William Pepperell Montague

Born Nov. 24, 1873, in Chelsea, Mass.; died Aug. 1, 1953, in New York. American idealist philosopher and representative of the new realist movement.

In 1920, Montague became a professor at Columbia University. He was one of the authors of the new realist manifesto (1910) and of the collection The New Realism (1912). Montague later sought to synthesize new realism and personalism. In the 1930’s he was an adherent of religious realism. Toward the end of his life, his views tended toward Thomism. Claiming to have achieved a synthesis of idealism and materialism, Montague called this synthesis animistic materialism, or hylopsychism. Montague regarded matter and the psyche as two different forms of energy; he considered matter as the mechanical system of kinetic energy and thought as the hierarchical system of potential energy concentrated in the brain. Montague supported the theory of emergent evolution, which he interpreted mechanistically as the appearance of a new quality as the result of the constant increase of one factor of development compared to others.