View source for Biography:Samuel Alexander

{{short description|Australian-born British philosopher (1859-1938)}}
{{other people}}
{{Infobox philosopher
| name             = Samuel Alexander
| honorific_suffix = {{post-nominals|country=GBR|OM|FBA|size=100%}}
| region           = [[Philosophy:Western philosophy|Western philosophy]]
| era              = [[Philosophy:20th-century philosophy|20th-century philosophy]]
| image            = SamuelAlexander.gif
| alt              = 
| caption          = 
| other_names      = 
| birth_date       = 6 January 1859
| birth_place      = [[Place:Sydney|Sydney]], New South Wales, Australia
| death_date       = {{death-date and age|13 September 1938|6 January 1859}}
| death_place      = Manchester, England
| alma_mater       = {{ubl | Wesley College, Melbourne | University of Melbourne | [[Organization:Balliol College, Oxford|Balliol College, Oxford]]}}
| school_tradition = {{hlist | [[Philosophy:British idealism|British idealism]] (early)<ref name=SEP>{{SEP|alexander|Samuel Alexander|Emily A. E. Thomas|13 July 2022}}</ref> | [[Philosophy:Analytic philosophy|analytic philosophy]] (late)<ref name=SEP/>}}
| main_interests   = [[Philosophy:Metaphysics|Metaphysics]]
| notable_ideas    = [[Philosophy:Emergent evolution|Emergent evolution]]
}}
'''Samuel Alexander''' {{post-nominals|country=GBR|OM|FBA}} (6 January 1859&nbsp;– 13 September 1938) was an Australian-born British philosopher. He was the first Jewish fellow of an Oxbridge college.<ref name="ODNB">{{cite ODNB|id=30372 |first=Michael A. |last=Weinstein |title=Alexander, Samuel (1859–1938)}}</ref> He is now best known as an advocate of [[Philosophy:Emergentism|emergentism]] in biology.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Baldwin |first1=Thomas |title=The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870-1945 |date=27 November 2003 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-59104-1 |page=765 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I09hCIlhPpkC&pg=PA765 |language=en}}</ref>

==Early life==
He was born into a Jewish family at 436 George Street, Sydney, Australia, the third son of Samuel Alexander, a prosperous saddler, and Eliza née Sloman. His father died around the time he was born, of tuberculosis. Eliza moved the family to St Kilda, Victoria in 1863 or 1864, and Alexander was tutored, and placed at a private school. In 1871, he was sent to Wesley College, Melbourne, then under the headmastership of Martin Howy Irving.<ref name="ODNB"/><ref>{{ThoemmesBritish19C|Alexander, Samuel|10–17}}</ref><ref name="ADB">{{cite book |title=Samuel Alexander (1859–1938) |url=https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/alexander-samuel-4994 |website=Australian Dictionary of Biography |publisher=National Centre of Biography, Australian National University |language=en}}</ref><ref name="DAB">{{Dictionary of Australian Biography|First=Samuel|Last=Alexander|shortlink=0-dict-biogA.html#alexander1}}</ref>

Alexander matriculated at the University of Melbourne on 22 March 1875. He completed the first two years with distinction, but then left without taking a degree.<ref name="ODNB"/>

==Academic career==
In May 1877, Alexander sailed for England in an attempt to win a [[Social:Scholarship|scholarship]] at [[Organization:University of Oxford|Oxford]] or [[Organization:University of Cambridge|Cambridge]]. He was successful at [[Organization:Balliol College, Oxford|Balliol College, Oxford]], and matriculated there on 28 January 1878. He graduated B.A. in 1881, was elected a Fellow of [[Organization:Lincoln College, Oxford|Lincoln College]] in 1882, and graduated M.A. in 1884.<ref name="ODNB"/><ref>{{alox2|title=Alexander, Samuel}}</ref> He remained as philosophy tutor at Lincoln College to 1893. It was during this period that he developed his interest in [[Social:Psychology|psychology]], then a neglected subject. He travelled on the continent of Europe, and in the winter of 1890–91 was in Germany working on [[Experimental psychology|experimental psychology]] at the laboratory of [[Biography:Hugo Münsterberg|Hugo Münsterberg]] at Freiburg.<ref name="ODNB"/>

Alexander for much of his life was deaf, which acted as a handicap.<ref name="ADB"/> For some time, he wanted to obtain a professorship. He made three unsuccessful attempts before he was appointed at Owens College, Manchester in 1893. Among his colleagues there was the educational theorist Catherine Isabella Dodd, whom he admired.<ref>{{cite ODNB|id=48579|first=A. B.|last=Robertson|title=Dodd, Catherine Isabella (1860–1932)}}</ref> Another educationalist he found impressive was Esther Lawrence, a cousin.<ref>{{cite ODNB|id=56327|first=Jane|last=Read |title=Lawrence, Esther Ella (1862–1944)}}</ref>

