Abstract

Introduction This essay argues that, contrary to a good deal of received opinion, the classical pragmatists, C. S. Peirce, William James and John Dewey, had almost no influence as regards the human sciences in the United States, and that in a stunning inversion, their distinct views were absorbed by the mainstream and employed to justify mainstream practices. Thus, for example, in her extremely well documented The Origins of American Social Science (1991), Dorothy Ross quite correctly charact...