Pragmatism and Prophecy: H. G. Wells and the Metaphysics of Socialism

Read throughout the world, H. G. Wells was one of the most famous political thinkers in the early twentieth century. During the early 1900s he elaborated a bold, idiosyncratic, and controversial cosmopolitan socialist vision. In this article I offer a new reading of Wells’s political thought. I argue that he developed a distinctive pragmatist philosophical orientation, which he synthesised with his commitments to evolutionary theory. His pragmatism had four main components: a nominalist metaphysics; a verificationist theory of truth; a Jamesian “will to believe”; and a vision of philosophy as an exercise oriented to improving practice. His political thought was shaped by this philosophical orientation. Wells, I contend, was the most high-profile pragmatist political thinker in the opening decades of the twentieth century. Such an understanding requires a re-evaluation of both Wells and the history of pragmatism

Founding the World State: H. G. Wells on Empire and the English-Speaking Peoples

Herbert George Wells was one of the leading public intellectuals of the first half of the twentieth century. Most famous today as a founder of modern science fiction, he was once known throughout the world as a visionary social and political thinker. Questions of global order occupied a central place in his work. From the opening decade of the century until the close of the Second World War, he campaigned tirelessly for the creation of a world state, which would act as a guarantor of universal peace and justice. Yet, scholarship on Wells pays insufficient attention to the complex and conflicted nature of Wells's early views about how to build a world state. In particular, it neglects the tensions between his advocacy of a New Republic, formed by the unification of the English-speaking peoples, and his support for liberal imperialism. I analyze the development of this theme in Wells's political thinking during the years before WWI, a formative period in his intellectual life. I demonstrate how his conceptions of race, empire, and Anglo-American union shifted over time, show how his political arguments connected to his underlying views about social explanation and language, and highlight how his interpretation of the United States profoundly influenced his ideas about world order

Pragmatic Utopianism and Race: H. G. Wells as Social Scientist

H. G. Wells was one of the most celebrated writers in the world during the first half of the twentieth century. Famed for his innovative fiction, he was also an influential advocate of socialism and the world state. What is much less well-known is that he was a significant contributor to debates about the nature of social science. This article argues that Wells’s account of social science in general, and sociology in particular, was shaped by an idiosyncratic philosophical pragmatism. In order to demonstrate how his philosophical arguments inflected his social thought, it explores his attack on prevailing theories of race, while also highlighting the limits of his account. The article concludes by tracing the reception of Wells’s ideas among social scientists on both sides of the Atlantic. Although his programme for utopian sociology attracted few disciples, his arguments about the dynamics of modern societies found a large audience among social scientists and political thinkers.Invaluable financial support was provided by the Leverhulme Trust