William James was the first psychologist who helped establish experimental psychology as a scientific discipline. He studied medicine before his interest in philosophy and the combination of two subjects led him to become a leading figure in creating a new scientific field of psychology. He also founded the first classes in experimental psychology at Harvard University, and his pragmatist approach to studying psychology made it possible for psychology to move away from philosophical speculation toward empirical research. His book Principles of Psychology (1890) remains a classic text in the field. After studying medicine at Harvard Medical School, he turned to philosophy and wrote important works on pragmatism and religious experience.
In particular, he worked on a psychological analysis of consciousness, something that had long occupied philosophers but hadn’t been subjected to rigorous scientific scrutiny. He showed that consciousness is a kind of mental process, a way we connect and organize all of our different thoughts. So instead of just thinking about consciousness as an object—something you might see in a microscope—he said consciousness is a continuous stream of thought. This idea became known as the “Stream of Consciousness”.
