Stephen C. Pepper (April 29, 1891 – May 1, 1972) was an American

pragmatism Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that considers words and thought as tools and instruments for prediction, problem solving, and action, and rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality. ...

philosopher, the Mills Professor of Philosophy at the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

. He may be best known for

World Hypotheses ''World Hypotheses: A Study in Evidence'', by Stephen C. Pepper (1942), presents four relatively adequate world hypotheses (or world views or conceptual systems) in terms of their root metaphors: formism (similarity), mechanism (machine), contextu ...

: A Study in Evidence (1942) but was also a respected authority on aesthetics, philosophy of art, and ethics. Stephen Coburn Pepper received his bachelor's degree (1913) and his doctorate in philosophy from Harvard University (1916). He trained under

Ralph Barton Perry Ralph Barton Perry (July 3, 1876 in Poultney, Vermont – January 22, 1957 in Boston, Massachusetts) was an American philosopher. He was a strident moral idealist who stated in 1909 that, to him, idealism meant "to interpret life consistently ...

, a noted critical realist. He taught primarily at the

, from 1919 to 1953.

Works

World hypotheses

Pepper may be best known for ''

: A Study in Evidence'' (1942), in which he presented four relatively adequate world hypotheses (or world views or conceptual systems) in terms of their root metaphors: formism (similarity), mechanism (machine), contextualism (historical act), and organicism (living system). He also developed contextualism into a world hypothesis, focusing on the criterion of beauty as an "aesthetic quality", which he conceptualized as the immediately felt wholeness of a social context that precede subject-object dualism. One of the thinkers he influenced was

Thomas Kuhn Thomas Samuel Kuhn (; July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American philosopher of science whose 1962 book '' The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term ''paradig ...

, who joined as a junior faculty member at Berkeley during his tenure. Scholars have made comparisons between Pepper's world hypotheses and the Kuhnian paradigms.

Aesthetics

Pepper was also a respected authority on aesthetics, philosophy of art, and ethics, publishing a dozen books and more than a hundred articles. At the University of California he served as chair of the art department and, subsequently, as chair of the philosophy department. Pepper was the Mills Professor of Philosophy, an endowed chair. At the university, he was noted for opposing the functional and aesthetic deterioration of the institution due to the construction of new buildings.

Publications

Duncan, Elmer H.(1970). Stephen C. Pepper: A bibliography. ''The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism'', ''28''(3), 287-293.
*Efron, A. (1980). Pepper's continuing value: In A. Efron & J. Herold (Eds.), Root metaphor: The live thought of Stephen C. Pepper. ''Paunch'', No. 53-54, 5-53. *Pepper, S. C. (1942). World hypotheses: A study in evidence. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

References

External links