How American Is Pragmatism?

This essay examines the provenance of a single, curious term that William James often used in connection with his own pragmatism. The term is Denkmittel , an uncommon German contraction of Denk (thought) and Mittel (instrument). James’s Central European sources for this now forgotten bit of philosophical jargon provide a small illustration of a bigger historical point that too often gets obscured. Pragmatism—James’s pragmatism, at least—was both allied with and inspired by a broader sweep of scientific instrumentalism that was already flourishing in fin de siècle European philosophy.