William James Linton

William James Linton 1812-97, Anglo-American wood engraver, author, and political reformer. In 1842 he began working as a wood engraver with John Orrin Smith and produced illustrations for the newly formed London Illustrated News. An ardent radical, he helped found the Leader, expounded the principles of Mazzini in the Red Republican, and started (1851) the English Republic. Later, he returned to wood engraving and in 1867 moved to the United States and set up a printing press in New Haven, Conn.; he continued the tradition of Thomas Bewick, advocating the use of the white as well as the black line. The best wood engraver of his day in England, he contributed more than any other to the regeneration of the art in America. His publications include The Life of Thomas Paine (1839), Some Practical Hints on Wood-Engraving (1879), The History of Wood-Engraving in America (1882), and Memories (1895).

Bibliography: See biography by F. B. Smith (1973).

James, William (1842–1910) An American philosopher of the pragmatist school, notable mainly for his unusual accomplishment in significantly influencing the development both of neo-positivism and symbolic interactionism, via his view that the empirical consequences of an idea constitute its meaning. See also PRAGMATISM (PHILOSOPHY OF).

James, William (1842–1910), American philosopher, elder brother of Henry James. His views are embodied in his Principles of Psychology (1890), and show a tendency to subordinate logical proof to intuitive conviction. He was a vigorous antagonist of the idealist school of Kant and Hegel, and an empiricist who made empiricism more radical by treating pure experience as the very substance of the world. Pragmatism, for which he is best remembered by philosophers, was his method of approach to metaphysics. James's other principal works were Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), Pragmatism (1907), The Meaning of Truth (1909), a Pluralistic Universe (1909), Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912). The conclusions of his Varieties of Religious Experience are notable: ‘the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance…spiritual energy flows in and produces effects within the phenomenal world.’ He coined the phrase ‘stream of consciousness’ now widely used as a literary term.