James McCosh

James McCosh 1811-94, Scottish-American philosopher and educator, b. Ayrshire, Scotland, grad. Univ. of Edinburgh, 1833. He was called to the United States in 1868 to become president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton Univ.), and he retained the position until 1888. His successful career as administrator and teacher laid an enduring foundation for the liberal development of the college. His philosophical position was that of the Scottish school of Thomas Reid and Sir William Hamilton; he is philosophically important as the expounder of the Scottish tradition to America. Chief among his works are Method of Divine Government (1850), The Intuitions of the Mind Inductively Investigated (1860), Christianity and Positivism (1871), Scottish Philosophy from Hutchinson to Hamilton (1875), and Psychology (1886-87).

Bibliography: See W. M. Sloane, ed., The Life of James McCosh (1896).

McCosh, James (1811–94),Scottish‐born philosopher and educator, came to the U.S. to become president of the College of New Jersey (1868–88). In Scotland and at Princeton, he set forth his philosophy of Intuitionism, opposed to the doctrines of Kant and J.S. Mill. He maintained that commonsense principles or intuitions have their beginnings in simple cognition, take on singular and concrete forms, and pass into higher judgments and beliefs, to become universal and necessary principles. His philosophy led him to become a theist, and at the same time to champion the doctrine of evolution as evidence of God's method of creation. His books include The Intuitions of the Mind Inductively Investigated (1860), An Examination of Mr. J. S. Mill's Philosophy (1866), The Laws of Discursive Thought (1870), Christianity and Positivism (1871), The Scottish Philosophy (1875), and Realistic Philosophy Defended (1887).