A philosopher, metaphysician, mathematician, and Darwinian stalwart, Chauncey Wright was born in Northampton, Mass., on September 20, 1830. The son of Ansel Wright, a grocer and constable, and Elizabeth Boleyn, Wright was an able student with a particular aptitude for the quantitative sciences, and his reputation for scholarship earned him the largesse of a local philanthropist that enabled him to attend Harvard as an undergraduate. After his graduation in 1852, he benefited further from the influence of friends, most notably William James, who helped secure him a lectureship at the College. A standard academic position, however, was not immeidately in the cards, however. For all his intellectual talents, his affability and sociability, he proved to be a miserable teacher, dull and often incomprehensible from a student's pespective, and as a result, he failed to flourish in the academy.

In 1852, Wright therefore took an appointment as a "computer" with the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac, a position that provided him with sufficient financial support and, more importantly, sufficient time to devote himself to intellectual cultivation and collegiality. His home in Cambridge became a modern day salon beginning in the later 1850s, attracting colleagues from Harvard and the Almanac. By 1872, this lifelong bachelor had become one of the elders of the proto-pragmatist Metaphysical Club, a veritable "boxing-master" for his junior colleagues C. S. Peirce, William James, and the younger Oliver Wendell Holmes, renowned for his prowess in intellectual jousts. Although they never eventuated into an ongoing appointment, his connections to Harvard circles earned him a one year lectureship in psychology in 1870-1871,and he subsequently taught mathematical physics there to an small, but indifferent crowd of students.

Publishing principally, though too seldom, in the North American Review and The Nation, Wright established himself during the 1860s as an important American philosopher. He was best known, perhaps, as one of the early and most adept proponents of Darwinian thought in America, and he was an ardent defender of natural selection against the plethora of alternative evolutionary mechanisms. His support for Darwin and his attack on Saint George Mivart in the North American Review, brought Wright to Darwin's personal attention and earned him the naturalist's regard and sincere appreciation. During a visit to England in 1872, his only trip abroad, Wright garnered a special invitation to visit Darwin at Down House, an incident he later recalled as one of the highlights of his life.

As a philosopher, Wright grew away from an early allegiance to the Common Sense writings of Thomas Reid and his student William Hamilton to take up a radical version of the new British empiricism. The catalyst to this transformation was Wright's reading of John Stuart Mill, and particularly Mill's devastating critique of Hamilton, although Wright subsequently modified Mill. In turn, Wright's radical empiricism influenced the rising generation of pragmatist philosophers, most notably his Metaphysical colleagues Holmes, James, and Peirce. Insisting on the primacy of empirically-deteremined "facts" over a priori elements, Wright sketched a theory of knowledge based larged opn empiricist contingency rather than a priori certainty. His insistence that science remain free of metaphysical or theological assumptions has remained influential in scientific epistemology led him to reject the writings of Herbert Spencer, whose allegiance to empiricism and evolutionism might otherwise appear palatable. Spencer's insistence upon "law" and invariability and his inveterate teleology, however, led Wright to dismiss his writings as mere metaphysical speculation. Wright was also became known for his efforts to apply natural selective theory to human psychological development, prefiguring modern evolutionary epistemology.

Never a hale figure, Wright's health declined in the late 1860s and 1870s. He suffered from a bout of whooping cough in 1869 and years of too little sleep and too much drinking and smoking took their toll. Late at night on September 11, 1875, Wright suffered a stroke while sitting at his desk, and while he was discovered alive on the following morning, a second led to his death.

Frustratingly sparse, the surviving papers of Chauncey Wright nevertheless provide glimpses into the mind and personality of one of America's great philosophers of the mid-nineteenth century. Primarily personal in nature, and nearly all addresssed to Wright, these letters span most of Wright's brief life from his last two years as a student at Harvard bewteen 1850-1852 until nearly the end of his life in 1875.

In a small handful of letters, Wright's philosophical and intellectual interests shine through. There is a particularly fine exchange of letters with Francis Bowen regarding Wright's theory of the mathematics and metaphysics of the honeycomb, but these also relate more generally to Wright's perspective on causality. As might be expected, Mill's philosophy comes up repeatedly, especially in letters from Bowen, Edwin Lawrence Godkin, Catherine Innes Ireland, and Charles Sanders Peirce, and Mills' and Wright's thoughts of the equality of sexes appears in several of these letters, and in a letter from Sara Sedgwick. Of particular interest in this regard is a letter from C. S. Peirce to Wright, September 2, 1865, working through the mathematics of a card trick, but also through Mill's discussion of free will and his criticism of William Hamilton. Peirce believed Mill's arguments were ingenious, but aimed with "malicious intent. Mill wants to root out this philosophy, by adequate arguments or by inadequate ones."

Darwin appears as a subject in letters from Charles Eliot Norton, who was delighted that Wright had visited Darwin in 1872. Having learned that Wright had dined at Down House, Norton effused about Darwin: "He is a man whose personal qualities, only to be known by acquaintance with him in his own home, complete and satisfy the highest conception of him that one may have formed from his books. He is one of the most satisfactory of men." A receipt from the Massachusetts Historical Society acknowledges the gift of Wright's famous essay against St. George Mivart's Genesis of Species.

Other letters in the collection provide brief glimpses into the personal and political context of Wright's intellectual circle. The letters from Reginald Heber Chase, a Harvard classmate, provide some particularly pointed references to the politics of the Civil War and digust over the draft, the president, and the state of the nation. Still less happily, Wright became entangled in the controversy over the Dudley Observatory and earned the umbrage of Benjamin Apthorp Gould. The sole letter from Wright in this collection is a draft reply to Gould. There are two school essays by Wright in the collection, and a poem, the "Posivitivist Hymn."

The 137 items in the Wright Papers are arranged alphabetically by correspondent.

Provenance

Acquired from Chauncey Wright Pearson, August 1978 (1978-1252ms).

Preferred citation

Cite as: Chauncey Wright Papers, American Philosophical Society.

Processing information

Recatalogued by rsc, 2002.

Related material

The Harvard University Archives also contain a small collection of the Papers of Chauncey Wright. He appears as a correspondent as well in the Records of the North American Review at the Houghton Library, Harvard.

Bibliography

• Dudley Observatoy
• Harvard College (1780- )

• Agassiz, Elizabeth Cabot Cary, 1822-1907
• Bowen, Francis, 1811-1890
• Chase, Reginald Heber, 1832-1885
• Comfort, George Fisk, 1833-191
• Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882
• Godkin, William Lawrence, 1831
• Gould, Benjamin Apthorp, 1824-1896
• Hamilton, William, 1788-1856
• Ireland, Catherine Innes
• Lesley, J. P. (J. Peter), 1819-1903
• Lesley, Susan I. (Susan Inches), 1823-1904
• Mill, John Stuart, 1806-1873
• Norton, Charles Eliot, 1827-1908
• Oliver, James Edward, 1829-189
• Peirce, Charles S. (Charles Sanders), 1839-1914
• Pratt, Orson, 1811-1881
• Sedgwick, Sara
• Thayer, James Bradley, 1831-19
• Thayer, William Sydney, 1864-1
• Wright, Chauncey,1830-1875.

• American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac
• Bees.
• Card tricks
• Epistemology
• Materialism
• Mathematics
• Metaphysics
• Mormons
• Philosophy
• Probability
• Statistics
• United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865