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Habit
William James's fascinating treatise explores the psychology of habitual behaviour in human beings, discussing the science of habit and it's drawbacks, benefits, negation, and more. This easy-to-digest volume is highly recommended for students and will appeal those with an interest in psychology. William James (1842 - 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist. He is among the most influential thinkers of the late nineteenth century and is widely considered one of the most important philosophers in American history. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly rare and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.
72 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 1, 2003
26 people are currently reading
450 people want to read
About the author
William James
344 books1,350 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist who was also trained as a physician. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, James was one of the leading thinkers of the late nineteenth century and is believed by many to be one of the most influential philosophers the United States has ever produced, while others have labelled him the "Father of American psychology". Along with Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey, he is considered to be one of the greatest figures associated with the philosophical school known as pragmatism, and is also cited as one of the founders of the functional psychology. He also developed the philosophical perspective known as radical empiricism. James' work has influenced intellectuals such as Émile Durkheim, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty.
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 wrote widely on many topics, including epistemology, education, metaphysics, psychology, religion, and mysticism. Among his most influential books are Principles of Psychology, which was a groundbreaking text in the field of psychology, Essays in Radical Empiricism, an important text in philosophy, and The Varieties of Religious Experience, which investigated different forms of religious experience.
William James was born at the Astor House in New York City. He was the son of Henry James Sr., a noted and independently wealthy Swedenborgian theologian well acquainted with the literary and intellectual elites of his day. The intellectual brilliance of the James family milieu and the remarkable epistolary talents of several of its members have made them a subject of continuing interest to historians, biographers, and critics.
James interacted with a wide array of writers and scholars throughout his life, including his godfather Ralph Waldo Emerson, his godson William James Sidis, as well as Charles Sanders Peirce, Bertrand Russell, Josiah Royce, Ernst Mach, John Dewey, Macedonio Fernández, Walter Lippmann, Mark Twain, Horatio Alger, Jr., Henri Bergson and Sigmund Freud.
William James received an eclectic trans-Atlantic education, developing fluency in both German and French. Education in the James household encouraged cosmopolitanism. The family made two trips to Europe while William James was still a child, setting a pattern that resulted in thirteen more European journeys during his life. His early artistic bent led to an apprenticeship in the studio of William Morris Hunt in Newport, Rhode Island, but he switched in 1861 to scientific studies at the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University.
In his early adulthood, James suffered from a variety of physical ailments, including those of the eyes, back, stomach, and skin. He was also tone deaf. He was subject to a variety of psychological symptoms which were diagnosed at the time as neurasthenia, and which included periods of depression during which he contemplated suicide for months on end. Two younger brothers, Garth Wilkinson (Wilky) and Robertson (Bob), fought in the Civil War. The other three siblings (William, Henry, and Alice James) all suffered from periods of invalidism.
He took up medical studies at Harvard Medical School in 1864. He took a break in the spring of 1865 to join naturalist Louis Agassiz on a scientific expedition up the Amazon River, but aborted his trip after eight months, as he suffered bouts of severe seasickness and mild smallpox. His studies were interrupted once again due to illness in April 1867. He traveled to Germany in search of a cure and remained there until November 1868; at that time he was 26 years old. During this period, he
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist who was also trained as a physician. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, James was one of the leading thinkers of the late nineteenth century and is believed by many to be one of the most influential philosophers the United States has ever produced, while others have labelled him the "Father of American psychology". Along with Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey, he is considered to be one of the greatest figures associated with the philosophical school known as pragmatism, and is also cited as one of the founders of the functional psychology. He also developed the philosophical perspective known as radical empiricism. James' work has influenced intellectuals such as Émile Durkheim, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty.
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 wrote widely on many topics, including epistemology, education, metaphysics, psychology, religion, and mysticism. Among his most influential books are Principles of Psychology, which was a groundbreaking text in the field of psychology, Essays in Radical Empiricism, an important text in philosophy, and The Varieties of Religious Experience, which investigated different forms of religious experience.
William James was born at the Astor House in New York City. He was the son of Henry James Sr., a noted and independently wealthy Swedenborgian theologian well acquainted with the literary and intellectual elites of his day. The intellectual brilliance of the James family milieu and the remarkable epistolary talents of several of its members have made them a subject of continuing interest to historians, biographers, and critics.
James interacted with a wide array of writers and scholars throughout his life, including his godfather Ralph Waldo Emerson, his godson William James Sidis, as well as Charles Sanders Peirce, Bertrand Russell, Josiah Royce, Ernst Mach, John Dewey, Macedonio Fernández, Walter Lippmann, Mark Twain, Horatio Alger, Jr., Henri Bergson and Sigmund Freud.
William James received an eclectic trans-Atlantic education, developing fluency in both German and French. Education in the James household encouraged cosmopolitanism. The family made two trips to Europe while William James was still a child, setting a pattern that resulted in thirteen more European journeys during his life. His early artistic bent led to an apprenticeship in the studio of William Morris Hunt in Newport, Rhode Island, but he switched in 1861 to scientific studies at the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University.
