few can have been as
completely disinterested as he. Add to this eminence his tireless
amiability, his beautiful modesty, his affectionate nature and freedom
from egotism, his childlike simplicity in worldly affairs, and we have
the picture of a character of which his friends feel more than ever
now the elevation and purity" (Ryan 2000:3, p. 4). Yet there was one
mostly negative response to Wright from Borden Parker Bowne
(1847-1910) written a few years after Wright's death. It mostly
defends his position against which Wright was critical, and seeking to
place Wright in the camp of a crude empiricist. The article is of
interest due to the effort to mention the history of philosophy with
which Wright was engaged, and for which Prof. Bowne chides him for
being anachronistic, lacking and narrow in historical study, and
accuses him of being a mere critic, not a system-builder. If one adds
to this Wright's ateleological predisposition, his view of the belief
in a God as confession of one's speculative convictions and
productions of education and experience, and in the possibility of
irreligious morality, we gain part of the view of why his works were
also difficult to place in the then budding neo-Hegelian religious
system-builder of Classical American philosophy.

As the catalyst of the "Cambridge Septum Club" (1856, 1858, 1859), and
especially for the "Metaphysical Club" (1872), Chauncey Wright was, as
C.S. Peirce put it, the "intellectual boxing master". As William James
stated, Wright's best work was "done in conversation; and in the acts
and writing of the many friends he influenced, his spirit will, in one
way or another, as the years roll on, be more operative than it ever
was in direct production" (James in Ryan 2000: 1-2). As part of a
splendid recollection of Wright as a modest, simple and well disposed
friend, and as a "philosopher of the antique or Socratic type", James'
tribute captures what Wright's presence must have inspired. Where the
perceptive and enthusiastic James overstated is in how Wright's "acts
and writing" would "be more operative than it ever was in direct
production". Apart from the few direct mentions in the works of
William James in The Principles of Psychology (Preface), The Will to
Believe, in Pragmatism, and once in his Letters, Wright was not made
part of the emerging philosophical renaissance at Harvard.

There is a similarity in the immediate fate of Wright's works, and
those of C.S. Peirce, though the works and subsequent influence of
Peirce in American philosophy was saved from oblivion thanks to the
generosity of James and the care and philosophical and historical
sensibility of Royce. The legacy of the works of Wright is owed to his
friends J.B. Thayer, who collected his letters, and privately printed
the volume in 1877, and his friend C. E. Norton, who collected his
principle writings under the title Philosophical Discussions (1877).
Yet, thirty-six review-articles remain in the journals within which
Wright had published, from the years 1858 to 1876.

In a letter to William James, dated November 21, 1875, C.S. Peirce
stated that "as to [Wright] being obscure and all that, he was as well
known as a philosopher need desire. It is only when a philosopher has
something very elementary to say that he seeks the great public or the
great public him." Peirce then adds, "I wish I was in Cambridge for
one thing. I should like to have some talks about Wright and his ideas
and see if we couldn't get up a memorial for him. His memory deserves
it for he did a great deal for every one of us [James, Peirce, Abbot].
Other of his friends, Gurney, Norton, Peter Lesley, Asa Gray etc.,
would be wanted to do the personal and other relations. But what I am
thinking of [I don't purpose anything] is to give some resume of his
ideas and of the history of his thought" (James, The Correspondence of
William James, Vol. 4. 1995: 523-524). These talks never happened.

While both Peirce and James acknowledged their personal debt to their
"intellectual boxing master", apart from a few mentions in their
letters and in a few of James' works, no directly cited conceptual
links can be traced with scholarly confidence. While Charles Darwin
was impressed by Wright's work, and saw him as one of his clearest
readers, the untimely death of Wright ended what could have been a
more productive exchange. In Wright's letters one finds that he
possibly influenced Nicholas St. John Green in discussing the use of
the terms "duty of belief", (though reference to the author is not
provided by Thayer). Wright believed that "duty of belief" means only
those principles of conduct, and what follows from them, which
recommend themselves to all rational beings or at least to all adult
rational, human beings (Letters 342-343). One can imagine William
James being present, and then adopting this critique years later for
his text, The Will to Believe (1896). It was Nicholas St. John Green,
as Max Fisch reports, that "urged the importance of applying Alexander
Bain's definition of belief as that upon which a man is prepared to
act", and continues, "from this definition, Peirce adds, pragmatism is
scare more than a corollary" (Ryan 2000: 99, and 99n.28; 136). If C.S.
Peirce was "disposed to think of [Bain] as the grandfather of
pragmatism" (and either himself, or St. John Green as fathers), then
perhaps, one may again refer to Chauncey Wright as pragmatism's
"uncle", because Wright, more than anyone of his early fellow
thinkers, worked under the guidance of the "instinctive attraction for
living facts", as Peirce once defined pragmatism (Ryan 2000: 136,
139).
7. References and Further Readings
a. Primary Sources

* Wright, Chauncey, 1850-1875. Chauncey Wright Papers, American
Philosophical Society.
* Wright, Chauncey, 1858. "The Winds and the Weather." Atlantic
Monthly Vol. 1 (January): pp. 272-279.
* Wright, Chauncey, 1971.Philosophical Discussions, ed. Charles
Eliot Norton, (Henry Holt and Co., 1877), New York: Burt Franklin.
* Wright, Chauncey, 1971a. Letters of Chauncey Wright, ed. James
Bradley Thayer, (Cambridge 1878), New York: Burt Franklin.

