Chauncey Wright

Chauncey Wright (1830 to 1875) was an American philosopher and mathematician and an influential early defender of Darwinism in the United States. Born in Northampton, Massachusetts, the son of a merchant, he graduated from Harvard in 1852, worked as a computer for the Nautical Almanac, and became a frequent contributor to the North American Review and The Nation, where he defended natural selection and criticised Herbert Spencer. He lectured briefly at Harvard on psychology and mathematical physics, and in 1872 helped found the Metaphysical Club with Charles Sanders Peirce, William James and others. He wrote little, and his influence on American pragmatists came mainly through conversation with the Cambridge circle. He died of a stroke in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1875.