{"id":881,"date":"2009-06-07T23:23:23","date_gmt":"2009-06-07T22:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lumen.nu\/rekveld\/wp\/?p=881"},"modified":"2009-06-07T23:24:04","modified_gmt":"2009-06-07T22:24:04","slug":"pragmatism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/?p=881","title":{"rendered":"pragmatism"},"content":{"rendered":"

A fragment of ‘Pragmatism<\/a>‘ by William James<\/a>, a book written in 1907. I found this quoted in another book about which I’ll write as soon as I find the time to finish reading it. I suppose pragmatism can be seen as a precursor to constructivism<\/a> ?<\/p>\n

“Metaphysics has usually followed a very primitive kind of quest. You
\nknow how men have always hankered after unlawful magic, and you know
\nwhat a great part, in magic, WORDS have always played. If you have
\nhis name, or the formula of incantation that binds him, you can
\ncontrol the spirit, genie, afrite, or whatever the power may be.
\nSolomon knew the names of all the spirits, and having their names,
\nhe held them subject to his will. So the universe has always
\nappeared to the natural mind as a kind of enigma, of which the key
\nmust be sought in the shape of some illuminating or power-bringing
\nword or name. That word names the universe’s PRINCIPLE, and to
\npossess it is, after a fashion, to possess the universe itself.
\n‘God,’ ‘Matter,’ ‘Reason,’ ‘the Absolute,’ ‘Energy,’ are so many
\nsolving names. You can rest when you have them. You are at the end
\nof your metaphysical quest.<\/p>\n

But if you follow the pragmatic method, you cannot look on any such
\nword as closing your quest. You must bring out of each word its
\npractical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your
\nexperience. It appears less as a solution, then, than as a program
\nfor more work, and more particularly as an indication of the ways in
\nwhich existing realities may be CHANGED.<\/p>\n

THEORIES THUS BECOME INSTRUMENTS, NOT ANSWERS TO ENIGMAS, IN WHICH
\nWE CAN REST. We don’t lie back upon them, we move forward, and, on
\noccasion, make nature over again by their aid.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A fragment of ‘Pragmatism‘ by William James, a book written in 1907. I found this quoted in another book about which I’ll write as soon as I find the time to finish reading it. I suppose pragmatism can be seen as a precursor to constructivism ? “Metaphysics has usually followed a very primitive kind of … Continue reading pragmatism<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-umwelt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joostrekveld.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}