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Once before, as it now is again, pragmatism was a transformative, world- wide intellectual movement that championed a new paradigm of how we should think and act, not only responding more effectively to peren- nial philosophical problems but also proposing insightful approaches to meeting the challenges of the modern sciences, framing inclusive and democratic methods of making public policy, and teaching the ethical habits of inclusive, meaning-filled, growth-fostering daily living. The original American pragmatists — Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and their circle of friends known as The Metaphysical Club — invented this new intellectual paradigm in the late years of the nineteenth century, in the wake of Charles Darwin's paradigm-shattering publica- tion of On the Origin of Species and the American Civil War that destroyed the lives and hopes of many who were dear to them. Because their prag- matist paradigm fit the emerging problems of the times so well, and their books, articles, and speeches about its transformative significance were persuasive to thinkers in many other contexts, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the interdisciplinary community of scholars who were actively participating in pragmatism's development had reached international scope.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137352705_1

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