The American Mind; 3; Mind and Matter in Colonial America

as be nice butt the series and the thing that series as dr robert see whether more associate professor of philosophy at tulane university remember three mind and the matter in colonial america right team and here's dr wood

it has been set but apart from those who were powerful more distinguished invade political movements that were stirring the american colonies there were three men who rose above mediocrity in the middle of the eighteenth century american city the three being jonathan edwards benjamin franklin and samuel johnson those of you who were with me last week will remember something of edwards and i am sure that all of you have heard of benjamin franklin but samuel johnson remains largely unknown to the american public and this is not surprising for aig wrote no new philosophical system and he never aspired to be a founding father yet all the same samuel johnson must be placed among those who had an important part play

in shaping the american mark johnson was born at guilford connecticut in the year sixteen hundred and ninety six his family mark congressional coach and his father was a deacon of the congregational church there as he grew up he studied the puritan theology and like most pure the men of his generation went on to college to become himself a preacher the age of fourteen he entered yale university was a yale then of course it was just a little collegiate school and four years later he got his bachelor's degree after year at yale as a tutor he accepted the offer of a call the congregation at the west haven connecticut and he's served there until he was about twenty six years old but this time

he had a major problem as he had read through the course of studies at yale and had come into contact with the writings of some of the men who would then causing a revolution in english philosophy and science he had come to feel that the puritanism of his father's was not at all the correct point of view most particularly he had come to feel that the congregation all type of church government was not right and so and seventeen hundred and twenty two he announced to his congregation that he was going to england and they had to accept orders in the anglican communion the episcopal church the church of being now this may not seem like very much to you but you have to remember that in those days puritanism was

everything in new england even in far western connecticut which was a little more liberal the massachusetts bay no one dared to announce a defiance of the puritan congregational system and so when johnson says that he can no longer accept the congregational principle that by his readings he has become convinced that if passed the pacific and the succession the bishops is the only true intention of the church and the only true reading of the church fathers well this creates a funeral and that sets up a whirl know patrick for the religious development in the commons he went to him and a year later he came back or day he then went to stratford connecticut where there was a small community of anglicans and their he remained for the next thirty years as a minister to the church of england community at stratford but this time he was

quite well know he had done considerable amount of writing the endgame sums be patient as skulk and so he was called on to become the first president what is now columbia university in new york of course in those days it didn't look like it looks now in those days it was just mainly one building with a few out buildings on the top of a hill morning side heights in new york this was the way it looked a few years after johnson became president he remained at columbia or kings college as it was then known for several years organizing its curriculum teaching its first class and then after a period of time growing all having had troubles in his family he retired to stratford and again took up his ministry and there he died in the year seventy hundred and seventy two on the eve of the american revolution

while at columbia or kings college he innovated a good many things that later became standard practice in the american educational system johnson did not believe that education should be carried on the way it was say at harvard or even a nail that is just to train men to be ministers he was in favor of broadening of humanizing the educational curriculum it was also far in advance of his time as regards the progressive character of education he believed that education should be something you enjoy believe that it should be something you did because you wanted to do it because you were forced to do it and this is strange to say he anticipated john doing his fellow columbia teacher why some nearly two hundred acts that johnson is known to us today mainly not as an educational philosopher nor as cool innovative in this field but rather as one

who introduced him to america certain basic ideas that were then current in england and on the country and in order to understand johnson and his motive for you have to know something about the man who owns this mode of thought the man who ultimately were to be great influences on the development of the american mind foremost among the years was the english philosopher john locke john locke was born in sixteen hundred and thirty two and died in the year seventeen hundred and four i believe that you must start in education you must start in knowledge where you are and he comes to write a book which he calls the essay on the human understanding and beginning this book he asks himself the question what do i know and how do i know and he comes to the conclusion that at birth our minds are just what he calls a cob you are also a blank white tablet there is

nothing in my mind that is not the first in the sense of it everything we know we get says locke through experience and therefore if we ask what is the original of all our ideas we have to say that it is a sensation and reflections upon the sensation so therefore if there are ideas which we do not by sensation the question arises as to whether or not they are meaningful this position is known in philosophy as imperious is the belief that everything we know we know through experience and that what we can not experience either cannot be known or is meaningless it represents a complete break with the theological tradition of the past because of course in religion and theology you want to say that you have a great many ideas that you don't derive from experience ideas for instance such is the immortal soul the notion of dog or things like that so says lock everything begins

with experience and the original of our ideas is nothing but sensation and reflection now johnson takes up this notion and in his book expresses himself as follows these ideas what objects of sense are commonly supposed to be pictures or representations of things without us and indeed external to any mind even that of the deity himself and the truth or reality of them is can seem to consist in there exact pictures of things are objects without us which are supposed to be the real facts but as it is impossible for us to perceive what is without our minds and consequently what those supposedly originals are and whether these ideas of ours are just resemblances of them or not i'm afraid