In his early adulthood, James suffered from a variety of physical ailments, including those of the eyes, back, stomach, and skin. He was also tone deaf. He was subject to a variety of psychological symptoms which were diagnosed at the time as neurasthenia, and which included periods of depression during which he contemplated suicide for months on end. Two younger brothers, Garth Wilkinson (Wilky) and Robertson (Bob), fought in the Civil War. The other three siblings (William, Henry, and Alice James) all suffered from periods of invalidism.
He took up medical studies at Harvard Medical School in 1864. He took a break in the spring of 1865 to join naturalist Louis Agassiz on a scientific expedition up the Amazon River, but aborted his trip after eight months, as he suffered bouts of severe seasickness and mild smallpox. His studies were interrupted once again due to illness in April 1867. He traveled to Germany in search of a cure and remained there until November 1868; at that time he was 26 years old. During this period, he
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 11, 2020
Too short, didn't read.
Kidding. I love William James. This is just makes some goddam American horse-sense, you get me? Like the infield fly rule.
Yep...I'm sticking with that.
Kidding. I love William James. This is just makes some goddam American horse-sense, you get me? Like the infield fly rule.
Yep...I'm sticking with that.
September 25, 2014
"Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. Of course, this has its good side as well as its bad one." - this are the words that made me want to read Habit by William James. It's that kind of reading that keeps making you feel like taking action to change your life in a better way. And if you don't have enough reasons to really start new habits this book might gave you a couple of them!
"It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again. If the period between twenty and thirty is the critical one in the formation of intellectual and professional habits, the period below twenty is more important still for the fixing of personal habits, properly so called, such as vocalization and pronunciation, gesture, motion, and address."
"A lock works better after being used some time; at the outset more force was required to overcome certain roughness in the mechanism. The overcoming of their resistance is a phenomenon of habituation. It costs less trouble to fold a paper when it has been folded already. This saving of trouble is due to the essential nature of habit, which brings it about that, to reproduce the effect, a less amount of the outward cause is required."
"In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible. Accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall reinforce the right motives ; put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way; make engagements incompatible with the old; take a public pledge, if the case allows; in short, envelop your resolution with every aid you know. This will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as soon as it otherwise might; and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all."
"It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again. If the period between twenty and thirty is the critical one in the formation of intellectual and professional habits, the period below twenty is more important still for the fixing of personal habits, properly so called, such as vocalization and pronunciation, gesture, motion, and address."
"A lock works better after being used some time; at the outset more force was required to overcome certain roughness in the mechanism. The overcoming of their resistance is a phenomenon of habituation. It costs less trouble to fold a paper when it has been folded already. This saving of trouble is due to the essential nature of habit, which brings it about that, to reproduce the effect, a less amount of the outward cause is required."
"In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible. Accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall reinforce the right motives ; put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way; make engagements incompatible with the old; take a public pledge, if the case allows; in short, envelop your resolution with every aid you know. This will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as soon as it otherwise might; and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all."
Read
May 15, 2019This book deserves more readers.
November 12, 2022
At the beginning, James reduces living creatures to "bundles of habits." It's a fairly easy read with nuggets of wisdom within. Application and learning are encouraged for the young. Plasticity makes the application of these habits easier, before calcification sets in. He also encourages us to force ourselves to do things we don't want to, preparing our system for possible disaster. Well worth the read.
February 8, 2021
This is another insightful essay by James who ability to anticipate advances in science and psychology of the current day is one full display. The essay describes how habits are formed in a way that only recently has been accepted. Yet it is his connection between habits and moral that is truly fascinating. For James, Habit is not the poor congestive relative to conscious thought but the basis for most of our action that should be cultivated to our own good and that of society as whole.
How habits are formed
* We look at animals as a "bundle of habits" but tend to overlook the role habits play in humans. 3
* Plasticity. Yes James uses this word to describe how habits physically form in the brain.”“Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once.”
* Habits become self perpetuating. “any sequence of mental action which has been frequently repeated tends to perpetuate itself; so that we find ourselves automatically prompted to think, feel, or do what we have been before accustomed to think, feel, ordo, under like circumstances, without any consciously formed purpose, or anticipation of results.”
* Habits have several practical benefits
* “simplifies the movements required to achieve a given result, makes them more accurate and diminishes fatigue”
* If frees up time to to learn other activities. “If an act became no easier after being done several times, if the careful direction of consciousness were necessary to its accomplishment on each occasion, it is evident that the whole activity of a lifetime might be confined to one or two deeds” The act performed in habit is done as one as oppose to many acts. The trigger or sensation, without violation is enough to set the habit in motion. This accounts for error - when a trigger sets off a habit. It’s not unconscious - we have a sense of the action, without willing every step. (The person knitting while watching TV)
Habit and morals/society
James draws on Aristoltle’s concept of virtue ethics and fuses it with recent science (of his day).
* If the ethical act is something we want. And habits ensure that an act is done more regularly and with less trouble, we should then make the effort to learn ethical habits. This is in contrast to either consequentialism or deontology that rely on “will” to power through ethical decisions.
