Four Pragmatists: A remarkably balanced blog posted here by Albert Mohler, discussing a new book entitled The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America, by Louis Menand (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001). The book profiles the contributions of four men, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., William James, Charles S. Peirce, and John Dewey, across the entire cultural spectrum of philosophy, psychology, law, and education. Sample: These four figures, along with others who shared their worldview, shape the American mind even now. Most significantly, their philosophy represents a conscious break with a Christian or theistic worldview and a tremendous change in the way ideas themselves are understood.
Mohler notes that John Dewey founded the AAUP. Which reminds me of the AAUP investigation of BYU for issues related to academic freedom: see an AAUP report here and BYU's defense of its right to place "religious limitations on academic freedom" here. And there's a repost of a Denver Post article on the affair here, noting, for example, the case of a BYU professor who was terminated for not going to church on Sunday (indirectly, by operation of the "ecclesiastical endorsement" requirement). Sample from the Denver Post article: "I was surprised by the number of cases that came to our attention," said AAUP investigator Linda Pratt, a professor at the University of Nebraska. "Usually, when AAUP comes to a campus, we know about one or possibly two very troubling cases, but with BYU, there was just a flood of them."
9:46:57 AM 
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