Reframing the Narrative on the Philosophies Influencing the Development of Occupational Therapy

The Progressive Era (roughly 1890-1920) in the United States was a time of high flux in the thoughts, attitudes, politics, and ways of living in a radically altered social landscape. The Progressive Era ushered in many pressures and social problems brought on by the daunting combination of industrialization, urbanization, mass immigration, class struggle, and capitalist expansion (Diner, 1998; Hofstadter, 1955; Rodgers, 1982; Wiebe, 1967). During this period, philosophy, while still seen as relevant in some quarters, also experienced the coda of a transition where science supplanted it as the basis for intellectual thought and the desired instrument for modern progress. Multiple philosophies were fashionable in the United States during the late 1800s and early 1900s, mostly European imports, particularly the utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill and Hegel’s neo-idealism (Hall, 1879). Comtean positivism, as filtered through Mill and appropriated by American thinkers, was also increasingly prominent, as we expand upon later in this chapter. Influential to a lesser extent were the fading ideas of Scottish commonsense realism, particularly Hamilton’s (1852) conception of the limits of knowledge, a type of “philosophical humility” (Pearce, 2015, p. 449). Utilitarianism’s core tenets meshed well with American ideals of efficiency, democratic liberalism, and the new science of evolution. Hegelianism was less embraced but established a foothold in the Midwest, mainly due to the efforts of William Torrey Harris, superintendent of the St. Louis public schools (Hall, 1879; Kuklick, 2001). This potpourri of philosophies also included the lingering presence of transcendentalism and the more distinctly American pragmatism born and nurtured in the Metaphysical Club of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the 1870s (Menand, 2001; Pearce, 2015).