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“Among the philosophic cranks of my acquaintance in the pastwas a lady all the tenets of whose system I have forgotten except one. Had she been born in the Ionian archipelagosome three thousand years ago, that one doctrine would probably have made hername sure of a place in every university curriculum and examination paper. Theworld, she said, is composed of only two elements, the Thick, namely, and theThin.” -- William James.
There’s a lot to like about this passage. There is, to begin, the mild streak of misanthropy.James’ prose often gives you the sense that he did not suffer fools gladly, andsomeone of his prominence must certainly have heard from a lot of “philosophiccranks” out to sell their own brand of snake oil.
Secondly, though, and somewhat at odds with that: there’s alove of human variety. This woman was a “crank,” but she was a crank whosesilly idea sticks in his mind, and might in the right time and place have madeher famous.
Third, there is the point of it. For James, the distinctionbetween thick and thin is critical in examining philosophies. Some are thin –they seem to proceed entirely by logic chopping, by the dance of bloodlesscategories. Such is the vice of intellectualism. Other philosophies are thick –they bring in the empirical world at every turn – and they draw James’admiration. He uses this anonymous woman’sdistinction to introduce the works of Fechner, and the remainder of thatchapter tells of his admiration for Fechner’s mind as a “multitudinouslyorganized cross-roads of truth.”
It is the distinction, in short, between the hedgehog andthe fox.
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