The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand
The Metaphysical Club was an informal group that met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872, to talk about ideas. Its members included Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., founder of modern jurisprudence; William James, the father of modern American psychology; and Charles Sanders Peirce, logician, scientist, and the founder of semiotics. The Club was probably in existence for about nine months. No records were kept. The one thing we know that came out of it was an idea - an idea about ideas. This book is the story of that idea. Holmes, James, and Peirce all believed that ideas are not things "out there" waiting to be discovered but are tools people invent - like knives and forks and microchips - to make their way in the world. They thought that ideas are produced not by individuals, but by groups of individuals - that ideas are social. They do not develop according to some inner logic of their own but are entirely dependent - like germs - on their human carriers and environment.
Daniel Kevles, Yale University : ". . Menand's book is an extraordinary collective biography, at once erudite and enthralling." Joan Didion: "The Metaphysical Club is brilliant, illuminating, necessary." Henry Louis Gates, Jr: "The Metaphysical Club makes a genuinely original contribution to our national self-understanding... as evocative, and precise, as a Luminist painting." Richard Poirier: "This is a richly populated, intellectually thrilling book in which America is shown to be discovering its future."
Louis Menand is a professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, a staff writer at The New Yorker, and has been a contributing editor of The New York Review of Books since 1994. This is his first book for a general readership.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780007126897 |
| ISBN 10 | 0007126891 |
| Title | The Metaphysical Club |
| Author | Louis Menand |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Year published | 2001-10-15 |
| Number of pages | 592 |
| Prizes | Winner of Pulitzer Prize History Category 2002 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |