The Metaphysical club

The members of the metaphysics club which, largely became the foundations for the pragmatist’s movement, were surely influenced by many things. One common theme that kept showing up was reference to Darwin’s origins. It had a clear effect on the thinking of Wright, Holmes, and James all of whom were members of this metaphysics club. The influence can be seen in their take on natural science, morality, and law. I also of course saw many references to their European predecessors. At times they were in agreement and others outright denial of previous theory and methodology.
Wright creates this Darwinian weather analogy that stemmed from his theory relating weather to organic change. I believe it to be an explanation of the development and maintenance of organic life. The universe was once like a storm regulated but volatile to create life and now has subsided into a simpler more stable form the weather. His thinking is very Darwinian and he agrees with the theory of natural selection but rejects evolution as sort of progress. His take on natural science is that like weather patterns in the future nature as a whole is unpredictable. So the development of life and nature as a whole is a probabilistic, random, and varied. He rejects the regularity in nature and of hard dualistic distinctions between our subjective experience and objective nature. Because of his empiricist views he can not accept that we can know there is one unified intelligible natural law or how nature works truly. This here also points to the pragmatic conception of fallibilism. Here he separates from predecessors like Descartes and aligns more closely with Hume. The brand of empiricism that he puts forth is more radical as outlined in Stuhre.
Holmes interest in law can be seen looked at as a form of Darwinian thinking as well. His characterization of law and how it develops parallels Wrights weather analogy. His legal thinking is in line with his pragmatist background and reflects on the volatility an indeterminism in law. Legal adjudications can not be solved only by logic alone. That is not to say that there is no logic found in the decisions made by judges. However, their decisions are a result of an often instable and changing set of competing factors which push and pull and change like the weather as society changes. The contending legal imperatives such as justice, consistence with historical precedents, political views, and social factors lead to indeterminacy in the law. He in the most pragmatist sense favors experience over logic. Legal cases aren’t decided by first reference to a priori truths. For him the prediction of law is most possible by what he refers to as the reasonable man standard. The indeterminacy in law is constant the best way to predict it is by a sort of probability function. This principle or theory is another example of the rejection of certainty in any field and the encouragement of scientific like experience based knowledge over metaphysical assertions.
The value of knowledge and of empirical results is only seen as instrumental in enabling us to cope with the world around us. As in law and Wrights weather analogy beliefs are shaped less by a priori truths than interaction and conditioning. What is right and true in the pragmatic sense is not a mirror reflection of the way things really are. Beliefs are instrumental. Belief in God for example is useful in defining a code of action not held because of God actually existing. For pragmatist we are unable to know such things by sensory input. Beliefs are grounded in the pragmatic sense by results. As Dewey explained beliefs are probabilistic bets on the universe and the successful ones become habit.