Samuel Alexander papers
![[Image - Bust of Samuel Alexander]](alexander.jpg)
Date range: 1877-1938.
Papers of Samuel Alexander (1859-1938), Professor of Philosophy at Owens College and later Manchester University, 1893-1924.
Manchester's most distinguished philosopher, he was a pioneer in modernizing the discipline by recognizing the philosophical significance of contemporary developments in psychology, biology and evolutionary theory.
Alexander is best known for his theory of `emergent evolution’, expounded in his major work, Space, Time and Deity (1920), in which he argued that existence is hierarchically ordered, and that through a process of evolution ever higher levels of existence emerge.
In later life Alexander broadened his interests to include aesthetics and literature. He was active in the life and politics of the University, and was a keen advocate of women's suffrage.
Alexander's papers include large numbers of letters, numerous accounts, receipts and business letters from publishers, research notebooks, pamphlets and offprints, and biographical and obituary material.
Correspondents include the philosophers Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, the writers A.N. Monkhouse and C.E. Montague, the physicist Ernest Rutherford, and the Zionist pioneer Chaim Weizmann (Alexander supported the campaign for a Jewish homeland in Palestine).
Finding aids
- partial unpublished catalogue. See also B.D. Brettschneider, The Philosophy of Samuel Alexander: Idealism in 'Space, Time and Deity' (New York, 1964);
- M.R. Konvitz, On the Nature of Value: The Philosophy of Samuel Alexander (New York, 1967);
- J.W. McCarthy, The Naturalism of Samuel Alexander (New York, 1948);
- A.P. Stiernotte, God and Space-time: Deity in the Philosophy of Samuel Alexander (New York, 1954).
Location
JRUL (Deansgate).