this notion of them will lead us into an inextricable skepticism and so he goes on to say that our ideas are not simply representations of things with out our minds what really consist in the original things themselves that is i have an idea say of a hand in front of the idea that i have is the reality of my hair now then what do i mean when i say that rocket said that everything i know comes from outside so that what i call an idea is really an impression in my mind and johnson modifies this to say that the impression in my mind is the reality that i am aware of no in order to see how this has worked out we have to move from mr locke to another english philosopher a man who was to play a much more important part of the development of johnson's thought and

through him the development of the american mind this was the english philosopher george barclay now johnson's relationship with barkley was a very interesting because whereas he had only read walk through the essay that he had found in his college library hino barkley personally because in the year seventy nine hundred and twenty nine likely came to america his idea was to found a college in the colonies specifically at bermuda this idea didn't pan out and after two years living in rhode island he went whoa what's in those two years janssen got to know the philosopher quite well and from him in the fall or not says barkley if it is true but all i know are my ideas and if it is true that all i know of the ideas that i get through since experience

it follows that if there is no sense experience there is no idea or as barkley puts it to me is to be perceived if i don't perceive a thing it doesn't exist for instance suppose right at this moment there's a tree falling in far off siberia a thousand miles from any but it doesn't make any song because there is nobody to hear so therefore it follows that tune they used to be perceived and that equally follows according to barclay that the bane of myself is a conscious proceeding i am as i perceive my ideas all real as i perceive them but what happens when i'm not perceiving at this point barkley comes up with a very ingenious idea if everything is real only in so far as it is perceived then

it follows that somewhere somebody must be perceiving all the time if i don't perceive a thing somebody else must perceive it or else doesn't exist now is leader a good many things in this world but apparently nobody no human being or perhaps even animal is proceeding how then do these things continue in existence for instance when i leave this studio it goes dark tonight does it go out of existence when no one is here not at all says barkley what happens is that there is a lot and god is the cosmic perceive or who was perception keeps things and being when nothing else is looking at so therefore you say we have a very ingenious proof for the existence of god drawing directly from the nature of experience and it's a very a hard proof to get around because if you agree that to be used to be perceived

and try to think of something as existing without perception then it follows that somewhere somehow somebody saw mine must be perceiving at every minute or else they would be not therefore god exists as the cosmic receive nih says johnson if this is the soul then what are we to conclude we must he says conclude that we are at present spirits or mines connected with most tangible bodies for them or there is no mere arbitrary constitution between these and finally that all of this is you don't want to go our minds may be said to be creative man tapia russell they have no notions of any object of any kind get it apprehended and all the notices they have of any kind of objects they have an immediate dependence upon the deity as really they depend on him for their

existence that is not only does god ensure that things exist but i don't say one and so far is anything resists me i push say a chair away i am aware of god must exist to provide the principle of resistance because after all that i know my own ideas so therefore what johnson does is to develop in his own point of view the barkley and philosophy adapted together with this notion of locks and then to sit down and write his own book this book went through many additions it's called elemental philosophic and it concerns chiefly know what a cut of things relating to the minder understanding and africa or things relating to the moral behavior in this book he undertakes to spell

out his complete philosophical system based again and walk and on barkley and the importance of this philosophical system lies in the very fact that in most american college as it was the standard philosophical text for some generations so therefore you see in this way the young american college student as he learns philosophy is exposed to the philosophy of barclay i don't walk as interpreted by mr johnson now then mr johnson however comes up with one thing which is his all the question arises how do i know that is what about i don't mind your spirit i'm not always perceiving things in their correspondence barkley and johnson discuss this problem johnson raises the question what happens when i sleep what happens with what i am aware of something once comes

this unity and his ultimate answer is that it is something in the nature of a spiritual life but before i proceed he says i would first observed that most ordered as any optics strike the senses or is received in our imagination or apprehended by our understanding but we are immediately conscious of a kind of intellectual light within us we find that as we are enabled by this intellectual like to perceive those objects and like manners by sensible like we are unable to perceive the optics of sense now what this light is and where it comes from he can't really say if it be asked whence does this like to arrive whereby all created minds of what's perceived by a common standard the same things to be alive and true i answer i have no other way to conceive this then by deriding it from the universal presents an action of the deity or a perpetual communication with the great father of lights and so therefore we come

up again to still another evidence of got the very fact that it exists as a unified being in that i am aware that my experiences as a unified whole is an indication that got as enlightened me in some way by putting with in my mind that this spiritual like no this doctrine originally goes back to a doctrine of an earlier european philosopher descartes and so therefore we really have in johnson's philosophy and amalgamation of walk barkley and descartes all put together in this novel american way and so we have the beginnings of a philosophical system now of course johnson was not the only one to be thinking along these lines nor was he the only one who was reading leave european philosophers and scientists in an attempt to arrive at his own philosophical point of