Robert Mackintosh (1858–1933) owed his appointment as lecturer in 1904 to the new Manchester theological faculty in 1904 to Alexander, he believed.<ref>{{cite ODNB|id=39617|title=Mackintosh, Robert (1858–1933)|first=Alan P. F.|last=Sell}}</ref> Alexander introduced experimental psychology at Manchester in 1907, in unorthodox fashion, with the appointment of Tom Pear (1886–1972), later a professor. Pear was recruited while still an undergraduate, but was backed by Charles Sherrington, who had brought William George Smith as a lecturer to the [[Organization:University of Liverpool|University of Liverpool]] in 1905.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Baker |first1=David B. |title=The Oxford Handbook of the History of Psychology: Global Perspectives |date=2012 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=USA |isbn=978-0-19-536655-6 |page=191 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9uRnGeBAaRMC&pg=PA191 |language=en}}</ref> He invited [[Biography:John Macmurray|John Macmurray]] to be a lecturer in the philosophy department in 1919.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Costello |first1=John E. |title=John Macmurray: A Biography |date=2002 |publisher=Floris Books |isbn=978-0-86315-361-7 |page=91 |language=en}}</ref>

Alexander was president of the [[Philosophy:Aristotelian Society|Aristotelian Society]] from 1908 to 1911, and again from 1936 to 1937.<ref name="WW">{{Who's Who|title=Alexander, Samuel|id=U205175}}</ref> In 1913, he was made a Fellow of the British Academy.<ref name="SEP"/> R.&nbsp;G. Collingwood met Alexander in 1917, when both were working for the United Kingdom, and they kept in touch on philosophy for the rest of Alexander's life.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Fisher |first1=A. R. J. |title=Marking the Centenary of Samuel Alexander's Space, Time and Deity |date=4 June 2021 |publisher=Springer Nature |isbn=978-3-030-65121-3 |page=194 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a9QxEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA194 |language=en}}</ref> Collingwood later contended that Alexander had "philosophical genius of very high order".<ref>Collingwood (1945) – The Idea of Nature – Clarendon Press, Oxford p 158</ref> Alexander influenced A.&nbsp;N. Whitehead, and mentored others who went on to become major figures in 20th-century British philosophy. One such was [[Biography:John Anderson (philosopher)|John Anderson]].<ref>{{cite ODNB|id=40280|first=John|last=Passmore|title=Anderson, John (1893–1962)}}</ref>

In 1924 Alexander retired from his chair, and was succeeded by [[Biography:John Leofric Stocks|John Leofric Stocks]].<ref>{{cite ODNB|id=36309|title=Stocks, John Leofric (1882–1937)|first=D. Z.|last=Phillips}}</ref>

==Awards and honours==
He was given the Hon. LLD of St Andrews in 1905, and in later years he received Hon. Litt. D. degrees from Durham, Liverpool, Oxford and Cambridge.<ref name="DAB"/><ref name="WW"/>

In 1924, Alexander sat for the sculptor Jacob Epstein, who made two copies of a bust. One copy went to the Ben Uri Gallery & Museum, and the other to the [[Organization:University of Manchester|University of Manchester]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Professor Samuel Alexander (1859–1938), OM, FBA, Art UK |url=https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/professor-samuel-alexander-18591938-om-fba-292477 |website=artuk.org |language=en}}</ref> He was Herbert Spencer lecturer at Oxford in 1927, and in 1930 the Order of Merit was conferred on him, the first to a native of Australia.<ref name="WW"/><ref name="ADB"/>

==Death and legacy==
[[File:University of Manchester Samuel Alexander Building (Original Faculty of Arts).jpg|thumb|The Samuel Alexander Building at the University of Manchester]]
Alexander died on 13 September 1938. He was unmarried and his ashes lie in Manchester Southern cemetery (British Jewish Reform Congregation section).<ref name="ODNB"/> He left money to the [[Organization:Hebrew University of Jerusalem|University of Jerusalem]] and the University of Manchester. [[Biography:John Laird (philosopher)|John Laird]], his literary executor, edited ''Philosophical and Literary Pieces'' (1939).<ref name="DAB"/> His papers were left to the John Rylands Library.<ref name=SEP/>

The building formerly known as Humanities Lime Grove at the [[Organization:University of Manchester|University of Manchester]] was renamed the Samuel Alexander Building, in 2007.<ref>{{cite web |title=Samuel Alexander Building, History of The University of Manchester |url=https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/history-heritage/history/buildings/samuel-alexander/ |website=The University of Manchester |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Stuff |first1=Good |title=Samuel Alexander Building, Hulme, Manchester |url=https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101393664-samuel-alexander-building-hulme-ward |website=britishlistedbuildings.co.uk}}</ref> A theatre at Monash University, Melbourne, is also named for him.<ref name="ADB"/>

