Per Pragmatism, Philosophy Isn't Passive

In The Metaphysical Club, Louis Menand tells the story of how William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Charles Peirce and their friends developed Pragmatism, a distinctly American philosophy. James’s insight was that thinking isn’t a passive mirror of the world but a way of coping with it. We don’t simply discover truth; we make it, by testing ideas against experience to see what works. Philosophy, in this view, doesn’t sit apart from reality. It’s in dialogue with it, shaping it and being shaped by it.