William James and the Art of Human Understanding

This article proposes (a) that William James (1842-1910), one of the founders of philosophical pragmatism as well as psychological science, developed a distinctive theory of human understanding, according to which all knowledge, including scientific knowledge, is ultimately based on "the finding of analogy"; (b) that this theory of human understanding underlay both his psychological and philosophical thought; and (c) that this theory depended on his artistic sensibility and experience. James's native artistic ability and interests are discussed, and his period as an artist's apprentice in the early 1860s is depicted as particularly salient to the development of his system of thought.