The William James Lectures are a series of invited lectureships at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Chronological list of invited lectureships

:This compilation is based on a mimeographed list found in the clippings file at the Harvard Library Archives. The mimeographed list only covered the lectures delivered through 1971. The remaining items were supplied by searching for relevant monographs in the catalogs of the Harvard Library and the Library of Congress. Since not all of the lecture series resulted in a published book, the list may be incomplete. *

John Dewey John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the f ...

('30–'31) "

Art as Experience ''Art as Experience'' (1934) is John Dewey's major writing on aesthetics, originally delivered as the first William James Lecture at Harvard (1932). Dewey's aesthetics have been found useful in a number of disciplines, including new media. Dewe ...

" *

Arthur Lovejoy Arthur Oncken Lovejoy (October 10, 1873 – December 30, 1962) was an American philosopher and intellectual historian, who founded the discipline known as the history of ideas with his book ''The Great Chain of Being'' (1936), on the topic o ...

('32–'33) "The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea" *

Wolfgang Köhler Wolfgang Köhler (21 January 1887 – 11 June 1967) was a German psychologist and phenomenologist who, like Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka, contributed to the creation of Gestalt psychology. During the Nazi regime in Germany, he protest ...

('34–'35) "The Place of Value in a World of Facts" *

Étienne Gilson Étienne Henri Gilson (; 13 June 1884 – 19 September 1978) was a French philosopher and historian of philosophy. A scholar of medieval philosophy, he originally specialised in the thought of Descartes; he also philosophized in the tradition o ...

('36–'37) " The Unity of Philosophical Experience" *

Kurt Goldstein Kurt Goldstein (November 6, 1878 – September 19, 1965) was a German neurologist and psychiatrist who created a holistic theory of the organism. Educated in medicine, Goldstein studied under Carl Wernicke and Ludwig Edinger where he focused on n ...

('38–'39) "Human Nature in the Light of Psychopathology" *

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...

('40–41) "An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth" *

E. L. Thorndike Edward Lee Thorndike (August 31, 1874 – August 9, 1949) was an American psychologist who spent nearly his entire career at Teachers College, Columbia University. His work on comparative psychology and the learning process led to the theory o ...

('42–'43) "Human Nature and Human Institutions" * William E. Hocking ('46–'47) "Issues in Contemporary Philosophy of Law" *

B. F. Skinner Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher. He was a professor of psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974. ...

('47–'48) "Verbal Behavior" *

Karl R. Popper Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian-British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the cl ...

('49–'50) "The Study of Nature and Society" *

Frank A. Beach Frank Ambrose Beach, Jr. (April 13, 1911 – June 15, 1988) was an American ethologist, best known as co-author of the 1951 book ''Patterns of Sexual Behavior.'' He is often regarded as the founder of behavioral endocrinology, as his publication ...

('51–'52) "A Biological Approach to Psychology" *

J. L. Austin John Langshaw Austin (26 March 1911 – 8 February 1960) was a British philosopher of language and leading proponent of ordinary language philosophy, perhaps best known for developing the theory of speech acts. Austin pointed out that we use l ...

('54–'55) "

How to Do Things with Words John Langshaw Austin (26 March 1911 – 8 February 1960) was a British philosopher of language and leading proponent of ordinary language philosophy, perhaps best known for developing the theory of speech acts. Austin pointed out that we use l ...

" *

Robert Oppenheimer J. Robert Oppenheimer (; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist. A professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is often ...

('56–'57) "The Hope of Order" * Donald B. Lindsley ('58–'59) "Brain Organization and Behavior" *

Gabriel Marcel Gabriel Honoré Marcel (7 December 1889 – 8 October 1973) was a French philosopher, playwright, music critic and leading Christian existentialist. The author of over a dozen books and at least thirty plays, Marcel's work focused on the modern ...

('61–'62) "The Existential Background of Human Dignity" *

Herbert A. Simon Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916 – February 9, 2001) was an American political scientist, with a Ph.D. in political science, whose work also influenced the fields of computer science, economics, and cognitive psychology. His primary ...

('62–'63) "Symbolic Processes in Human Behavior" *

Edwin H. Land Edwin Herbert Land, ForMemRS, FRPS, Hon.MRI (May 7, 1909 – March 1, 1991) was an Russian-American scientist and inventor, best known as the co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation. He invented inexpensive filters for polarizing light, a ...

('66–'67) "Color Vision from Retina to Retinex" *

H. Paul Grice Herbert Paul Grice (13 March 1913 – 28 August 1988), usually publishing under the name H. P. Grice, H. Paul Grice, or Paul Grice, was a British philosopher of language. He is best known for his theory of implicature and the cooperative prin ...

('66–'67) "Logic and Conversation" *

A.J. Ayer Sir Alfred Jules "Freddie" Ayer (; 29 October 1910 – 27 June 1989), usually cited as A. J. Ayer, was an English philosopher known for his promotion of logical positivism, particularly in his books ''Language, Truth, and Logic'' (1936) an ...

(1970) "Russell and Moore: The Analytical Heritage" *

Donald Broadbent Donald Eric (D. E.) Broadbent CBE, FRS (Birmingham, 6 May 1926 – 10 April 1993) was an influential experimental psychologist from the UK His career and research bridged the gap between the pre-World War II approach of Sir Frederic Bartlett and ...

(1971) "In Defense of Empirical Psychology" *

Jeffrey Satinover Jeffrey Burke Satinover (September 4, 1947) is an American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and physicist. He is known for books on a number of controversial topics in physics and neuroscience, and on religion, but especially for his writing and pu ...

(1974) "Imagination in Art and Religion" *

Michael Dummett Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett (27 June 1925 – 27 December 2011) was an English academic described as "among the most significant British philosophers of the last century and a leading campaigner for racial tolerance and equality." He wa ...

(1976) "The Logical Basis of Metaphysics" *

Donald T. Campbell Donald Thomas Campbell (November 20, 1916 – May 6, 1996) was an American social scientist. He is noted for his work in methodology. He coined the term ''evolutionary epistemology'' and developed a selectionist theory of human creativity. A ''R ...

(1977) "Descriptive Epistemology: Psychological, Sociological, Evolutionary" *

Richard Wollheim Richard Arthur Wollheim (5 May 1923 − 4 November 2003) was a British philosopher noted for original work on mind and emotions, especially as related to the visual arts, specifically, painting. Wollheim served as the president of the British So ...

(1982) "The Thread of Life" *

Allen Newell Allen Newell (March 19, 1927 – July 19, 1992) was a researcher in computer science and cognitive psychology at the RAND Corporation and at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, Tepper School of Business, and Department ...

(1987) "Unified Theories of Cognition" * Roger N. Shepard (1994) "Mind and World: Principles of Perception" *

Ned Block Ned Joel Block (born 1942) is an American philosopher working in philosophy of mind who has made important contributions to the understanding of consciousness and the philosophy of cognitive science. He has been professor of philosophy and psych ...

(2012) "How Empirical Facts About Attention Transform Traditional Philosophical Debates About the Nature of Perception"

Published versions of the lectures

*Austin, J.L. (1962). ''How to do things with words.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. *Ayer, A.J. (1971). ''Russell and Moore: The analytical heritage.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. *Broadbent, D.E. (1934). ''In defense of empirical psychology.'' London: Methuen. *Campbell, D.T. (1988). ''Methodology and epistemology for social science: Selected papers'' (E. Samuel Overman, Ed.). NY: Minton, Balch & Company. *Dewey, J. (1934). ''Art as experience.'' NY: Minton, Balch & Company. *Dummett, M. (1991). ''The logical basis of metaphysics.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. *Gilson, E. (1937). ''The unity of philosophical experience.'' NY: C. Scribner's Sons. *Goldstein, K. (1940). ''Human nature in the light of psychopathology.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. *Grice, H. P. (1989). ''Studies in the way of words.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. *Köhler, W. (1938). ''The place of value in a world of facts. '' NY: Liveright Publishing. *Lovejoy, A.O. (1934). ''The great chain of being: A study of the history of an idea.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press *Marcel, G. (1963). ''The existential background of human dignity.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. *Newell, A. (1990). ''Unified theories of cognition.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. *Russell, B. (1940). ''An inquiry into meaning and truth.'' NY: W.W. Norton. *Simon, H. (1979). ''Models of thought.'' New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. *Skinner, B.F. (1957). ''Verbal behavior.'' NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts. *Thorndike, E.L. (1943). ''Man and his works.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. *Wollheim, R. (1984). ''The thread of life.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

References

{{William James Harvard University Pragmatism Behaviorism History of artificial intelligence Philosophy events History of psychology William James 1929 establishments in Massachusetts