The Principles of Psychology is an 1890 book about psychology by William James, an American philosopher and psychologist who trained to be a physician before going into psychology.
The four key concepts in James' book are: stream of consciousness (his most famous psychological metaphor); emotion (later known as the JamesāLange theory); habit (human habits are constantly formed to achieve certain results); and will (through James' personal experiences in life).
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The metaphor "stream of consciousness" suggests how thoughts seem to flow through the conscious mind. Research studies have shown that humans only experience one mental event at a time, as a fast-moving mind-stream. The full range of thoughts one can be aware of forms the content of this "stream".
The term was coined by Alexander Bain in 1855, when he wrote in The Senses and the Intellect, "The concurrence of Sensations in one common stream of consciousness (on the same cerebral highway) enables those of different senses to be associated as readily as the sensations of the same sense". But the man who popularized it is commonly credited instead: William James, often considered the father of American psychology, used it in 1890 in The Principles of Psychology.
The specious present is defined as the "supposed time between past and future" or "a present that lasts a short stretch of physical time". The term was coined by E. R. Clay in his 1882 book The Alternative: A Study in Psychology, and cited by William James in The Principles of Psychology. It can be classed as a "thick" conception of time perception, to be contrasted with "thin" conceptions that see the present as instantaneous.
William James (January 11, 1842Ā ā August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, he is considered to be one of the leading thinkers of the late 19th century, one of the most influential philosophers and is often dubbed the "father of American psychology."
Born into a wealthy family, James was the son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James Sr. and the brother of both the prominent novelist Henry James and the diarist Alice James. James trained as a physician and taught anatomy at Harvard, but never practised medicine. Instead, he pursued his interests in psychology and then philosophy. He wrote widely on many topics, including epistemology, education, metaphysics, psychology, religion, and mysticism. Among his most influential books are The Principles of Psychology, a groundbreaking text in the field of psychology; Essays in Radical Empiricism, an important text in philosophy; and The Varieties of Religious Experience, an investigation of different forms of religious experience, including theories on mind-cure.