view another man who was to have quite an influence on the shaping of the american mind was doing the same thing his name was cadwallader cold he was born in ireland his parents were scottish and just about the time that johnson was attending yale he was emigrating to new york he was a man of many talents he was interested in medicine and natural science has apparently quite brilliant for only three years after he arrived in new york he was invited to serve on the governor's council and he did for many years until finally and seventeen hundred and sixty one he became lieutenant governor of new york a position which he occupied until his death in seventeen seventy six some of you will that are familiar with the events of the years preceding the american revolution may be familiar with coleman's name he was really they principal tory leader the tory

governor of new york and the revolution is to have a great many run ins with it but his importance stems from the fact that while he also borrowed a bit from rock he introduced another man a man who was to have again a great deal of significance this is the famous british scientist sir isaac newton holden was the first man in america to thoroughly study the works of sir isaac newton johnson had tried it but johnson just didn't have the mathematics and he admitted that so johnson was never really able to come to grips with sir isaac point of view but carolyn had the mathematics he was a scientist and he very quickly saw that if we are going to develop any really philosophy of science in america it has to be in conformity with the work of sir isaac newton because after all the work of sir isaac newton is the basic scientific

work that was being done in europe at the time so therefore colvin also comes to write his book and this is the way he begins following sir isaac we have no knowledge of substances or then he'd be in or of anything abstracted from the action of that thing or beer all our knowledge of things consists in the perception of the power or force or property or manner of acting of but think what you say here again the reliance is on experience the reliance is on the nature of experience as science we think only where johnson was willing to admit some element of spirit colin feels that everything can be explained in terms of forces or motions now this is very important because if he is right then obviously all of nature can be explained in terms of natural

law as set forth for instance in newton's great work the principia mathematica and indeed this was the ideal of a walk too because locke had tried to say that if everything comes from since what we have from censor certain qualities some of the qualities are in the things such as motion and impenetrable many others are in not such as colors and sounds so therefore if that is true and if one is that we are out there is simply motion well then why is cleared for a purely mechanical physical interpretation of thing now this too was in paris isn't but it is in paris isn't without got johnson had quite a correspondence with colin and the basic issue that they work debating oliver was what is the role of intelligence coleman believe that if everything is reducible to matter in motion you don't require intelligence and matter johnson on the other hand says but how then do

you possibly explain how things get started one isn't that give something's a purpose of action well johnson convinced his plan partially because eventually cold and had to fall by kama dualism he had to admit that was intelligence on the other hand the physical world as explained simply in terms of matter in motion he tried therefore to come by in buckley and do now ultimately this can't be done why it can't be done it i don't have time to go into but basically it as the issue between what we might call a spiritual or idealistic approached reality on the one hand and a materialistic mechanistic approach on the other colin stands for the materialism the mechanized ultimately sam johnson comes to stand for the idealists between these two positions virtually all of the issue of modern

philosophy our poll and in the development of american thought that schools are going to be very prominent and both schools are constantly going to be at odds with each other all of this of course being mediated again truly english philosophers walk barkley new soul if you believe certain things for instance if you are a pragmatist a about some things in the american way it may be that a good many of your thoughts are not so much a regional not even so much american because most of the basic philosophy that comes to guide america in this period is derived from aid and offer those of you that would wish to pursue these matters on your own that i'd like to recommend to you a few volumes which you ought to look into the first of these is samuel johnson himself his writings have been

collected in three volumes and in a very fine edition and you will i think find this quite interesting because not only do you have his writings what you have a long autobiography in which he develops his whole falk told you how he came to believe what he did the basic book to find out about barclays' philosophy and one you certainly ought to take a look at is barclays treaties concerning the principles of human knowledge this is a classic this was the book that johnson himself read and discussed with and then there was finally made great work of john walke which perhaps more than any other book was to shape the american mind in the eighteenth century the city's walks famous work essay on the human understanding if you would know anything about the american mind you must be familiar with

law and barkley i leave a note not have account basically because newton's fundamental work of the principia mathematica is the sort of thing that can only be understood by advanced mathematicians and in any case it has been rather superseded by modern science but luck is fundamental and broccoli is scarcely less so and between them they came to have a vast influence upon the subsequent development of the american mind up to now we have been primarily concerned with scholars but next week we're going to take a look at a man of action a man who in fact had only two years of formal schooling and yet who are nonetheless has gained permanent fame as the first centralized america is named benjamin franklin and

the preakness this there is the history of the american people dr roberts associate professor of philosophy in the american mind is as did your presentation of wypr cheating is national educational television in an er