==Works==
Alexander contributed articles on philosophical subjects to ''Mind'', the ''Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society'', and the ''International Journal of Ethics''. In 1887, he won the Green moral philosophy prize with an essay on the subject "In what direction does Moral Philosophy seem to you to admit or require advance?" It was the basis of his volume ''Moral Order and Progress'', which was published in 1889 and went into its third edition in 1899. Alexander credited A. C. Bradley with introducing him to ethics, and his brother [[Biography:F. H. Bradley|F. H. Bradley]] helped him with the book. He was influenced by [[Biography:T. H. Green|T. H. Green]], in whose memory the prize had been set up, but diverged from his views in pursuing [[Philosophy:Evolutionary ethics|evolutionary ethics]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mander |first1=W. J. |title=British Idealism: A History |date=12 May 2011 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-955929-9 |pages=220–221 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HRcUDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA220 |language=en}}</ref>

Alexander was appointed Gifford lecturer at Glasgow in 1915, and delivered his lectures in the winters of 1917 and 1918. They drew on preliminary papers he had written from 1908 onwards. These materials he developed into his major work ''Space, Time, and Deity'', published in two volumes in 1920.<ref name="ODNB"/> John Laird called it "the boldest adventure in detailed speculative metaphysics attempted in so grand a manner by any English writer between 1655 and 1920".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Fisher |first1=A. R. J. |title=Marking the Centenary of Samuel Alexander's Space, Time and Deity |date=4 June 2021 |publisher=Springer Nature |isbn=978-3-030-65121-3 |page=2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a9QxEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA2 |language=en}}</ref> His Arthur Davis Memorial Lecture on ''Spinoza and Time'', in the nature of an annexe to ''Space, Time, and Deity'', was published in 1921.<ref name="ODNB"/>

In 1933, Alexander published ''Beauty and Other Forms of Value'', mainly an essay in [[Social:Aesthetics|aesthetics]]. It incorporated passages from papers that had appeared in the previous ten years. Compared to his systematic work, it was rather closer to the mainstream of British thought, and was praised highly by R. G. Collingwood.<ref name="ODNB"/>

==Philosophical ideas==
Two key concepts for Alexander are those of an "[[Philosophy:Emergence|emergent quality]]" and the idea of [[Philosophy:Emergent evolution|emergent evolution]]:

{{Blockquote|''As existents within Space-Time, minds enter into various relations of a perfectly general character with other things and with one another. These account for the familiar features of mental life: [[Philosophy:Knowledge|knowing]], [[Social:Freedom|freedom]], [[Philosophy:Value (ethics and social sciences)|values]] and the like. In the hierarchy of qualities the next higher quality to the highest attained is [[Religion:Deity|deity]]. God is the whole universe engaged in process towards the emergence of this new quality, and religion is the sentiment in us that we are drawn towards him, and caught in the movement of the world to a higher level of existence.''|Space, Time and Deity [1920] Vol. II, p. 428}}

His idea was to start with space and time, each of which he regarded as inconceivable without the other, in fact mutually equivalent. His thinking, as he said, originated in ''Instinct and Experience'' (1912) by [[Biography:C. Lloyd Morgan|C. Lloyd Morgan]]; who went on in 1922 to give an exposition of emergent properties.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Murillo |first1=Philippe |last2=Roussillon-Constanty |first2=Laurence |title=Science, Fables and Chimeras: Cultural Encounters |date=25 November 2013 |publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing |isbn=978-1-4438-5444-3 |page=195 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A2ExBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA195 |language=fr}}</ref> Pure spacetime emerges, through a process Alexander describes simply as "motion", the stuff and matter that make up our material world:

{{Blockquote|''Space-Time, the universe in its primordial form, is the stuff out of which all existents are made. It is Space-Time with the characters which we have found it to reveal to experience. But it has no 'quality' save that of being spatio-temporal or motion.'' |Space, Time and Deity [1920] Vol. I, p. 342}}

{{Blockquote|''Motion is not a succession of point-instants, but rather a point-instant is the limiting case of a motion.'' |Space, Time and Deity [1920] Vol. I, p. 321}}

{{Blockquote|''Point-instants are real but their separateness from one another is conceptual. They are in fact the elements of motion and in their reality are inseparable from the universe of motion; they are elements in a continuum.'' |Space, Time and Deity [1920] Vol. I, p. 325}}

{{Blockquote|'' Time makes Space distinct and Space makes Time distinct... Space or Time, may be regarded as supplying the element of diversity to the element of identity supplied by the other.'' |Space, Time and Deity [1920] Vol. I, p. 195 }}

Alexander absolutizes spacetime, and even speaks of it as a "Entity|stuff" of which things are made. At the same time he also says that spacetime can be called "Motions" – not motion in the singular, but complexes of motions with kaleidoscopic changes within a continuum. In other words, for Alexander motion is primitive, and space and time are defined through relations between motions.

