Classic review: The Metaphysical Club

He begins with the Civil War, a battle between differing ideals that tore the nation apart. Young Holmes marched to battle radiating Boston's radical liberalism. But suffering from a near-fatal wound at Ball's Bluff, his faith in absolutes drained away with his blood. He spent the many remaining decades of his life considering, articulating, and finally establishing in American constitutional law his new suspicion of all "truth" claims. That attitude may sound dark and cynical, but it led Holmes to create the modern concept of free speech, a tolerance he hoped would prevent the violence inspired by certainty and allow ideas to struggle for survival in the social marketplace.

His friend William James didn't fight in the Civil War, but by a different path (actually, many different paths) he arrived at the similar conclusion that "certainty was moral death." His sister once described him as "a blob of mercury." He complained even about the constraints of standardized spelling. He infuriated his medical colleagues at Harvard by defending spiritual healers.

The triumph of "The Metaphysical Club" is the author's dramatic demonstration of the parallel between developments in science and philosophy. For instance, his examination of the way astronomers began using new concepts of probability to develop more accurate star measurements seems at first an arcane detour. But at just the right moment, this exploration snaps into relevance with his discussion of a new philosophy for arriving at moral judgments. Connections like this produce a kind of rare intellectual delight that erupts throughout "The Metaphysical Club."

Menand notes that Peirce "rarely glimpsed a path down which he was not tempted to wander," and the same could be said about this book, a study that bristles with curiosity and curiosities. Menand is as excited to explain the theory of "causeless cause" as he is to gossip about an affair one of his subjects had with a teenage girl. But he catches the rhythms of 19th-century America with striking clarity, swinging from complex explanations to epigraphic summaries. The doors of "The Metaphysical Club" look intimidating, but don't be put off. It's engaging, wise, and touched with wit - a chance to follow an inspector around the foundations of American thought and understand this house of mirrors we've inherited.

Ron Charles is the Monitor's book editor. Send comments to charlesr@csmonitor.com.

William James thought that belief in God "works" in the same way that learning to shoot free throws - or tie your shoes, honor your father and mother, or get out of a box - works: each time it issues in a successful action, it gets reinforced as an organic habit. What "imprints" the belief is the action. If behaving as though we had free will or God exists gets us results we want, we will not only come to believe those things; they will be, pragmatically, true.

- from 'The Metaphysical Club'

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