(2004-12-19) Levin Metaphysical Club

Adina Levin just read The Metaphysical Club about the birth of Pragmatism. These thinkers, in Louis Menand's analysis, responded to two challenges to conventional 19th century certitudes. The writings of Charles Darwin destroyed faith in the determinist hand of the Deity in history, and also in the determinist clockwork of Enlightenment science. The bloody US Civil War, in which the combination of modern weapons and premodern tactics caused horrific carnage, cast doubt on the purity of prewar sanctimonious convictions.