In ''Space, Time, and Deity'' Alexander held that an [[Philosophy:Object|object]] may be before a [[Philosophy:Consciousness|consciousness]], but is not in it; consciousness of an object is not the same as [[Philosophy:Metacognition|consciousness of one's consciousness of the object]]. For example, an object such as a chair may be apprehended by a consciousness, but the chair is not located within that consciousness; and, the [[Philosophy:Contemplation|contemplation]] of the chair is distinct from thinking about the act of contemplating the chair. Further, since the contemplation of an object is itself an [[Philosophy:Action|action]], in Alexander's view it cannot be "contemplated", but only subjectively experienced, or "enjoyed".

Alexander asked the question:

{{Blockquote|How far a science of order could be founded on this bare conception of ordered parts of Space-Time I do not know. But at any rate the more comprehensive theorems of speculative mathematics at the present time do not thus proceed. They appear to use the conception of Space and Time not as being stuffs, as we have taken them to be, within which there are relations of the parts of Space and Time themselves, but as relational in the sense that they are relations between things or entities. This is the antithesis between absolute and relational|Space, Time and Deity [1920] Vol. I, p. 168}}

Alexander's views have been described as panentheistic.<ref>John W. Cooper ''Panentheism, the other God of the philosophers: from Plato to the present'' 2006, pp. 133–134</ref>

==Family==
A change in Alexander's home life occurred in 1902 when the whole of his family—his mother, an aunt, two elder brothers and his sister—came from Australia to live with him.<ref name="ADB"/> His sister became his hostess and on Wednesday evenings there were informal social gatherings.<ref name="DAB"/>

Alexander was an "unofficial godfather" to writer [[Biography:Naomi Mitchison|Naomi Mitchison]] née Haldane, born in 1897. He took an interest in her studies, and wrote her long letters. Mitchison devoted a chapter in her autobiographical work ''You May Well Ask'' to Alexander, recounting affectionate anecdotes and quoting extensively from his letters.<ref>[[Biography:Naomi Mitchison|Naomi Mitchison]], 
You may well ask", London, 1979, Part II, Chapter 1.</ref>

==Books==
*[https://archive.org/details/moralorderandpro00alexuoft ''Moral Order and Progress''] (1889)
*[https://archive.org/details/lockealexander00alexiala ''Locke''] (1908), a short study in the ''Philosophies Ancient and Modern Series''.
*''Space, Time, and Deity'' (1920), Macmillan & Co., reprinted 1966 by Dover Publications, reprinted 2004 by Kessinger Publications: [https://archive.org/details/spacetimedeitygi01alexuoft "volume one"] : {{ISBN|0-7661-8701-2}} [https://web.archive.org/web/20070927041001/http://www.giffordlectures.org/Browse.asp?PubID=TPSTAD&Cover=TRUE online version], [https://archive.org/details/spacetimeanddeit00alexuoft "volume two"] : {{ISBN|0-7661-8702-0}}
*[https://archive.org/details/spinozatime00alexuoft ''Spinoza and Time''] (1921)
*[https://books.google.com/books?id=Z3m7AAAAIAAJ ''Art and the Material''] (1925); Adamson Lecture for 1925
*''Beauty and Other Forms of Value'' (1933)
*''Philosophical and Literary Pieces'' (1939), (posthumous)

==Notes==
{{reflist}}

== External links ==
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20061004074247/http://www.giffordlectures.org/Author.asp?AuthorID=5 Gifford Lectures biography]
*[http://www.iep.utm.edu/alex-sam/ ''Samuel Alexander''] article by Emily Thomas in [[Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]] originally published 28 May 2012   
*John Slater's [http://www.thoemmes.com/idealism/alexander_intro.htm Introduction to the Collected Works of Samuel Alexander] has some biographical details on Alexander's life.
*[https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/manchesteruniversity/data/gb133-alex Samuel Alexander papers] at the University of Manchester Library
*Article by recent occupier of Alexander's chair at the University of Manchester discussing the legacy of [https://web.archive.org/web/20050226052252/http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2834 Whitehead and Alexander].
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20060820051903/http://www.art.man.ac.uk/RELTHEOL/JEWISH/EXHIBITION/11Alexander.html "Samuel Alexander and Zionism"]
*{{Cite Australasia|Alexander, Samuel}}


{{DEFAULTSORT:Alexander, Samuel}}
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{{Sourceattribution|Samuel Alexander}}