# Science and Sentiment in America By Morton White **URL:** **By** Edward Regis, Jr. **Published:** March 1, 1974 --- “Conspicuous for its absence from curricula of departments of philosophy in the United States is the study of American philosophy.” Conspicuous for its absence from curricula of departments of philosophy in the United States is the study of American philosophy. The academic trend today is toward outright irrationalism: courses in Oriental philosophies, Zen Buddhism, mysticism, yoga (astrology may be next) are increasingly in demand on college campuses. In this context the appearance of a new critical study of American philosophy is most welcome. This is Morton White's _Science and Sentiment in America_. This study seeks to understand the development of American philosophy in terms of the opposition between the challenge of modern science and scientific method on the one hand, and the desire of many American philosophers to accommodate somehow what reason will not let them have: belief in God, ethical systems based upon God, or upon intuition, or upon wishful thinking and emotion. This program is carried out successfully by the author: one by one the reader is introduced to the Berkeleyan idealist metaphysics of Jonathan Edwards, whose influence in keeping America Puritan is not yet dead; to the gushings over nature and emotion of the neo-Kantian Transcendentalist Emerson and others, whose spirit lives today in the so-called "ecology" movement; to the thought (or lack of it) of C. S. Peirce, the originator of the distinctive American philosophy, pragmatism, and advocator of wishful-thinking as an epistemologically proper method; to William James, staunch defender of religion and (again) the method of wishful thinking; to Josiah Royce, absolute idealist, in whose system the individual is engulfed in an all-encompassing absolute world-soul; and to other Americans who have had an influence in the making of this country's hodgepodge of conflicting and contradictory ideologies, values, aspirations and whims. The book's main defect appears in its treatment of the founding fathers. Just one chapter is devoted to the authors of the Declaration of Independence, and White is concerned here with identifying its transatlantic sources. While it may be true that the authors of the Federalist Papers and the drafters of the Constitution were not primarily philosophers, nevertheless their thought has played such an obviously significant role in the formation of this country's intellectual heritage and governmental theory that White's virtual neglect of it constitutes a serious omission. This drawback is somewhat compensated for by a discussion in the concluding chapter of American "philosophical and social anti-intellectualism," in which the author isolates an irrationalist strain running through American philosophies, specifically to be found in their epistemologies. Acutely conscious of the effect which philosophy has upon society, White traces some of the cultural consequences of this anti-intellectualism: \> "Like those who say it with flowers," writes the author, "and those who seek to save the world without studying it, such deep thinkers rest on a philosophy with which the readers of this book are now very familiar. In short, on all of the lower floors of philosophical anti-intellectualism we can hear the noise of philosophers who live at the top. Those Americans who have lived at the very top of our high culture have thumped their messages down to lower floors for two hundred years. Edwards, Emerson and James—in his earlier writings—have all held that there is a way of feeling our way to knowledge. Therefore, if our previous story teaches anything, it is that intellectual anti-intellectualism is as American as apple pie, indeed, as American as apple pie in the sky; the doctrine has been formulated and defended by three of the most widely read philosophers treated in this book." That such trends are identified, and condemned, by a contemporary American historian of philosophy is a refreshing surprise. But the book is of value not only for this critical estimate, but also for its thematic treatment of the thinkers who have helped shape this country. It is of interest not only to professional philosophers, but to anyone who wants to understand the historical development of American philosophical ideas and their consequences. _Reviewed by Edward Regis, Jr. / Philosophy (359 Pages, Indexed) / BFL Price $2.95_