b. Secondary Sources

* Anderson, Katharine, 2005. Predicting the Weather: Victorians
and the Science of Meteorology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Chambliss, J.J., 1960. "Natural Selection and Utilitarian Ethics
in Chauncey Wright", American Quarterly, 12, pp. 145-152.
* Chambliss, J.J., 1964. "Chauncey Wright's Enduring Naturalism",
American Quarterly, 16, pp. 628-635.
* Clendenning, John, 1985. The Life and Thought of Josiah Royce,
Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press.
* Cohen, Felix, S. 1962. American Thought: A Critical Sketch. New
York: Collier Books.
* Croce, P. J., 1998. Science and Religion in the Era of William
James: Eclipse of Certainty, 1820-1880,
* Eliot, Charles W., 1909. Education for Efficiency and The New
Definition of the Cultivated Man, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
* Eliot, Charles W., 1913.The Tendency to the Concrete and
Practical in Modern Education, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
* Eliot, Charles W., 1924.Late Harvest: Miscellaneous Papers
Written between Eighty and Ninety, Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press.
* Eliot, Charles W., 1969.Educational Reform, New York: Arno Press.
* Fisch, M.H., 1942. "Justice Holmes, the Prediction Theory of Law
and Pragmatism", The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 39, No. 4 (February
12), pp. 85-97.
* Fiske, John, 1902. "Chauncey Wright" in Darwanism and Other
Essays, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin andCompany.
* Flower, Elizabeth, and Murphey, Murray, G., 1977, A History of
Philosophy in America, Vol 2. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
* Gardiner, John H., 1914. Harvard, New York: Oxford University Press.
* Giuffrida, Robert Jr., 1980. "Chauncey Wright and the Problem of
Relations," Transactions of the C.S. Peirce Society, Vol. 16, No. 4
(Fall): pp. 293-308.
* Giuffrida, Robert Jr., 1988. "The Philosophical Thought of
Chauncey Wright: Edward Madden's Contribution to Wright Scholarship,"
Transactions of the C.S. Peirce Society, Vol. 24, No. 1, (Winter): pp.
37-43.
* Hawkins, Hugh, 1972. Between Harvard and America: The
Educational Leadership of Charles W. Eliot, NewYork: Oxford University
Press.
* Hill, George B., 1895. Harvard College by an Oxonian, New York:
Macmillan and Co.
* Huler, Scott, 2004. Defining the Wind: The Beaufort Scale, and
How a Nineteenth-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry, New York:
Crown Publishers.
* James. Henry, 1930. Charles W. Eliot: President of Harvard
University 1869-1909, Vols. 1 and 2, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
* James, William, 1952. Principles of Psychology, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
* James, William, 1975. Pragmatism, and The Meaning of Truth,
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
* James, William, 1992, 1995, 1999, 2000, 2003. The Correspondence
of William James, Vols. 1, 4, 7, 8, 11, Edited by Ignas K. Skrupskelis
and Elizabeth M. Berkeley, Charlottesville: University of Virginia
Press.
* Kuklick, Bruce, 1977. The Rise of American Philosophy:
Cambridge, Massachusetts 1860-1930, New Haven: Yale University Press.
* Kuklick, Bruce, 2001. A History of Philosophy in America
1720-2000, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
* Lowell, A. Lawrence, 1962. At War with Academic Traditions in
America, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
* Madden, Edward H., 1955. "The Cambridge Septem," Harvard Alumni
Bulletin, LVII, (January): 310-315.
* Madden, Edward H., 1958.The Philosophical Writings of Chauncey
Wright: Representative Selections, New York: The Liberal Arts Press.
* Madden, Edward H., 1963.Chauncey Wright and the Foundations of
Pragmatism, Seattle: University of Washington Press.
* Madden, Edward H., 1972. "Chauncey Wright and the Concept of the
Given," Transactions of the C.S. Peirce Society, Vol. 8, No. 1
(Winter): 48-52.
* Madden, Edward H., 2000.Introduction, Influence and Legacy,
Vol.3 The Evolutionary Philosophy of Chauncey Wright, Frank X. Ryan,
(ed.) London: Thoemmes Press.
* Menand, Louis, 2001. The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in
America, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
* Morison, Samuel E., 1937. Three Centuries of Harvard
(1636-1936), Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
* Perry, Ralph B., 1935. The Thought and Character of William
James, Boston: Little Brown and Company.
* Privitello, Lucio A., 2005. "Introducing the Philosophy of
Education and Pedagogy of Chauncey Wright," Transactions of the C.S.
Peirce Society, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Summer): 627-649.
* Ryan, Frank X. (ed.), 2000. The Evolutionary Philosophy of
Chauncey Wright, 3 vols. London: Thoemmes Press.
* Santayana, George, 1944. Persons and Places, New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons.
* Schneider, Herbert W., 1946. A History of American Philosophy,
New York: Columbia University Press.
* Sini, Carlo, 1972. Il Pragmatismo Americano, Bari: Editori Laterza.
* Thelin, John, R. 2004. A History of American Higher Education,
Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
* Todhunter, Isaac, 1873. The Conflict of Studies and Other Essays
on Subjects connected with Education, London: Macmillian and Co.
* White, Morton, 1972. Science and Sentiment in America:
Philosophical Thought from Jonathan Edwards to John Dewey, New York:
Oxford University Press.
* Wiener, Philip P. 1948, "The Pragmatic Legal Philosophy of N.
St. John Green (1830-76)", Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 9,
No. 1, pp. 70-92.