Naturalistic Empiricism

Abstract

When Chauncey Wright died in 1875, American philosophy lost one of its most incisive naturalistic and empiricistic critics of speculative philosophy and of scientism. Although Wright’s friends published two volumes of his writings — one, selected from his essays and reviews,¹ and the other, a volume of letters² — the editions were quite limited and did not reach a wide audience and his writings were to lie largely unnoticed for almost half a century. In any case, the period just after Wright’s death, what Morton White has called “no Golden Age of American philosophy,”³ could scarcely have cared less for the firm naturalism of Wright — a view that not only rejected all non-natural explanations of events but also rejected efforts of scientism, like Spencer’s, to erect specific scientific findings into metaphysical systems. While Wright was unsuccessful in reducing the influence of rationalism and scientism, his naturalism and empiricism proved enduring and reappeared later in the philosophic ground of various naturalistic empiricists.