* James goes further noting that habit impacts society. ““Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance.” (Burke makes similar arguments about customs - a type of social compact habit)
* Thus “in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. It is to fund and capitalize our acquisitions, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague. The more of the details of our “daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. ”
How habits are formed
* We look at animals as a "bundle of habits" but tend to overlook the role habits play in humans. 3
* Plasticity. Yes James uses this word to describe how habits physically form in the brain.”“Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once.”
* Habits become self perpetuating. “any sequence of mental action which has been frequently repeated tends to perpetuate itself; so that we find ourselves automatically prompted to think, feel, or do what we have been before accustomed to think, feel, ordo, under like circumstances, without any consciously formed purpose, or anticipation of results.”
* Habits have several practical benefits
* “simplifies the movements required to achieve a given result, makes them more accurate and diminishes fatigue”
* If frees up time to to learn other activities. “If an act became no easier after being done several times, if the careful direction of consciousness were necessary to its accomplishment on each occasion, it is evident that the whole activity of a lifetime might be confined to one or two deeds” The act performed in habit is done as one as oppose to many acts. The trigger or sensation, without violation is enough to set the habit in motion. This accounts for error - when a trigger sets off a habit. It’s not unconscious - we have a sense of the action, without willing every step. (The person knitting while watching TV)
Habit and morals/society
James draws on Aristoltle’s concept of virtue ethics and fuses it with recent science (of his day).
* If the ethical act is something we want. And habits ensure that an act is done more regularly and with less trouble, we should then make the effort to learn ethical habits. This is in contrast to either consequentialism or deontology that rely on “will” to power through ethical decisions.
* James goes further noting that habit impacts society. ““Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance.” (Burke makes similar arguments about customs - a type of social compact habit)
* Thus “in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. It is to fund and capitalize our acquisitions, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague. The more of the details of our “daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. ”
September 19, 2025
This was really good but then he got a racist/classist with it.
"
When we look at living creatures from an outward point of view, one of the first things that strike us is that they are bundles of habits.
The laws of Nature are nothing but the immutable habits which the different elementary sorts of matter follow in their actions and reactions upon each other. <- This was cute
This saving of trouble is due to the essential nature of habit, which brings it about that, to reproduce the effect, a less amount of the outward cause is required.
The organism tends to form itself in accordance with the mode in which it is habitually exercised.
A strictly voluntary act has to be guided by idea, perception, and volition, throughout its whole course. In an habitual action, mere sensation is a sufficient guide.
1) habit simplifies the movements required to achieve a given result, makes them more accurate and diminishes fatigue
2) habit diminishes the conscious attention with which our acts are performed
1) The acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible.
2) Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.
3) Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain.
4) Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day
"
The part about the arts creating morally bad habits is so crazy
"
When we look at living creatures from an outward point of view, one of the first things that strike us is that they are bundles of habits.
The laws of Nature are nothing but the immutable habits which the different elementary sorts of matter follow in their actions and reactions upon each other. <- This was cute
This saving of trouble is due to the essential nature of habit, which brings it about that, to reproduce the effect, a less amount of the outward cause is required.
The organism tends to form itself in accordance with the mode in which it is habitually exercised.
A strictly voluntary act has to be guided by idea, perception, and volition, throughout its whole course. In an habitual action, mere sensation is a sufficient guide.
1) habit simplifies the movements required to achieve a given result, makes them more accurate and diminishes fatigue
2) habit diminishes the conscious attention with which our acts are performed
1) The acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible.
2) Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.
3) Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain.
4) Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day
"
The part about the arts creating morally bad habits is so crazy
Want to read
October 13, 2019Scanned ebook via Archive.org here: https://archive.org/details/habitjam0...
Also possibly at Project Gutenberg here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/auth...
Also possibly at Project Gutenberg here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/auth...
January 8, 2014
Very good read.
Considers the nature of habit from a solid, biologically oriented platform. By connecting the subjects of physiology and psychology in a simple, fundamental (read non-abstract) way, this short book provides useful, actionable advice on a subject where so many other similar productivity/self-help books obscure with unnecessarily technical language.
Without trying to sell you a system, or a "secret" way to do anything, the message is clear and self-evident that forming habits, good or bad, is what matters most when it comes to realising future outcomes.
Considers the nature of habit from a solid, biologically oriented platform. By connecting the subjects of physiology and psychology in a simple, fundamental (read non-abstract) way, this short book provides useful, actionable advice on a subject where so many other similar productivity/self-help books obscure with unnecessarily technical language.
Without trying to sell you a system, or a "secret" way to do anything, the message is clear and self-evident that forming habits, good or bad, is what matters most when it comes to realising future outcomes.
May 16, 2016
This book felt like it was made to my taste.
5 stars ain't justice enough to this one.
5 stars ain't justice enough to this one.
June 3, 2015
gets to the point, and delivers its point well.
Read
September 6, 2017interesting perspectives about habits
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews