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Definition of essay

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Definition of essay  (Entry 2 of 2)

transitive verb

• composition

attempt , try , endeavor , essay , strive mean to make an effort to accomplish an end.

attempt stresses the initiation or beginning of an effort.

try is often close to attempt but may stress effort or experiment made in the hope of testing or proving something.

endeavor heightens the implications of exertion and difficulty.

essay implies difficulty but also suggests tentative trying or experimenting.

strive implies great exertion against great difficulty and specifically suggests persistent effort.

Examples of essay in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'essay.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Middle French essai , ultimately from Late Latin exagium act of weighing, from Latin ex- + agere to drive — more at agent

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 4

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 2

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“Essay.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/essay. Accessed 21 Apr. 2024.

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Meaning of essay in English

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• I want to finish off this essay before I go to bed .
• His essay was full of spelling errors .
• Have you given that essay in yet ?
• Have you handed in your history essay yet ?
• I'd like to discuss the first point in your essay.
• boilerplate
• composition
• dissertation
• essay question
• peer review
• go after someone
• go all out idiom
• go down swinging/fighting idiom
• go for it idiom
• go for someone
• shoot the works idiom
• smarten (someone/something) up
• smarten up your act idiom
• square the circle idiom
• step on the gas idiom

essay | American Dictionary

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have irons in the fire

to be involved with many activities or jobs at the same time or to make certain that there are always several possibilities available

Binding, nailing, and gluing: talking about fastening things together

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Decoding Billy Collins: Layers of Meaning in Simple Verses

This essay about the poetry of Billy Collins explores the deceptive simplicity in his verses, revealing a poetic virtuoso capable of transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. As a former laureate of the United States Poet Laureate, Collins’s unassuming demeanor conceals intricate layers of meaning that invite readers into a realm of contemplation. Through works like “Introduction to Poetry” and “The Lanyard,” Collins employs artful subtlety, elevating commonplace experiences into profound meditations on love, gratitude, and the human condition. His signature wit and humor add depth, creating a dynamic interplay between levity and introspection in poems like “Litany.” Additionally, Collins’s self-awareness as a poet, evident in “The Revenant,” adds a meta-literary dimension, showcasing a nuanced understanding of the poetic craft. In essence, this exploration of Billy Collins’s poetry unveils a multi-faceted tapestry that transforms simplicity into complexity, leaving an indelible mark on contemporary poetic expression.

How it works

In the vast landscape of contemporary poetry, Billy Collins emerges as a poetic virtuoso, skillfully enfolding profound nuances within the folds of seemingly uncomplicated verses. A former laureate of the United States Poet Laureate, Collins has garnered widespread acclaim for his distinctive ability to transmute the ordinary into the extraordinary. His poetry, marked by an unassuming demeanor, conceals intricate layers of meaning that beckon readers into a realm of contemplation and discovery.

Upon an initial encounter with Collins’s poems, the untrained eye might dismiss them as mere simplicity, resonating with a conversational ease.

Yet, beneath this veneer, lies a trove of complexity waiting to be unearthed. Collins crafts his verses with an artful subtlety, employing a keen sense of observation to elevate commonplace experiences into poetic revelations. In works such as “Introduction to Poetry,” he urges readers to embrace poetry as an immersive experience, a sensory journey rather than a decipherable code. Thus, unraveling Collins’s creations becomes an odyssey, an exploration of profundity tucked away within the commonplace.

“The Lanyard,” a seemingly whimsical reflection on a childhood gift to his mother, exemplifies Collins’s mastery. What begins as a recounting of a summer camp creation morphs into a profound meditation on the intricacies of love and gratitude. The lanyard, ostensibly a simple object, transforms into a vessel, encapsulating the intricate bond between parent and child. Collins adeptly guides readers through the corridors of memory, using the lanyard as a portal to unveil the complex tapestry of the human experience.

Collins’s brilliance lies not solely in his capacity to infuse ordinary objects with profound meaning but also in his exploration of the human condition. “Forgetfulness” serves as a poignant testament to this, as Collins delves into the universal experience of memory loss and the inexorable march of time. Through vivid imagery and poignant metaphors, he captures forgetfulness as an inherent, if disconcerting, aspect of the human journey. His contemplation of aging becomes a mirror reflecting the reader’s own experiences, fostering a connection that transcends the specific details of the poem.

The poet’s signature wit and humor play an integral role in adding layers to his work, creating a dynamic interplay between levity and introspection. “Litany” exemplifies this balance, as Collins humorously catalogues life’s inconveniences and irritations. Yet, beneath the surface, a more profound commentary surfaces regarding humanity’s proclivity for fixating on trivialities while overlooking deeper, more meaningful aspects of existence. Collins’s adeptness at infusing humor with insight renders his poetry both accessible and contemplative, appealing to a diverse audience while maintaining a depth that beckons further exploration.

Furthermore, Collins’s self-awareness as a poet contributes an additional layer to his verses. In “The Revenant,” he whimsically personifies the poem itself as a ghostly entity haunting the poet. This playful acknowledgment of the challenges of poetic creation adds a meta-literary dimension, inviting readers to peer behind the curtain of the artistic process. Collins’s ability to intertwine the profound and the playful showcases a nuanced understanding of his craft.

In essence, decoding Billy Collins demands a willingness to peel back the deceptively simple exterior of his verses. His poetry functions as a multi-faceted tapestry, guiding readers through landscapes of memory, human experience, and the intricacies of the poetic process. With a unique blend of observational acuity, wit, and self-awareness, Collins invites readers to embark on an expedition where each line unfurls a new facet of meaning. In this way, he transforms simplicity into complexity, leaving an indelible mark on the ever-evolving canvas of contemporary poetry.

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Anthony Collins

Anthony Collins (1676–1729) was a wealthy English free-thinker, deist and materialist who in his later years became a country squire and local government official in Essex. Along with John Toland, Collins was the most significant member of a close knit circle of radical free thinkers that arose in England in the first three decades of the eighteenth century. This group included such men as Samuel Bold, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Woolston and William Wollaston. [ 1 ] Collins was a friend of John Locke in Locke’s old age and Locke was one important formative influence on his philosophical views. In respect to his materialism and determinism Collins was clearly influenced more by Hobbes, Bayle and possibly Spinoza than he was by Locke. The Latitudinarians may well have influenced his views about free thinking as well as Locke. Collins’ works had some influence in England and much more on the continent during the eighteenth century.

Collins’ central passion is the autonomy of reason particularly with respect to religion. Collins was strongly motivated by an aversion to religious persecution. Issues revolving around religious freedom are the threads that run through all of his writing. It is possible to divide Collins’ works into those that are mainly philosophical and those that are more narrowly religious, but they are clearly connected. His 1707–8 pamphlet controversy with Samuel Clarke over whether “matter can think” and other topics, and his book about free will and determinism are chiefly engaged with philosophical topics. Even these topics, however, involve such religious issues as the immortality of the soul and punishment and reward in the next life. His writing about reason and free-thinking may be regarded as on the borderline between philosophy and religion. Although it deals with epistemological and sometimes metaphysical issues, it focuses almost entirely on religious issues. His religious works are even more narrowly focused. The Thirty-nine Articles are the only official confessional statement of Anglicanism. Two of Collins’ books deal with the authenticity of Article 20 of the Thirty-nine Articles and whether the church has the power to make doctrine. In large measure, these represent the doctrines of free-thinking applied to the particular case of the Anglican Church. Collins also wrote a book examining the question of whether the prophecies of Christ’s messiahship could be accepted. This seems to be a rejection of Christianity as a revealed religion. How far Collins went in the direction of atheism is still a matter of scholarly debate.

Collins was clearly a controversial figure in his time; nor has scholarly treatment down the years done much better at being objective. As Ernest Campbell Mossner remarks:

The Deists were long subjected to the odium theologicum and the historians of the movement have almost without exception downgraded or slandered them both socially as well as intellectually since the time of John Leland in the eighteenth century. (Mossner 1967b: 335)

1.2 Chief Works

2.1 background: consciousness and material systems, 2.2.1 clarke’s categories, 2.2.2 real emergent properties, 2.2.3 personal identity, 2.3 evaluating the clarke collins correspondence, 3.1 background, 3.2 determinism in collins’ early works, 3.3 a philosophical inquiry concerning human liberty , 1717, 4.1 an essay concerning the use of reason , 1707, 4.2 analogical language, 4.3 a discourse of free thinking , 1713, 4.4 interpreting a discourse of free thinking, 5. collins and religion, 6.1 in england, 6.2 on the continent, work by collins, works by others, secondary literature, other internet resources, related entries, 1. life and works.

Anthony Collins was born in Heston, Middlesex on June 21, 1676 into a family of lawyers. He went to Eton and then King’s College, Cambridge in 1693. Though he had not graduated from Cambridge, Collins went to the Middle Temple in 1694 to study law. He didn’t like the law and was never called to the Bar. In 1698 he married the daughter of a rich London merchant, Sir Francis Child. She died in childbirth in 1703. At the time of his marriage he received some property in Essex from his father. Together with his wife’s dowry, this made him a very rich man indeed. Collins met John Locke on a visit to Oates in Essex in 1703, visited Locke five times over the next 18 months and carried on a correspondence with him about various philosophical topics. In one of his letters to Collins Locke remarked:

Believe it, my good friend, to love truth for truth’s sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed bed of all other virtues; and if I mistake not, you have as much of it as I have ever met with in anybody.

Collins was a lifelong bibliophile with a large private research library. In the article on Collins in Birch’s Dictionary, Birch notes that his

large and curious [library] was open to all men of letters, to whom he readily communicated all the lights and assistance in his power, and even furnished his antagonists with books to confute himself, and directed them how to give their arguments all the force of which they were capable. (Birch, quoted in Berman 1975: 50)

During this period Collins also met Samuel Bold and John Toland. From 1703 until 1706, after his wife’s death, Collins spent the winters in London and the summers at his fine summer mansion in Buckinghamshire—where Queen Anne and her court visited him. In 1707 Collins began a pamphlet controversy with Samuel Clarke, a prominent British philosopher and member of Newton’s inner circle, over the question of whether matter can think. The controversy continued until 1708. In 1707 Collins also published anonymously the Essay Concerning the Use of Reason in Propositions, the evidence whereof depends on human testimony . During this period Collins frequented the London coffee shops where the deists and free-thinkers met. Berkeley apparently met him at such a gathering in 1713. In 1710 Collins made his first trip to the Continent, spending his time buying books in Holland and meeting John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, and Prince Eugene. Back in England, Collins met several times with Samuel Clarke and William Whiston at the house of Lady Calverly and Sir John Hubern for “frequent but friendly debates about the truth of the Bible and the Christian Religion” (Whiston, quoted in O’Higgins 1970: 77). In 1713 he published A Discourse Concerning Free-Thinking . The Discourse was his most controversial work. He made a second trip to the continent about the time that the Discourse was published. Again he went to Holland and France and planned to go on to Italy. The trip was cut short by the death of a close kinsman. In 1715 Collins, in effect, took root in Essex, moving into Mowdon Hall. Collins probably owned a good 2000 acres in Essex, much of it prime agricultural land. In 1717 he published A Philosophical Enquiry Concerning Human Liberty in which he argues for a compatibilist form of determinism and rejects freedom of the will. Samuel Clarke reviewed the book, continuing the argument that had begun during the Clarke Collins correspondence of 1707–08.

From 1717 on Collins spent most of his time in the country, but still had a keen interest in national politics at a distance, and local politics in person. Collins was a Whig and became a spokesman for the Whigs in the country. Collins took a serious role in the government of Essex—serving as a justice, a commissioner for taxes, and then Treasurer of the County. He examined roads and bridges. He was involved in finding a place for housing county records. As Treasurer he was a model of integrity. In considering the relation between Collins, the County official and Collins the writer, O’Higgins notes that Collins was probably less tolerant towards Catholics than other justices (O’Higgins 1970: 128–9). Collins the writer is consistently anti-Catholic. So, while one might hope that the use of reason would produce a higher degree of toleration towards all religious groups than one would expect to find among true believers, there seems to be little conflict here between the writer and the jurist.

In December 1723 Collins’ only son suddenly became ill and died. His father was grief-stricken. Collins remarried in 1724 and he published what is perhaps his most successful book, A Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion as well as An Historical and Critical Essay on the Thirty Nine Articles of the Church of England . From 1725 until 1729 Collins’ health began to deteriorate. Still, in 1726 he published The Scheme of Literal Prophecy Considered . In 1729 Collins published A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing . He was suffering from gall stones and finally died of his disease on December 13, 1729. His second wife Elisabeth and his two daughters survived him. He willed his unpublished manuscripts to Pierre Desmaizeaux but Desmaizeaux took an offer from Collins’ widow to buy them. Desmaizeaux quickly regretted his decision, but it was too late. He accused Elisabeth Collins of giving some of Collins unpublished papers to the Bishop of Lincoln. She denied that the story was true. She willed some or all of Collins unpublished papers to a friend. What became of them is still a mystery.

• An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason , 1707
• A Letter to Mr. Dodwell, 1706
• A Reply to Mr. Clarke’s Defence of His Letter to Mr. Dodwell
• Reflections on Mr. Clarke’s Second Defence of His Letter to Mr. Dodwell
• An Answer to Mr. Clarke’s Third Defence of His Letter to Mr. Dodwell, 1708
• Priestcraft In Perfection 1710
• A Vindication of the Divine Attributes, in some Remarks on His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin’s sermon intitled “Divine Predestination Consistent with the Freedom of Man’s Will” , 1710
• A Discourse of Free-Thinking , 1713
• Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty , 1717
• A Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion , 1724
• An Historical and Critical Essay on the Thirty Nine Articles of the Church of England , 1724
• The Scheme of Literal Prophecy Considered , 1726
• A Discourse concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing , 1729

2. The Clarke Collins Correspondence (1707–08)

The chief topic of the Clarke Collins controversy of 1707–08 is whether consciousness can inhere in a material system, a highly controversial issue largely inspired in this case by Locke’s notorious speculation about thinking matter. In Book IV of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , in stressing the limits of human knowledge of substances, Locke writes:

We have the Ideas of Matter and Thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know, whether any mere material Being thinks, or no; it being impossible for us, by the contemplation of our own Ideas, without revelation, to discover whether Omnipotency has not given to some System of Matter fitly disposed, a power to perceive and think, or else joined and fixed to Matter so disposed, a thinking immaterial Substance…. (Locke 1690 IV, iii, 6 [1975: 540–1])

Locke then went on to conjecture that it might be just as easy for God to add the power of thought to a system of matter organized in the right way as for God to connect an immaterial thinking thing to a body (Ibid.). Clearly, the difficulties in explaining how an immaterial mind could relate to a material body play a significant role in leading Locke to this position. This “thinking matter” passage “raised a storm of protest and discussion that lasted right through to the last years of the eighteenth century” (Yolton 1983: 17). One of the first of these protests came from Bishop Stillingfleet and Locke’s response helps us better understand the thinking matter hypothesis. Starting with God’s creation of matter, Locke goes through a series of superadditions of motion to matter, life and the excellencies of vegetation such as those of a rose or a peach tree, then sense and spontaneous motion and the other properties of an elephant. Then he notes that if there are no objections to God performing these actions upon matter, why object to the next step which is superadding the powers to matter to make a thinking, intelligent material thing. Thus, superaddition seems to involve the creation of organizations out of matter that have particular functional powers characteristic of different kinds of living things.

Locke and Collins discussed some of the responses to the thinking matter passage that were published before Locke’s death in 1704. Locke’s conjecture about thinking matter is, in effect, the centerpiece of the debate between Samuel Clarke and Anthony Collins between 1707 and 1708, although the issue was also discussed on the continent. Still, as Ann Thompson writes in Bodies of Thought:

Here I shall only observe that despite the undeniable importance of Locke’s hypothesis and the arguments put forward in his second reply to Stillingfleet, they should not be seen as a starting point for speculations about the soul, but as part of an ongoing philosophical and theological discussion. While Locke’s arguments probably provided a new stimulus for discussion, claims that his hypothesis constituted the sole impetus for the late seventeenth century materialistic works ignore the preceding theological debates. (Thompson 2008: 58)

There were some diverse strands to this debate.

The Catholic Church at the Fifth Lateran Council in 1553 had declared the soul immaterial and therefore immortal. Philosophers were invited to produce proof of the soul’s immateriality. There was a tradition going back to Plato that the soul is a unity without parts. Presumably having no parts it cannot fall apart. The kind of substance dualism that one finds in Descartes, for example, was intended to distinguish humans from animals. In England, the new science was both regarded suspiciously by some religious conservatives while its proponents saw it as an ally of religion. In his will, Robert Boyle provided for a series of lectures that would use the new science to defend religious orthodoxy. These Boyle lectures were aimed at defending religion against atheists, deists, Epicurean philosophers, as well as Hobbes, Spinoza, and their followers. One of Richard Bently’s sermons in 1692 was titled Matter and Motion Cannot Think . Bently claimed that even God’s omnipotence could not produce a cognitive body (Thompson 2008: 61). This claim that there was a limit to God’s omnipotence was shocking to some. Samuel Clarke gave the Boyle lecture two years in a row, 1704 and 1705, and these were published together as A Discourse Concerning the Being and Attributes of God and the Obligations of Natural Religion and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation . It is quite likely that Collins had read this work and so when he opposed Clarke, he surely knew who and what philosophical positions he was dealing with.

On the other side, the mechanical philosophy of Descartes, Mersenne and Gassendi played a role on the materialist side of the debate. Insofar as animals could be treated like machines, it became possible for one to argue that humans were sufficiently like other animals that they too could be treated as machines. Thus an immaterial soul could be dispensed with. There were also medical treatises that suggested that matter is active and that the soul dies with the body. There were the works of Hobbes and Spinoza which argued for a materialistic monism. In 1704 John Toland published his Letters to Serena in which he argues that motion is essential to matter. Finally, there was a Christian mortalist strand in Protestantism. One strand of these Christian mortalists claimed to derive their mortalism from scripture alone and urged that the immaterial soul was a Platonic invention that had been foisted on Christianity and should be dispensed with. In England, this movement can be traced back as far as William Tindale in the sixteenth century and included such luminaries as Overton, Milton, and Hobbes. Henry Dodwell, a well respected biblical scholar, was one such figure in this tradition.

2.2 The Correspondence

The correspondence between Clarke and Collins took its rise from a book published in 1706 by Henry Dodwell. Dodwell claimed on the basis of various passages from the Bible that without divine intervention the soul would perish at death. Clarke wrote a public refutation of Dodwell’s book. Besides rejecting Dodwell’s interpretation of scripture, Clarke gave a single argument to show that consciousness could not be a property of a material system since the most plausible reason, apart from appeals to scripture, for the soul being naturally mortal is that it is material. Clarke claims

matter being a divisible substance, consisting always of separable—nay of actually separate and distinct parts—it is plain, unless it were essentially conscious—in which case every particle of matter must consist of innumerable separate and distinct consciousnesses—no system of it in any possible composition or division can be an individual conscious being. (Clarke 1738 [1928: 757]; Clarke and Collins 2011: 48)

Clarke went on to pose a thought experiment in which we are to imagine “three or three hundred particles at a mile, or any given distance, one from another” (ibid.). Clarke claims that this collection of particles could not constitute one individual conscious being. Then he has us supposes these particles brought together so as to touch one another.

Will they, thereby, by any motion or composition whatever, become any whit less truly distinct beings than they were at the greatest distance? How, then, can their being disposed in any possible system, make them one individual conscious being? (ibid.)

Clarke’s argument in effect denies that organization can play any role in unifying parts into a whole. Clarke’s argument, without mentioning Locke by name, is a refutation of Locke’s thinking matter hypothesis.

Collins, writing to Dodwell concerning matters about which they disagreed, noted that he would be happy to see Dodwell have the liberty “to publish whatever he thinks fit” (Dybikowski 2011: 188). Collins then wrote a public “Letter to Mr. Dodwell” in which he claimed to show that Clarke’s philosophical argument against the mortality of the soul was inconclusive. Clarke responded with “A Defence of a Letter to Mr. Dodwell”. Over the next two years, Clarke wrote three more defenses of his original letter to Henry Dodwell and Collins wrote three replies. Each of these was longer than its predecessor. Clarke, who became increasingly irritated as the debate continued, got the final word in “The Fourth Defence of A Letter”.

While the central issue of the correspondence is whether it is possible for consciousness to inhere in a material system and thus for matter to think, the discussion toward the end turned to other issues such as free will and determinism and the adequacy of Collins’ account of personal identity. Rather than explain the Correspondence in detail, what follows is a discussion of Collins’ position in respect to two central issues, that of emergent properties and personal identity. [ 2 ]

To give a materialist account of life and consciousness, Collins needs to show that from lifeless and unthinking matter one can get life and thought. In his “Letter to Dodwell” Collins claims that there are material systems all about us whose parts do not have the properties found in the whole. He gives the example of a rose that has the power to produce its sweet scent in us, while the particles that compose it individually do not have this power (Clarke 1738 [1928: 751]; Clarke and Collins 2011: 48–9). These material systems provide models and analogies to understand how life and consciousness can arise from lifeless and thoughtless particles. Thus, from the beginning, Collins is arguing that consciousness is an emergent property, i.e. a property had by the whole, but not by the parts that compose that whole.

In his First Defence, Clarke responds by giving an argument to show that there are no real emergent properties. He does this by giving an enumeration of all of the kinds of properties. It turns out that there are only three categories. These categories correspond roughly to the primary, secondary and tertiary qualities of the mechanical philosophy (Attfield 1977: 46). The correspondence is not precise because Clarke claims to be categorizing all properties, not just properties that belong to matter. Thus, he includes consciousness in the first category, though on a different basis than the first category properties of matter such as magnitude and motion. Clarke claims that only properties of the first kind are real. Properties of the second kind are

not really Qualities of the System, and evidently do not in any proper Sense belong to it, but are only Effects occasionally produced by it in some other Substance, and truly are Qualities or Modes of that other Substance in which they are produced…. (Clarke 1738 [1928: 759]; Clarke and Collins 2011: 56)

Heat, light, taste, and sound are examples of this class of properties. Clarke claims that these properties are largely irrelevant to the question about consciousness because they are modes of the other substance in which they are produced. He claims, inaccurately that Collins’s example of the smell of a rose belongs to this class. The properties of the third kind are fictional. They

are not real Qualities at all, residing in any subject, but merely abstract Names to express the Effects of some determinate Motions of certain streams of Matter…. (Clarke 1738 [1928: 760]; Clarke and Collins 2011: 57)

The examples that Clarke gives of third category properties are magnetism, electrical attractions, and gravity.

What conditions are required for belonging to Clarke’s first class? In respect to material wholes, Clarke is a reductionist who holds that whatever real property one finds in the whole must be found proportionally in the parts. The height of the bricks and the mortar in a wall sum to the height of the wall as a whole. Thus, all the properties in a material whole are compositions of the properties of the parts. Call this Clarke’s Composition Principle. Any property of a material system that fails to conform to this pattern is not a real property. It follows that emergent properties, properties possessed by the whole but not by the parts, cannot be real. As a result of his examination of the kinds of categories, Clarke claims that all properties of a whole which are not proportionally present in the parts belong in his third class, the class of fictional properties. It follows that since consciousness is a real property it cannot be an emergent property.

Since consciousness is a real property it must belong in Clarke’s first class of properties. This being so, it would seem that it could not violate the Composition Principle. But consciousness, on Clarke’s account, is so strongly unified that it cannot be either compounded or divided. This is why it cannot belong to any material system. So, there must be a second sufficient condition for belonging to Clarke’s first category. Clarke second sufficient condition is that

an Individual Power , properly and strictly speaking…can only proceed from or reside in, an Individual Being . (Clarke 1738 [1928: 750]; Clarke and Collins 2011: 58).

To be an individual power, Clarke tells us, a power must be truly unitary, and thus not composed of parts. Call this the Individual Power Principle. So, consciousness is an individual power, which belongs to an individual being, the soul. The soul, too, is so unified that it does not have parts. Magnitude, in contrast, satisfies the Composition Principle but is not an individual power. This is because the matter to which it belongs can always be divided, or more precisely, actually is divided.

Underlying Clarke’s categories and his rejection of the possibility that wholes have properties not possessed by their parts is a principle that from material properties such as magnitude, motion, or solidity, only other material properties, or properties of the same kind, may result. The same kind of restriction can be said to apply to mental properties. Call this the Homogeneity Principle. This Principle, in turn, is related to what has been called an heirloom theory of causality. The idea here is that whatever ends up in an effect, must have been in the cause of that effect. Otherwise one gets contradictions such as that something has come from nothing, or there is more of a given property in the whole than there is in the parts, and so on. [ 3 ] Later, in “A Third Defense of an Argument” Clarke calls Collins’s attention to the fact that in his proof for the existence of God in Book IV of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , Locke invokes the Homogeneity Principle to argue that an eternal, immaterial thinking being could not arise from matter (Clarke 1738 [1928: 837]; Clarke and Collins, 2011: 170–171). Clarke holds that this puts an end to Locke’s claim that God could as easily make matter organized in the right way to think. We will return to this when we consider the outcome of the debate.

Marleen Rozemond, in her article of 2008, writes that Clarke’s position is that something made out of matter can never constitute a genuine individual because it is infinitely divisible, and so lacks the required unity. She notes the similarity on this score of Clarke’s position with that of Leibniz (Rozemond 2008: 175). One might think that a whole, at least one that obeyed the Composition Principle, would be a real individual being. But, it turns out that this is not the case. The magnitude of the collected particles is a real property but such a whole is not a genuine individual. The only real individuals have no parts. So, while Locke and Collins agree with Clarke that matter is infinitely divisible, they disagree on the role that organization plays in producing real, unified wholes that have parts. Clarke holds that organization cannot unify such wholes into individuals, and Locke and Collins hold that it can, both at a time and over time; notably in cases of living things, where the matter composing that individual changes while the organization persists. Clarke holds that as soon as a whole loses or gains a single particle it becomes a different substance.

In his “Reply to Mr. Clarke’s Defense of A Letter to Mr. Dodwell” Collins challenges the enumeration of categories of properties with which Clarke seeks to prove that consciousness cannot belong to a material system (Clarke 1738: Vol. 3: 751; 767–70; Clarke and Collins 2011: 69–72). He continues to maintain that consciousness is a real emergent property. He also challenges the Individual Power Principle.

In responding to Clarke’s Defense, Collins claims that Clarke has not properly enumerated the kinds of properties. He claims that Clarke needs to show that his enumeration is complete but has not done so. There may be powers unknown to Clarke that need to be included in order to give a complete enumeration of the properties and powers of matter. In order to effectively defend his materialist account of consciousness, however, Collins points out a new class of properties that are arguably real and that are emergent and do not fit Clarke’s composition model for real properties of matter.

Collins’ chief strategy for showing that there are real emergent properties is likely derived from Locke’s claim in the Chapter “Of Identity and Diversity” in the Essay that living things are individuated not by the matter that composes them at a time but by their functional organization (Locke 1975: ii. xxvii 3–4: 330–331; see also Attfield 1977: 52). [ 4 ]

Collins begins by considering the different roles that matter and organization may play in producing all the different kinds of things in the universe. He starts with the hypothesis that different parts of matter are different from one another. If this is so the particles of matter may work in the way different parts of a clock work—the parts of the clock are different from one another and consequently have different powers. The whole to which they contribute will have powers that none of the parts have (Clarke 1738 [1928: 768]; Clarke and Collins 2011: 72). The second hypothesis Collins puts forth is that all matter is the same and therefore completely interchangeable. Collins prefers this hypothesis because it makes it easy to argue that all of the differences between the various kinds of things are a result of their organization. The distinction between matter and its organization is useful for Collins’ purposes because the properties that result from the organization of matter are different from the properties of the particles. As Collins notes:

…if the powers of a System of Matter may intirely cease upon the least Alteration of a Part of that System, it is evident that the Powers of the System inhere not in the Parts in the same Sense with Magnitude and Motion: for divide and vary the Parts of Matter as much as you will, there will be Magnitude and may be Motion; but divide or vary the least Part of the Eye, and the Power of contributing to the Act of Vision is intirely at an end. (Clarke 1738 [1928: 768]; Clarke and Collins 2011: 72)

The organization of the eye is essential to its proper functioning and indeed to it being an eye at all (Clarke 1738 [1928: 769]; Clarke and Collins 2011: 72). It is an emergent property. Collins does not explicitly make the point that since the organization of the eye is an essential property it must also be a real property. Perhaps he thought this obvious. Clarke’s response was to claim that the power of the eye to see is a fictional and not a real property (Clarke 1738: 790]; Clarke and Collins 2011: 100).

Serious engagement with emergent properties did not really take place until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There are now a variety of different versions of emergentism, both scientific and philosophical, many of which bear hardly any resemblance to Collins account of properties had by wholes which are not had by the parts of that whole. However, in an article “Aggregativity: Reductive Heuristics for Finding Emergence” William Wimsatt describes a version of the distinction between emergent and non-emergent properties, coming from Complexity theory, that both improves on and articulates the insight that makes Collins’ account so interesting, though Wimsatt was unaware of the historical precedent (Wimsatt 1997 [2008]). That insight is that properties that are a result of the organization of parts are essentially emergent. Even if they can ultimately be explained, this will not change their status as emergent properties (see also Uzgalis 2018: 272).

The topic of personal identity comes up as early as Clarke’s Second Defence of an Argument because Clarke objects to consciousness being an emergent property of the brain and also objects to the brain being the bearer or seat of personal identity (Clarke 1738 [1928: 787]; Clarke and Collins 2011: 96). Correspondingly, there are important connections between Collins’ account of emergent properties and his account of personal identity. Consciousness, for Collins is both an emergent property and constitutive of personal identity. In addition, Collins claims that because of the mind-body problem, dualist views do not serve the ends and purposes of religion. Clarke replies that it is Collins’ materialist views that not only are useless, but have dangerous consequences for the ends and purposes of religion. Many of these consequences have to do with personal identity.

What are the connections between Collins’ account of emergent properties and his account of personal identity? The most important connection is the Lockean distinction between the matter that composes a material thing at any given time and the organization of matter. The distinction comes from Locke’s account of the individuation of masses of matter and living things in his chapter “Of Identity and Diversity” in Book II of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding . A mass of matter is individuated by the particles that compose it, however organized. If the mass gains or loses a single particle it becomes a different substance. Living things, by contrast, are individuated by their functional organization (Locke 1690: II. xxvii 3 [1975: 330). Collins’ summary of his views on identity and personal identity make it clear that he agrees almost completely with Locke’s account of identity and the individuation of masses, living things and persons (Clarke 1738 [1928: 875]; Clarke and Collins 2011: 231–232). But Clarke insists that in order for something to remain the same, it must remain the same substance. In the case of material things like oaks, this means that the matter that composes it must remain the same or it is not the same oak. Only atoms, souls and God fulfill this same substance condition for Clarke. So, oaks are only identical in a fictional sense. In addition, it is not possible for any entity to have the same properties it had previously if its substance has changed, because it is not possible to transfer properties from one substance to another (Clarke 1738 [1928: 798]; Clarke and Collins 2011: 113). So, just as Clarke holds that emergent properties are fictional, so he holds that any identity not based on identity of substance is fictional. The clash between the two over the metaphysical importance of organization is fundamental to their different views of emergent properties, identity, and personal identity.

Collins accepts Locke’s revolutionary view that consciousness and not the substantial soul is the bearer of personal identity. Again agreeing with Locke, he regards memory as crucial to personal identity and feelings of pleasure and pain as important concomitants of consciousness. Still, Collins’ account of personal identity is not exactly the same as Locke’s. Locke’s account is officially neutral in regard to whether “the substance that thinks in us” is material or immaterial, simple or compounded (Locke 1690: II, xxvii. 17 [1975: 341). Collins, by contrast, is giving an account that makes “the substance that thinks in us” material and compounded. But the neutrality of Locke’s account of personal identity ought to allow Collins to adopt it without significant change, and this is what he does. Collins also defends the view against attacks addressed to the concept of memory involved. Clarke holds that Collins’ account of memory violates a basic principle of Clarke’s substantialist account of identity—that properties cannot be transferred from one substance to another. So, if the particles of the brain have changed, a memory cannot be a veridical memory of that new substance. Locke and Collins,by contrast hold that representations of events can be transferred from one substance to another and these constitute genuine memories (Clarke 1738 [1028: 787]; Clarke and Collins 2011: 96).

Collins’ response to this is to claim that annexing consciousness to the brain explains the phenomena of consciousness far better than positing an unchanging immaterial substance. There is also a perfectly reasonable sense for properties to be transferred from one substance to another. In his Reflections on Mr. Clarke’s Second Defence he writes:

For if we utterly forget, or cease to be conscious of having done many things in former Parts of our Lives which we certainly did, as much as any of those which we are conscious that we have done; and if in fact we do by degrees forget everything which we do not revive by frequent Recollection, and by again and again imprinting our decaying Ideas; and if there be in a determinate Time a partial or total flux of Particles in our Brains: What can better account for out total Forgetfulness of some things, our partial Forgetfulness of others, than to suppose that the Substance of the Brain in constant Flux? (Clarke 1738 [1928: 787 and 809]; Clarke and Collins 2011: 130)

As for the problem of transferring consciousness from one substance to another he writes:

I will suppose myself conscious at Forty of having been carried to a Market or Fair at Five Years old, without any Particle of Matter about me, the same which I had at that Age: now in order to retain the Consciousness of that Action, it is necessary to revive the Idea of it before any considerable Flux of Particles, (otherwise I must totally lose the Memory of it (as I do of several things done in my Childhood) and by reviving the Idea of that Action, I imprint afresh the Consciousness of having done that Action, by which the Brain has a lively an Impression of Consciousness (though it be not entirely composed of the same Particles) as it had the day after it did the Action…. (ibid.)

This account of how memory works nicely fits the model of the preservation of an organization through a change of matter that Locke uses to explain the identity of living things. However, Clarke does not accept this explanation because he holds that only a theory of the substantial soul can provide the underpinnings for an account of veridical memory (Clarke 1738 [1928: 787; Clarke and Collins 2011: 180).

One might ask who won the debate? In the eighteenth century, the answer largely depended on whether you were a dualist or a materialist. If you were a dualist you saw Clarke as the winner. If you were a materialist you saw Collins as the winner. In her 2009 article focusing on Collins’ emergentism, Marleen Rozemond gives an account of the way she thinks the dialogue proceeded and concludes that Clarke was the victor. She holds that Collins, in fact, conceded a crucial point and as a result subsequently changed his position.

In order to understand why she thinks this we need to grasp the distinction Collins makes between numerical and generical powers in his “Reflections on Mr. Clarke’s Second Defence of his Letter to Mr Dodwell”. He writes:

By numerical powers I understand such powers as motions and figures of the same species. The power of the eye to contribute towards seeing is a species of motion, and the roundness of a body is a species of figure. By generical powers I understand all the several species of numerical powers —as motion signifies all the various species of motion, and figure all the various species of figure. (Clarke 1738 [1928: 805–806]; Clarke and Collins 2011: 124–125)

Rozemond notes that after making this distinction Collins admits that all generical powers conform to the Homogeneity Principle. In her 2008 article, Rozemond claims that Locke did not accept that emergent properties are possible, because in his proof for the existence of God in Chapter 10 of Book IV of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding he invokes the Homogeneity Principle to show that an eternal and Intelligent Being could not be created by matter (Rozemond 2008:163). In fact, Clarke draws Collins’ attention to this very passage in the Essay (Clarke 1738 [1928: 837]; Clarke and Collins 2011: 170–171). If this were the only reference to the Homogeneity Principle in the Essay it would be difficult to see how Locke could also maintain that it would be possible for God to cause matter to think even if it were arranged in the right way. Clarke’s point to Collins is that on this basis he should give up the idea that thinking matter is possible. I take it that this is Rozemond’s point as well and she holds that in saying that the Homogeneity Principle applies to all generical powers, Collins is conceding the crucial point.

Rozemond notes that there is one other way that Collins could have proceeded.

One way to reject Clarke’s position is to reject his qualitative constraints on causation. One could do this by becoming a Humean about causation. Collins did not do this and the world had to wait another while for Hume. (Rozemond 2009: 186–7)

So, on her view, Collins gives up the possibility of emergent properties and does not have the kind of empiricist theory of causality that Hume has. And there seem to be no other alternatives. She claims that after this Collins substantively changes his position by suggesting that consciousness is a mode of motion. She takes this to be a quite unattractive version of mind-brain identity theory (Rozemond 2009: 187).

There is, however an alternative view of how the Correspondence ends. This view is that Collins has not changed his position, or at least not changed it in the way Rozemond suggests. He is conceding nothing to Clarke. In introducing the distinction between numerical and generical powers he writes that

having set forth the entire strength of what can be said against my instances, an answer to it will set this dispute in a clearer light than possibly it has hitherto been, and perhaps give Mr. Clarke particular satisfaction with relation to the inconclusiveness of hiss argument, by detecting what I conceive has previously imposed upon him. (Clarke 1738: [1928: 805], Clarke and Collins 2011: 124)

His response to Clarke’s attack on his examples is to make the distinction between numerical and generical properties. This is hardly the words of someone who is about to concede the decisive point being debated.

There are a couple of possibilities about what Collins has in mind for numerical powers. One is that numerical powers would include both powers that conform to the Composition Principle (figure and motion), and powers that do not (the power of the eye to see). Generical powers, by contrast, simply treat powers that are numerically different (such as different kinds of motion) just as motions. Thus, all material powers, treated as generical, conform to the Homogeneity Principle (Clarke 1738 [1928: 806–807]; Clarke and Collins 2011: 28–30).

The second possibility, which is what the examples Collins gives really suggest, is that all numerical powers are emergent and do not conform to the Composition Principle. All generical powers, on the other hand, do conform to the Homogeneity Principle. If the second interpretation is true, Collins thinks that all of Clarke’s first category powers, or at least his favorite ones, can be treated as wholes that have properties not had by the parts. This would indeed be a change of position, but in just the opposite direction to the one that Rozemond supposes. But, even on this second interpretation, all generical properties conform to the Homogeneity Principle. So, why isn’t Collins in trouble in the way Rozemond claims? The answer is that the use of the Homogeneity Principle in Locke’s proof for the existence of God is not the only reference to that principle in Locke’s Essay.

In replying to Clarke in “An Answer to Mr. Clarke’s Third Defense of A Letter to Mr. Dodell”, Collins points out to Clarke that Locke had distinguished two situations involving the Homogeneity Principle (Clarke 1738 [1928: 868]; Clarke and Collins 2011: 220–221). In the proof for the existence of God as an immaterial intelligence, the Principle applies in full force to show that matter could not create an eternal, immaterial, intelligent being. The second case is the creation of human thought. In this second case, Locke supposes that an omnipotent, immaterial God exists and that God, because He is omnipotent, could violate the Principle of Homogeneity. In fact, Locke claims that God has in fact done so – in the case of secondary properties, such as color and sound, where what is produced in the mind bears no resemblance to the causes of those ideas in the material world or motions in the brain. Thus, Locke holds, there is good reason to think that God could produce thinking matter. He is explicit that there is no contradiction between the two cases, knowing as he did that some people thought his use of the Homogeneity Principle in the proof for the existence of God ruled out the possibility of thinking matter (Locke 1690: IV. iii. 6 [1975: 541). Collins adopts this position as well (Clarke 1738 [1928: 837]; Clarke and Collins 2011: 170–171; see also Uzgalis 2018: 270–271). If this is right Collins can continue to maintain that emergent properties are possible as they are all numerical properties and so need not conform to the Homogeneity Principle and actually exist and that God’s omnipotence allows him to make matter duly arranged to think. Clarke, in his next Defense, rejects both Collins’ distinction between numerical and generical powers and the Lockean distinction concerning the Homogeneity Principle (Clarke 1738 [1928: 829–830]; Clarke and Collins: 158–159). He claims in respect to the Homogeneity principle that the reasoning is the same in both cases. Clarke’s view is that even an omnipotent God cannot violate the Homogeneity Principle (Clarke 1738: 901; Clarke and Collins 2011: 268–269). As a consequence, he holds that emergent properties are not possible, nor can matter think. So. on this alternative view of who won the debate, if the criteria for victory is a concession by one side or the other, the Correspondence ends not in a victory for Clarke, but in a stand-off.

In evaluating the controversy, one would have to say that of all the encounters between the Newtonians and the free thinkers, the one between Collins and Clarke was the most philosophically significant and influential. O’Higgins holds that Collins is important to us mainly because he defends an early version of materialism. While there is surely some truth to this, O’Higgins is clearly damning Collins with faint praise. What we should recognize is that Collins was indeed a pioneer in trying to show that consciousness is a real emergent property of the brain and in this regard certainly showed much more originality than O’Higgins gives him credit for (see note 2 ). One need only compare Locke’s claim that we would need revelation to understand how matter could think and his use of the term ’superaddition’ with Collins account of emergent properties to see what an improvement in explanatory power the latter has over the former. O’Higgins also claims that Collins’ arguments are not very good. This also does not give Collins enough credit. It is true that Collins does give some arguments that are not very good. On the other hand, Collins forced Clarke to clarify his position in a number of respects. He also uncovered a number of weak points in Clarke’s position. Clarke’s poor treatment of Collins’ example of the power of a rose to produce a sweet smell in us is one example. He answered as if Collins was talking about the smell of the rose and claims that this secondary quality belongs in his second class of properties. But Collins properly objects that he was talking about the organization of the particles of the rose—the cause of this effect, and not the effect on us. Clarke’s response is weak. One of Collins’ strongest points was his critique of Clarke’s doctrine that though the soul is immaterial it is extended (Vailati 1993). One can also see how much pressure Collins is applying to Clarke’s system as the number of properties in Clarke’s third class—fictional properties—continues to mount in the course of the correspondence.

In respect to the central issues of the debate, Collins is struggling to articulate a materialist and empiricist metaphysics that can compete with the well developed dualist, a priori metaphysics that Clarke deploys. As Barresi and Martin comment:

His faltering, but often successful attempts to reformulate traditional metaphysical issues empirically, embodies the birth pangs of a new approach. (Martin and Barresi 2000: 51)

But perhaps most strikingly, Collins is attempting to defend a doctrine of emergent properties that does not become prominent in English philosophy until Mill’s System of Logic (1843) and the twentieth century British Emergentism movement.

3. Determinism and Free Will

Collins deals in passing with determinism and freedom of the will in the 1707–08 correspondence with Samuel Clarke and in his 1707 book An Essay concerning the Use of Reason . His A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Liberty of 1717 is entirely devoted to the issue. From the beginning, Collins is a determinist with a compatibilist account of free action (Clarke 1738 [1928: 872]; Clarke and Collins: 226–227). Clarke attacked Collins’ determinism in the 1707–08 correspondence. He also reviewed the 1717 book and defended a doctrine of libertarian free will as he had in the earlier correspondence.

Since the nature of human choices and actions are central to debates about free will and determinism there is a close connection between positions about these issues and positions about consciousness and personal identity. The kind of determinism that Collins advocates is a natural extension of his materialist, empirical, and naturalistic account of consciousness. In his account of consciousness, Collins makes the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain the most basic motives of action. This makes happiness and misery necessary concomitants of consciousness, and thus conscious beings are endowed with a desire for happiness. This is true as much of animals as it is of human beings and accounts for a large number of similarities in the behavior of humans and animals. Collins holds that if the behavior of animals is determined, then that of humans must be as well.

In the Clarke Collins correspondence of 1707–08 Collins claims that Clarke’s argument for dualism is useless to religion and morality because of the problem of explaining how the immaterial mind and the material body interact. One of Clarke’s counter-charges is that Collins’ materialism is not just useless but dangerous to religion and morality because it implies a determinism that is destructive of religion and morality (Clarke 1738 [1928: 831], Clarke and Collins: 192).

Collins claims that human action is caused in much the same way as the actions of clocks. Both are necessary agents, though the causes that produce the action, in either case, are very different.

Both are necessarily determined in their Actions: the one by the Appearances of Good and Evil, the other by a Weight or Spring. (Clarke 1738 [1928: 872]; Clarke and Collins 2011: 226)

Collins also attacks the free will position. He holds that the same causes will always produce the same effects and claims that the free will explanation of being able to do otherwise violates this basic principle of causal explanations (Clarke 1738 [1928: 873 and 874]; Clarke and Collins 2011: 227 and 230).

Collins also expressed determinist views in his first book— An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason , 1707. He does this in the context of the problem of reconciling God’s foreknowledge with human free will. As O’Higgins puts it:

He solved the problem to his own satisfaction by saying that all things, including human choices, are determined in their causes and as such can be foreseen by an all-knowing God. (O’Higgins 1976: 6)

This view also plays a role in Collins’ 1710 critique of Archbishop King’s views about the problem of evil and the epistemological status of the attributes of God. King claimed that God’s attributes, including his foreknowledge of events, was analogical. In the case of God’s foreknowledge, he did this to avoid contradictions between God’s knowing what was to come and the contingency of events and human free will. Collins is content to reject human free will and to suppose that ‘foreknowledge’ has a univocal meaning when used with reference to God or humans.

At the beginning of his discussion of Collins and determinism Jacopo Agnesina remarks: “Determinism is the aspect of Anthony Collins thought that has always met with the most success” (Agnesina 2018: 97). In A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty Collins briefly states his position. He rejects the view that there is any freedom from necessity and claims that insofar as there is human freedom it is “liberty or freedom from outward impediment to action”. Such freedom is compatible with necessity. Collins holds that every action has been caused and must necessarily have occurred. The future is as much determined as the past. He then gives six arguments for this form of determinism.

The first of Collins’ arguments has to do with experience. Defenders of free will hold that the experience of even ordinary people shows that they choose freely. Collins’ response is much the same as that of Hobbes and Spinoza. He claims that those who say such things are either not attending to, or not seeing, the causes of their actions. Collins goes on to claim that some defenders of free will admit that the issues are tangled and not to be resolved by appeals to vulgar experience (Collins 1717: 12–31 [1976: 60–69]).

William Rowe notes that Collins and Clarke share a volitional theory of action. Rowe describes the theory in this way:

According to this theory, actions are of two sorts: thoughts and motions of the body. What makes a thought or bodily motion an action is its being preceded by a certain act of will (volitions) which bring about the thought or motion. Volitions, then, are “action starters”. (Rowe 1987: 54)

Rowe also notes that Collins and Clarke share the assumption that if a volition is causally determined then the person doing the act does not have free will (Rowe 1987: 53). Rowe says that as the two antagonists agree on these points, they play little or no part in the debate. But they do explain the strategy that Collins uses to argue that experience actually shows that we are determined. He examines experience under four topics relating to choice and action: (1) Perception of Ideas; (2) Judging of Propositions; (3) Willing; and (4) Doing as we will. Collins argues that each of these is causally determined.

He holds that perception of ideas of sensation and reflection are not voluntary. So, perception can hardly be free. In respect to judging, he claims that we judge in terms of how things appear to us and that we can’t change these appearances. In respect to the will, he claims that there are two questions to be considered. One is whether we are at liberty to will or not. The second is whether we are at liberty to will “one or the other of two or more objects”. In respect to the first question, he claims that Locke made a mistake in holding that people are at liberty to will because they can suspend willing. So, Collins holds that Locke’s answer to the first question would be affirmative. Collins claims that suspense of willing is as much an act of will as any other. So, his answer is negative. In respect to the second question, Collins argues for a value determinism that makes the answer to the second question negative as well. In defining willing, he remarks: “Willing or preferring is the same with respect to good and evil, that judging is with respect to truth or falsehood”. So, if something seems better than the alternatives we will choose it. Collins is thus a moral determinist who holds that we must do what seems best to us. In giving his negative answer to his second question, Collins is also rejecting the claim that we could have done otherwise in cases where we have decided which of the alternative choices is best (Collins 1717: 31–40 [1976: 69–73]). Collins then proceeds to consider cases where we can see no difference between the objects we are to choose among, e.g., which of two eggs we will take. Collins’ response is that:

It is not enough to render things equal to the will, that they are equal or alike in themselves. All the various modifications of the man, his opinions, prejudices, temper, habit, and circumstances, are to be taken in and considered as causes of the election no less than the objects without us among which we chuse; and these will ever incline or determine our wills, and make the choice we do make, preferable to us, though the external objects of our choice are ever so much alike to each other. (Collins 1717: 47 [1976: 77])

If one were truly indifferent one simply would not choose. But once there is a will to choose, the cascade of causes that leads to action will determine the choice one way or the other. What Collins means by “doing as we will” is what we do consequent to willing. Here again, he finds no freedom from necessity. We do what we have willed unless some external impediment or intervening cause hinders us from doing so. Finally, he compares the actions of animals to those of men. He claims that while animals are supposed to be necessary agents and humans free agents, there is no perceivable difference between their actions that would allow us to make this distinction (Collins 1717: 53–57 [1976: 80–82]).

Collins’ second argument is that man is a necessary agent because all his actions have a beginning. He holds that whatever has a beginning has a cause and all causes are necessary. Collins (as he had in the Clarke Collins controversy) also rejects the proposition that the same causes could produce different effects. Thus Collins rejects the doctrine of free will because it violates the basic principle of causal explanations. The third argument claimed that liberty is an imperfection. Going back to judging propositions, Collins points out that if we were free, we would be able to judge probable what is improbable, and so on. This is the analog of moral determinism to the epistemic realm. Just as we are not free to knowingly choose the worse over the better, we cannot affirm that what seems improbable to us is probable. If we could we would be worse off than we are. The fourth argument is that liberty is inconsistent with God’s foreknowledge. This is again similar to the view that Hobbes held and repeats the assertions of Collins’ first book An Essay concerning the Use of Reason . The fifth is that if man were not a necessary agent, and determined by pleasure and pain, there would be no foundation for rewards and punishments. The sixth is that if a man were not a necessary agent he would be ignorant of morality and have no motive to practice it. These last two arguments make the point that causality is necessary for the operation of morality in the world, and to introduce a causeless free will is to make the teaching of morality or its motivation by punishment or reward pointless (Collins 1717: 57–108 [1976: 82–108]).

James Harris and Jacopo Agnesina have both argued that the An Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty was in fact a response to Dr. Clarke and rational theology. They claim that Collins was attempting to demonstrate that determinism follows from Clarke’s first principles (Agnesina 2011, 2018: 105; Harris 2005: 58). Agnesina has also been at pains to argue that Collins’ determinism is a logical and not just a causal determinism.

Agnesina characterizes the distinction between these two kinds of determinism in this way. Causal determinists maintain:

…that present and future events are determined causally by their antecedents. This theory has its roots in the principle of causality or the principle of sufficient reason : all events have a sufficient cause that determines them. Thus causal determinism excludes events that arise ex abrupto , but without stating that this is the only possible and conceivable world: unrealized possibilities exist that, though they are not logically contradictory, cannot come about because they are incompatible with the law of nature , that is with the causal chain of events of this world. Necessitarianism strengthens causal determinism from just this latter standpoint: all unrealized possibilities are excluded and it is held that the current law of nature is the only possible one. (Agnesina 2018: 98)

In this regard, he thinks Collin’ position is that of a logical determinist, and so close to that of Spinoza. O’Higgins claimed that it was possible that Collins did not understand the Spinozistic implications of his position (Collins 1717 [1976: 45 note 114]). O’Higgins seems to be suggesting that Collins, if he read Spinoza’s Ethics , might have been confused by the book, even though Collins had also read the critiques of Spinoza by Pierre Bayle and G. W. Leibniz. Agnesina counters that even if Collins had not read the Ethics , he had read the critiques of Spinoza by Bayle and Leibniz and that these critics of Spinoza had clearly spelled out the implications of the kind of logical determinism that Collins seems perfectly willing to adopt (Agnesina 2018: 120–125). One problem with taking Collins to be a logical determinist is that Collins is a compatibilist, thus regarding freedom as freedom from outside obstruction. But it would seem that while compatibilism is possible under causal determinism; it is not under logical determinism. But, Hobbes too claimed to be a compatibilist and had the same kind of tendencies towards logical determinism that Collins has.

Interestingly, there was only one response to Collins’ book in England. Samuel Clarke reviewed it and argued that the notion of a ’necessary agent’ was incoherent, for to be an agent one must be active and Collins’ position was that the humans are completely passive and thus (in Clarke’s sense) not agents at all. Clarke charges that in discussing being able to do otherwise, Collins fails to distinguish between physical and moral necessity (see Harris 2005: 59). Clarke also complained that Collins treated perception as actions, when in fact, perception is passive (Clarke 1738 [1928: 722]). Clarke develops his own account of free will arguing that motives, pleasures and pains, reasons and arguments, are simply occasions for the self-moving power that is active to freely determine action. What we have again is a competing set of explanations for the same phenomena. It appears that Clarke failed to take a number of Collins’ arguments seriously, because the free will arguments being refuted were not his arguments.

In a series of letters, Collins discussed Clarke’s review of his book with his long time friend and collaborator Pierre Desmaizeaux. He had written up a reply. Eventually, however, Collins concluded that Clarke had been threatening him with civil action, and that to reply would provide Clarke with the opportunity to do so (Dybikowski 2011: 260–1, 269 and 281). Consequently, Collins made no reply to Clarke’s review.

In 1729 a short book, A Dissertation of Liberty and Necessity , with the initials A.C. on the title page, was published. For a number of reasons O’Higgins holds that Collins is not the author of this work. O’Higgins first reason for rejecting Collins’ authorship is that the book treats the substance of the soul as unknown—a Lockean doctrine that Collins had rejected. O’Higgins also cites contemporary reviews that claim the arguments of the book are weak compared to the Inquiry . Jacopo Agnesina agrees with O’Higgins that the work is not by Collins and gives a full discussion of the argument over attribution (Agnesina 2018: 125–132, see also Harris 2005: 60). Still while making claims that Collins would not make about the soul and substance, the arguments are certainly consistent with the determinist position that Collins was holding in the earlier work. The author also takes into account at least one of Clarke’s criticisms of the Inquiry .

The author of A Dissertation remarks that he will

attempt to solve the Point of Free Will, by tracing the progress of the Soul through all its Operations which we are conscious of, and examining in each whether “tis Active or Passive”. (Collins 1729: 1)

The point is that at every stage in the process, from perception to action, we are passive. The author apparently accepted Clarke’s point in his review of Collins’ Inquiry that perception is not an action, for he calls it not an ‘action’ but an ‘operation.’ The author explicitly takes up Clarke’s views when he argues that we are passive in judgment. He quotes Clarke at length. Clarke holds that judgment is passive but distinguishes between judging and acting. The author continues:

But I conceive the doctor here begs the Question, by asserting the Self-motive Power in the Soul without proving it, and then reasons from it as granted to him. (1729: 6)

The author of A Dissertation thus returns to Clarke a charge that Clarke had made about Collins in his 1717 review of A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty .

4. Collins, Deism and Freethinking

The seventeenth and early eighteenth century in England saw a rationalist treatment of theology that spanned many competing groups from the Latitudinarians to the Dissenters to the Deists. Samuel Hefelbower in The Relation of John Locke to English Deism remarks that among the progressives—theologians, philosophers and deists—all accepted a rationalistic religion. The question then becomes what exactly is the role of reason vis à vis revelation. The discussion of the relation of reason to revelation goes back at least to Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas—that is to the scholastic authorities. Albert held that reason has a role to play in religion, but there are questions where philosophy has no final answer and revelation must decide. Revelation is above reason but not contrary to it. Thomas has a similar position (Hefelbower 1918: 47). Locke holds that reason is responsible for determining what counts as a genuine revelation. Locke also holds the view that there is revelation that tells us about things above reason but not contrary to it.

Thus that part of the Angels rebelled against GOD, and thereby lost their first happy state: And that the dead shall rise, and live again: These, and the like, being beyond the Discovery of Reason, are purely matters of Faith, with which Reason has directly, nothing to do. (Locke 1690: IV. xviii. 7. [1975: 694])

The Deists tend to hold a more radical view than the one that Locke advocates.

Samuel Clarke in his Boyle lectures of 1704 distinguishes four grades of deists. First there were those who acknowledged a future life and other doctrines of natural religion. Second were those who while denying a future life, admitted the moral role of the deity. Third are those who acknowledged providence in natural religion, but not in morality. And finally, those who denied providence altogether. Where does Collins fit, in these grades of deism? According to O’Higgins:

In his books, Collins came to emphasize the part that morality should play in religion and to assert the importance of natural religion. (O’Higgins 1970: 40)

Collins claims to believe in a future life (if not natural immortality). Collins rejects Revelation. So, if O’Higgins is right, Collins fits Clarke’s first grade of deists.

David Berman has disputed this view, arguing that Collins is, in fact, an atheist (Berman 1988: 801). Jacopo Agnesina in his book The Philosophy of Anthony Collins: Free Thought and Atheism strongly agrees with Berman. Agnesina’s strategy is to take the whole of Collins’ work and by putting the pieces together makes clear what the parts only partially display—Collins atheism (Agnesina 2018: 192).

An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason , Collins’ first book, was published anonymously in 1707 a little before his Letter to Mr. Dodwell. The main thrust of the book is to reject religious mysteries. Collins starts his approach to the issues of religion and reason along the same lines that Locke does. He defines reason as “that faculty of the Mind, whereby it perceives the truth, Falsehood, Probability or Improbability of Propositions” (1707 [1984: 3]). Propositions consist of words “which stand for Ideas concerning which some agreement is affirm’d or deny’d” (1707 [1984: 3–4]). Thus he accepts Locke’s definition of knowledge. He also distinguishes in the way Locke does intuitive, demonstrative and probable truths, and treats claims about revelation as probable propositions that largely derive from testimony. Perhaps one diversion from Locke is that Collins distinguishes between two different kinds of probability. The stronger kind resembles demonstration but the connection between ideas is merely probable. The weaker kind of probability is a testimony. Collins’ position is that a person is not expected to believe anything that is not comprehensible by the human intellect. So, if terms take on meanings that cannot be understood, humans cannot be expected to believe them.

O’Higgins sees a strong affinity between Collins’ book and John Toland’s Christianity Not Mysterious , which had been published in 1696. He quotes Toland’s remark that:

We hold that reason is the only foundation of all certitude…that nothing reveal’d, whether as to its manner or to its existence, is more exempted from its disquisitions, than the ordinary phenomena of nature…that there is nothing in the gospel contrary to or above it.

O’Higgins claims that this is very much the position that Collins is taking in the Essay . In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke allowed that there were some truths that were above reason but compatible with it. Some scholars regard this as a mere verbal commitment to truths above reason, while others regard it as substantive. What is clear is that Locke would not accept truths above and contrary to reason. On this point, Locke, Toland, and Collins are in complete agreement. Toland, however, has a more radical position than Locke in that he rejects truths above reason, even where these truths are compatible with reason (see Woolhouse 2007: 372). Thus Toland would not accept the story of the rebellion of the angels or the claim that the dead shall rise. Collins, on the other hand, seems to hold the same position Locke does. He quotes with approval a passage from Robert Boyle who uses an analogy of a deep-sea diver to make the distinction between above reason and contrary to reason plausible. If the diver asks you if you can see to the bottom of the ocean and after you have declared that you cannot, brings up oysters with pearls in them, you will have no objection to the claim that there are oysters with pearls in them at the bottom of the sea. If, on the other hand, the diver claims that the pearls he shows you are larger than the shells containing them, “you would doubtless judge what he asserts contrary to the information of your eyes” (Collins 1707 [1984: 25–6]). This sounds like Locke’s position. But Agnesina points out that Collins gives this analogy a twist. He writes:

…Collins reduces Boyle’s example to its conceptual scheme: it is simply a matter of acquisition of knowledge, not of a different type or degree of knowledge. (Agnesina 2018: 149)

Thus Agnesina agrees with O’Higgins that Collins holds the same position as Toland: there are no truths above or contrary to reason.

Turning from analogy to theological doctrines, we find that Collins rejecting transubstantiation (1707 [1984: 24]). Collins also objects to the doctrine of the Trinity because it is not understandable and on some interpretations involves contradictions. Acceptance of the doctrine of the Trinity is the first of the Thirty-nine Articles to which an Anglican was supposed to subscribe. It is plain that Collins, like Locke, Newton, Clarke, Whiston, Toland, and others, objected to this article. Many of these men concealed their views about the Trinity and claimed that they were orthodox Anglicans.

Given that Collins rejects mysteries and the claims that there are truths above reason why should we accept any part of Holy Scripture? Collins holds that it is on account of testimony. Collins writes:

There are ideas join’d in Propositions, which the Mind perceives to agree or disagree by the testimony of others. (Collins, 1707: 5)

Testimony gives rise to a particular kind of knowledge, faith. We learn about facts, current events, historical, scientific ones, and so on by having them communicated to us by others. But testimony itself is not enough to produce faith or assent unless the people and events themselves are credible. Collins, like Spinoza in the Theological-Political Treatise concludes that the writers of the Bible were not writing for philosophers, but adapted their expressions to the capacity of understanding of the bulk of mankind (Collins 1707: 14). Agnesina points out the similarity in Collins’ conclusions not only with Spinoza, but Locke, Le Clerc, Richard Simon, and Toland. He remarks that these similarities:

…show what enormous pressure the Bible was subjected to in those years. Freed from the Holiness that made it untouchable, it was now minutely examined with the tools of philology. As may easily be imagined, this operation was exploited by the most radical thinkers, who discredited its contradictions and inconsistencies, in order to gain credit for their own positions. From the opposing side, in a sort of contrasting action, the desire was growing to preserve the Bible and to ’update’ according to the findings of science. (Agnesina 2018: 151)

Besides the kinds of pressure just noted, there was the act of toleration which came along with the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The Anglican Church in the 1690s was on edge as it saw its revenues falling and debates about the fundamental doctrines of the Church were at a fever pitch. Thus, the advent of the Boyle Lectures to defend the views of the Anglican Church and show their compatibility with Newtonian science is hardly surprising.

In A Vindication of the Divine Attributes, in some Remarks on His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin’s sermon intitled “Divine Predestination Consistent with the Freedom of Man’s Will” , (published in 1710) Collins takes on another way of evading his demand that whatever we believe must be comprehensible to us. This is the doctrine of analogy that goes back to St. Thomas Aquinas. The form in which Collins finds it in the works of Archbishop King of Dublin, is the doctrine that not only does God not have hands and feet and a beard in a literal sense, he does not have wisdom, benevolence or justice in any sense that we can understand these terms. Thus King remarked:

It does not follow from hence, that any of these are more properly or literally in God after the manner they are in us, than hands or eyes, than mercy, than love or hatred are.

Collins rejects the claim that God’s wisdom and benevolence could have meanings that we do not comprehend. He asserts that God’s knowledge and his attributes are univocal with ours (O’Higgins 1970: 63).

David Berman in his A History of Atheism in Great Britain , gives a number of reasons to take Collins as an atheist rather than a deist. He sees Collins’ account of the creation of matter ex nihilo in the Answer to Mr. Clarke’s Third Defence in the Clarke Collins correspondence as an argument for atheism disguised as an argument against atheism (Berman 1988: 80–81). He sees Collins as using Bayle to raise the problem of evil in the Vindication of the Divine Attributes and then showing that both the solution offered by Bayle and Dr. King are unacceptable. Collins’ official position at the end of the Vindication is that King is wrong but atheism is avoidable. Berman asks what the actual conclusion of the Vindication is. He continues:

It is simply that there are very formidable, or insuperable, difficulties in the theistic conception of God—revealed by the Manichean problems—and that the latest attempt to cope with, or solve, these difficulties, i.e. King’s theory, has failed; for the medicine is as bad as the disease. But the disease remains! (Berman 1988: 84)

Collins clearly rejects theism based on revelation. But one could also be a theist based on arguments from natural religion. Berman sees the Vindication as aimed at the heart of natural religion (1988: 84). If this were so, we would have good reason to regard Collins as an atheist. On the one hand, Collins’ position about analogical language may seem to strongly support natural religion. Insofar as the meaning of the divine attributes is univocal with our use of the same words about human beings, the analogy that natural religion relies on would work at its best. (The basic analogy on which natural religion depends is that humans are to the machines they make as God is to the world.) Archbishop King’s position, on the other hand, would completely undermine the analogy. There is, however, a second consideration. Insofar as the problem of evil is left unresolved in natural religion, it would suggest that it can provide no effective answer to this fundamental difficulty in theism. This is Berman’s point. O’Higgins, by contrast, claims that in the Vindication Collins simply sets aside the problem of evil (O’Higgins 1970: 63).

Like Locke, Collins is an advocate of the use of reason to determine religious truths. One necessary condition for being able to think freely is not to be persecuted for considering views that are different from the accepted ones. Only in such an environment can one genuinely consider alternatives. It must be possible to adopt whichever of the possibilities turns out to be the most reasonable. Collins, like Locke, is committed to the view that one should proportion assent to a proposition on the basis of the evidence for it. Religious persecution aims to limit the possibilities and the evidence that one can consider. Though Collins was strongly anti-clerical, he does distinguish between good priests and bad priests. The good priests are the ones who advocate freedom of thought; the bad priests, on the other hand, are persecutors who want to prevent people from thinking through the truths of religion for themselves. In his own time, Collins’ most controversial work was his A Discourse of Freethinking (1714).

Concerning the Discourse , J.M. Robertson writes that it

…may be said to sum up and unify the drift not only of previous English freethinking, but of the great contribution of Bayle, whose learning and temper influence all English deism from Shaftesbury onward. (Robertson 1915: 123)

Perhaps the motto of A Discourse of Free-Thinking ought to be “Where experts disagree, any person is free to reason for themselves”. Collins is chiefly concerned with religion, so the vast bulk of the disagreements he cites have to do with religious issues, from whether one religion is better than another, down to the details of Anglicanism. Looking at conflicting claims often leads to skepticism. Where exactly this approach leads Collins is a question that we will have to consider.

In A Discourse of Free-thinking Collins defines free-thinking as

The Use of the Understanding, in endeavouring to find out the Meaning of any Proposition whatsoever, in considering the nature and Evidence for or against it, and in judging of it according to the seeming Force or Weakness of the Evidence. (Collins 1713 [1984: 5)

Collins claims that we have a right to think freely. Richard Bently in his Remarks about a Late Discourse of Free-Thinking charges that this definition is too broad—that it amounts to a definition of thinking. James O’Higgins in his study of Collins agrees with Bently. This, however, is not a good evaluation. Collins’ account is surely intended to rule out believing without evidence, or against the evidence, or without carefully considering conflicting evidence. Either these are not going to be admitted as thinking at all, or Collins’ definition is not too broad.

The Discourse is divided into three sections. In the first two Collins gives a series of arguments in favor of free-thinking and in the third he answers objections to free-thinking and gives a list of historical figures who he views as free-thinkers. The arguments treat thinking effectively as like a craft or art and a number of the early arguments work on this analogy. He claims that just as putting restrictions on painting would reduce the proficiency of the painter, so putting restrictions on thinking can only reduce the proficiency of the thinker. To fail to think freely leads to the holding of absurd beliefs and superstition. Collins gives a brief history of the efforts of priests to control what people believe by fraud from the ancient world to the Reformation. Collins then claims that free-thinking is responsible for the decline in the belief in witchcraft.

Section 2 begins with Collins arguing that right opinion in matters of religion is supposed to be essential to salvation and errors to lead to damnation. But if one is not to think freely oneself about such subjects, then one must simply take up the opinions of those among whom one happens to live. But this means that they will only be right by accident. On the other hand, if people think freely, they will have “the evidence of things to determine them to the side of truth” (Collins 1713 [1984: 33). There are in all ages an infinite number of pretenders to revelations from Heaven, supported by miracles. These pretenders offer new notions of the Deity, new doctrines, commands, ceremonies and modes of worship. To decide which of these are genuine and which spurious requires that one think freely about the competing evidence that would show that one is genuine while the other an imposter. Collins remarks that since the Anglican Church has an organization to support foreign missionaries (The Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Lands) this really requires supporting free-thinking throughout the world and therefore at home as well. Indeed:

As there can be no reasonable change of opinions among men, no quitting of any old religion, no reception of any new religion, nor believing any religion at all, but by means of free-thinking; so the Holy Scriptures agreeably to reason, and to the design of our blessed Savior of establishing his religion throughout the whole universe, imply everywhere and press in many places the duty of free thinking. (Collins 1713 [1984: 43–46])

Finally Collins claims that the conduct of the priests

who are the chief Pretenders to be the Guides to others in matters of Religion, makes free-thinking on the nature and attributes of the eternal being of God, on the authority of the scriptures, and on the sense of scriptures, unavoidable. (Collins 1713 [1984: 46])

He goes on to list disagreements and differences of opinion among priests on all these topics.

In section 3 Collins takes up various objections to free-thinking. To suppose that all men have a right to think freely on all subjects is to suppose that they have the capacity to do so. But they do not. So it is absurd to think that they have a duty to think freely. Collins replies that to suppose a right to a thing “also implies a Right in him to let it alone, if he thinks fit” (Collins 1713 [1984: 100). As for free-thinking being a duty, Collins responds that it is so only in cases where those who contend “for the Necessity of all Men’s assenting to certain Propositions, must allow that men are qualify’d to do so” (ibid.). If it were the case that the great bulk of mankind lacked the capacity to think freely on matters of speculation, then the priests should conclude that men should in no way be concerned about truth and falsehood in speculative matters. In short, they should hold no opinion. Even in this case, however, the right to think freely would remain untouched in those disposed to think freely. The second objection is that to encourage free-thinking “will produce endless Divisions of Opinion and by consequence Disorders in Society”. Collins suggests that the consequence is false and that any remedy is worse than the disease. Third, free-thinking may lead to atheism. Collins points out that many divines hold that there never was a real atheist in the world while Bacon holds that contemplative atheists are rare. Still, even if free-thinking were to produce many atheists, the number of those who are superstitious or enthusiastic that will be produced in the absence of free-thinking is even greater. And these are worse evils for society than atheism. Fourthly, priests are the experts who are to be relied upon in their subject as doctors and lawyers are to be relied upon in theirs. Collins argues that the analogy between doctors and lawyers and priests does not hold. First, while doctors and lawyers act for us, we need not believe the principles or opinions on which one prescribes and the other acts. But in matters of religion, “I am obliged to believe certain opinions myself. No man’s belief will save me except my own” (Collins 1713: 109). Finally, free-thinkers are “the most infamous, wicked and senseless of all mankind” (Collins 1713: 118). Collins answers this objection in various ways—arguing that in fact free-thinking makes one virtuous. He ends by listing a variety of men he considers free-thinkers whose moral character was impeccable—Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Plutarch, Cicero, Varo and others among the ancients. Among the moderns he includes, Bacon, Hobbes and Archbishop Tillotson.

The Discourse leaves us with a variety of questions. What exactly is Collins trying to achieve in this book? Reflecting on the first two sections of the Discourse , James O’Higgins notes:

A good deal of what he wrote can be interpreted as the writing of an anti-clerical protestant, insisting on private judgment for the laity. A few other passages…such as those from Varo and Socrates, seem to imply a bias against Christianity itself, or at least against Revelation. (O’Higgins 1970: 89)

Some of Collins’ critics accused him of being an atheist. But, unless one gives the work an esoteric reading, this hardly seems warranted. Collins is, however, clearly extolling a universal religion based on reason.

The Discourse received a good number of replies. Steele commented that the author of the Discourse deserved “to be denied the common benefits of air and water” (quoted in O’Higgins 1970: 78). The Guardian campaigned against the Discourse . Among the articles it published were some by the young George Berkeley. There is a certain amount of scholarly debate about how effective these replies were. From early on, historians have often claimed that Richard Bently in his Remarks about a late Discourse of Freethinking delivered a crushing rejoinder to Collins. James O’Higgins in his book-length study of Collins probably gives the most balanced assessment. O’Higgins admits that Bently, on the whole, makes a strictly ad hominem attack on Collins. He attacked Collins’ scholarship and accused him of atheism. O’Higgins thinks that Bently succeeded in showing that “Collins was not the man to produce a critical edition of the Bible” (O’Higgins 1970: 84). O’Higgins also remarks that Bently correctly points out that Collins did not understand the role of textual variants in reducing (rather than increasing) our uncertainty about the meaning of a text. Since Collins is maintaining that everyone capable of doing so should reason about religious matters, claims that he failed to reason correctly may have more bite to them than other ad hominem arguments. But while these are good points, set against the fact that Bently completely failed to address the main issue of religious authority, this can hardly amount to a crushing rejoinder.

Edward and Lillian Bloom note in their introduction to A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing that:

For several years and in such works as Priestcraft in Perfection (1710) and A Discourse of Free-Thinking (1713), he was a flailing polemicist against the entire Anglican hierarchy. Not until 1724 did he become a polished debater, when he initiated a controversy that made “a very great noise” and which ended only with his death. The loudest shot in the persistent barrage was sounded by Grounds and Reasons and its last fusillade by the Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing . (Collins 1729 [1970: iii])

In Priestcraft in Perfection , 1710, and An Historical and Critical Essay on the Thirty Nine Articles of the Church of England , 1724, Collins attacks the first clause of Article 20 of the 39 articles: “The Church hath power to decree rites or ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith”. Collins goes over the history of the clause in considerable detail to argue that it is a forgery. Clearly if this were a forgery, the church would have no power to decree rites nor authority in controversies of faith. The point is that:

…the just and true establishment of religion lies, in allowing every man to have a conscience of his own; to use and follow his own private judgment; and particularly, to understand, profess and practice, what he thinks God teaches in the holy scriptures. (Collins, Preface to the Essay , quoted in O’Higgins 1970: 143–4)

O’Higgins notes that this might be the position of any dissenting minister. He gives a detailed summary of the controversy in Chapter IX of his study of Collins.

In A Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion , 1724, Collins attacks the basis of Christianity as a revealed religion. In The Reasonableness of Christianity , Locke had made the messiahship of Christ the single fundamental tenet for being a Christian. In the Discourse Collins rejects it. The argument is that Christianity is founded on Judaism, or the New Testament on the Old. The New Testament is only of importance in this regard insofar as it shows that the prophecies of the Old are fulfilled. Collins rejects the claim that they are fulfilled in the New Testament. This, he asserts, is the only proof for Christianity. Collins’ critics disputed this claim; there was the proof from miracles. But Collins rejected such proofs.

In rejecting the argument from prophecies Collins is once again jousting with the Newtonians. William Whiston (1667–1752) was a close associate of Newton’s and was probably influenced by Newton’s interest in prophetic arguments. Stephen Snobelen points out in his review of the controversy that Whiston hoped to set up an exact science of prophecies. As Snobelen notes: “For Whiston, fulfilled prophecy was as certain as a Boylean experiment or a Newtonian demonstration” (Snobelen 1996: 205). Collins shared much of Whiston’s desire for precision. Often it was allowed that a prophecy in the Old Testament had dual fulfillments, one in the prophet’s own day and one in the more remote future. One of these was supposed to be literal, the other allegorical. Both Whiston and Collins reject ‘allegorical’ interpretations for literal ones. But while Whiston regarded the later fulfillment as literal and the earlier as allegorical, Collins insisted that it was the earlier one that should be regarded as literal.

Using the catalog of Collins’ library produced by Giovanni Tarantino, Jacopo Agnesina has persuasively argued that A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing published in 1729 is a genuine work of Anthony Collins, though O’Higgins in his biography of Collins doubted its authenticity (Agnesina 2009). Edward and Lillian Bloom in their introduction to their reprint of the Discourse remark that:

For the modern reader, the Discourse concerning Ridicule and Irony is the most satisfying of Collins’s many pamphlets and books. It lacks the pretentiousness of the Scheme , the snide convolutions of the Grounds and Reasons , the argument by half-truths of the Discourse of Free-Thinking . His last work is free of the curious ambivalence which marked so many of his earlier pieces, a visible uncertainty that made him fear repression and yet court it. On the contrary, his last work is in fact a justification of his rhetorical mode and religious beliefs; it is an apologia pro vita sua written with all the intensity and decisiveness that such a justification demands. (Collins 1729 [1970: xv])

The aim of the Discourse is to refute a claim by Nathanael Marshall that while serious arguments about religious issues should be allowed, ridicule and irony in attacks on established religion should be prosecuted by the magistrate. This is a clear indication of how much his Anglican opponents had let Collins’ irreverent wit, biting satire and ironical remarks get under their skin. Collins’ opponent was vulnerable on a number of points and Collins makes telling arguments against his claim. He notes that the best writers on religion will be found to be committing these crimes in disputation; that the best punishment would be either to be ignored or to return ridicule with ridicule—rather than to be punished by the magistrate. He points out that when Mr. Marshall discovers how many of those who practice these crimes are of his party and are encouraged in these practices he will give up his position, and so on. The theme of allowing liberty of discourse in public debates about religion is the over-arching theme of the Discourse , and it is certainly one of the main themes of Collins’ work throughout his life.

6. Influences

We have already considered in some detail Samuel Clarke’s reaction to Collins’ views about emergent properties, personal identity and issues about determinism and free will in the early eighteenth century. The Clarke Collins correspondence of 1707–08 was reprinted twice and referred to many times in the course of the eighteenth century (Martin and Barresi 2000: 33). The conservative reaction to Locke and Collins concerning personal identity and materialism represented by Clarke continued to be maintained by many thinkers in eighteenth century England as well as on the continent. In fact, we can see an on-going debate between the materialists and dualists on these topics all the way through the eighteenth and into the early nineteenth century in England.

Bishop Joseph Butler (1692–1752) a protege of Samuel Clarke attacked the Locke/Collins account of personal identity in the Appendix on Personal Identity to his Analogy of Religion . Butler largely accepted Clarke’s substantialist account of identity and personal identity. Indeed he clarified Clarke’s position by summarizing it briefly and naming the distinction Clarke had been making between real and fictional identity. He called it the distinction between identity in the strict and proper sense and identity in the loose and popular sense (Ducharme 1986: 370). He reiterates Clarke’s claim that Collins’ account of personal identity is dangerous to religion and in particular the doctrine of the resurrection. He accused Collins of taking Locke’s doctrines “to a strange length” (Butler as quoted in Perry 2008: 102). By this Butler meant that Collins’ account of personal identity would not allow a person’s identity to persist for more than a moment and thus that Locke’s account of personal identity implied and that Collins explicitly stated a doctrine of successive persons. Butler claimed that such a doctrine would destroy both morality and any doctrine of the resurrection. This has been an influential misinterpretation of Collins (see Uzgalis 2008a: 322–326).

George Berkeley (1685–1753) met Collins at a freethinking coffee house meeting and later told his American follower, Samuel Johnson, that Collins was an atheist. As noted earlier, Berkeley attacked the Discourse of Free-Thinking in Steele’s Guardian , and continued his attacks on Collins in Alciphron . While Berkeley holds a quite distinct set of philosophical views from those of Clarke, together they represent a conservative Anglican response to Locke and Collins on the issue of personal identity. Berkeley agrees with Clarke about the substantial nature of persons.

Scholars are still debating the influence of Collins on David Hume (1711–1776). How much influence is attributed to Collins depends largely on the interpretation given to Hume’s philosophy (see McIntyre 1994, Russell 1995, and Harris 2005). McIntyre and Russell despite their differences agree that in A Treatise Of Human Nature Hume was systematically attacking Clarke’s position on the mind/body relation as articulated both in Clarke’s Boyle lectures and the Clarke Collins correspondence of 1707–08 and that many of Hume’s arguments resemble those of Collins. Harris, focusing on the issue of free will and determinism and using the Enquiries to interpret the Treatise , has a contrasting view. He argues that Hume’s account of necessity is weaker than “that defended by Collins and before him by Hobbes”, and he goes on to claim that in giving this weaker account Hume is giving the same kind of account that Bramhall and Clarke gave in trying to find a middle way between necessitarianism and the liberty of indifference (Harris 2005: 73). Harris may be correct in noting a variety of ways in which Hume’s account of causality and necessity differs from that of Hobbes, Locke and Collins. On the other hand, central to Hume’s analysis of causality is the total rejection of the a priori Homogeneity Principle and the necessary connection implicit in heirloom theories of causality. Collins also rejects the Homogeneity Principle, and heirloom theories of causality that underlie it. He strenuously denies that any of the contradictions that are supposed to follow from violating the Principle actually occur. These are clear similarities between Collins’ account of causality and Hume’s that Harris fails to note. I think these considerations tend to weaken Harris’ judgement that while Collins is a dogmatist on these issues, Hume is a skeptic (see Harris 2005: note 22 p. 79).

Thomas Reid (1710–1796) holds positions on materialism, personal identity and free will that have much in common with the views of Clarke. Reid deploys reduplication arguments in objecting to the views about personal identity of Joseph Priestly (see Martin and Barresi 2000: 47). Priestly’s views have strong connections to those of Locke and Collins.

Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) was sufficiently impressed with Collins’ Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Free Will to arrange the publication of a new edition of that work. Priestley also held that matter can think, but his views were based on a different conception of matter than the one which Collins and Clarke shared. Priestley had an active conception of matter derived from Boscovich. Priestley was also impressed by Collins’ work on the prophecies (Yolton 1983: 108–113).

Collins’ influence on the continent in the second half of the eighteenth century was much more considerable than his influence in England. O’Higgins remarks that

Small though his part in English literature may have been, during his own lifetime there were few English writers who were more fully reported in the continental journals, or more noted in foreign universities. (O’Higgins 1970: 203)

Pierre Desmaizeaux knew Collins for some 26 years and was his friend and collaborator. Desmaizeaux played an important role in raising Collins’ reputation both in England and on the continent. Collins discussed Clarke’s response to his book on determinism with Desmaizeaux and Desmaizeaux kept Collins in contact with the intellectual life on the continent and also served as a publicist for Collins. He had Collins’ Inquiry translated into French and handled the printing of his other books. In 1720, under Collins’ direction, Desmaizeaux published A collection of several pieces of Mr. John Locke, never before printed, or not extant in his works. Pub. by the author of the Life of the ever-memorable Mr. John Hales, &c which contained a number of Locke’s letters to Collins. There was considerable interest on the continent in the thinking-matter controversy. There is a certain amount of debate about the influence of Collins’ book on free will and determinism on Voltaire. O’Higgins accepts the evidence produced by Torrey in Voltaire and the English Deists that Voltaire was converted to determinism by reading Collins (O’Higgins 1970: 219–20). As time passed free-thinking came out into the open in France and Collins’ name was associated with it. Finally, his works on the materiality of the soul, determinism and free will and the prophecies influenced the group around Baron d’Holbach. (For a detailed treatment of Collins’ influence on the continent, see O’Higgins 1970: Chapter XI.) Whether Collins would have been happy with this depends on whether we view him as a deist with O’Higgins, or as an atheist with David Berman and Jacopo Agnesina. This disagreement over whether to regard Collins as a deist or as an atheist (or someone whose views changed over time or were unclear even to himself) is our most serious unresolved problem in determining Collins’ proper place in the history of ideas.

Primary Literature

A republication of Collins’ first book and his 1713 book on free thinking, both in their original eighteenth century type.

Provides the facsimile text of Collins’ A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Freedom along with annotations and a useful introduction that discusses Collins’ place in the debate over free will and determinism and provides an analysis of the text.

A republication of Collins’ last book with an interesting introduction and notes.

A new edition of the Correspondence with an introduction, notes, index and supplementary readings that put the correspondence in context.

A fine edition of Collins’ letters that includes an introduction, extensive notes that make clear many of the references in the letters that would otherwise be unintelligible, and an index.

This contains a translation of the article “Diaearchus” in which Bayle attacks the thinking matter hypothesis.

Clarke’s Works have Clarke’s Boyle lectures, the Clarke Collins correspondence in its entirety and Clarke’s review of Collins’ 1717 book on determinism and free will.

Locke’s magnum opus had a considerable influence on Collins both in respect to his epistemological views and in respect to particular issues such as whether matter can think. This is currently the standard edition of Locke’s Essay.

Contains Locke’s letters to Collins during the period of their eighteen month friendship. It is thus a major source for the study of their relationship.

Agnesina argues on the basis of a comparison of the sources used in A Discourse on Ridicule and Irony in Writing and the catalog of Anthony Collins library that the Discourse is a genuine work of Anthony Collins.

Agnesina argues that Collins was not just a determinist but a logical determinist or necessitarian who was influenced indirectly by Spinoza through Bayle and Leibniz.

An account of the life and works of Anthony Collins focused on the question of whether Collins was an atheist. Agnesina fills in some of the philosophical background to Collins’ work, identifies previously unknown works, and often gives a compelling analysis of some of the works themselves.

Introduces the Clarke Collins controversy, and focuses on the issue of Clarke’s categories. Attfield suggests that if one does not wish to accept Clarke’s reductionism one should focus on the powers of functional objects.

While not dealing with emergent properties before J. S. Mill, the twentieth and twenty-first century treatments of emergence in this book gives some real perspective on the interest and importance of the arguments Collins gives for such properties in the Clarke Collins correspondence of 1707–08.

This is, in effect, a critical review of James O’Higgins book Anthony Collins: The Man and His Work . Berman fills in the gaps that O’Higgins account leaves in our understanding of Collins. The article, then, is intended as a supplement to the book. Berman paints a picture of Collins as a genuine lover of truth who uses his wealth to create a research library used by many scholars. He relates Collins to Locke and Berkeley in terms of the meaning of terms for religious mysteries, e.g. the trinity, as well as in other ways.

• –––, 1980, “Hume and Collins on Miracles”, Hume Studies , 6(2): 150–154. doi:10.1353/hms.2011.0618

Berman makes the case that Collins was an atheist. This is a competing interpretative hypothesis to O’Higgins’ view that Collins believed in the existence of God and a future state.

Develops the political dimension of early English Deism. Colie claims that Collins was the least political of the early English Deists. She discusses the relation of Collins’ views on necessity and the problem of evil to those of Spinoza.

An anthology of works about Philosophy of Mind in the early modern and modern periods, including a chapter about the Clarke Collins correspondence (Uzgalis 2018).

Explains heirloom theories of causality

Makes the case that Clarke develops the metaphysical view that underlies the distinction between identity in the strict and philosophical sense and identity in the loose and popular sense that Butler later named.

Puts Collins in the context of a brief history of Deism.

Fergusen deals with the Clarke Collins controversy over determinism and free will. He considers critically Clarke’s response to Spinoza and Hobbes.

A fine treatment of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century debate over consciousness and personal identity that includes an account of the Clarke Collins correspondence of 1707–08 and the influence it had on the Scriblerians.

Puts the views of Clarke and Collins in the context of other views about free will and determinism in the eighteenth century.

An effort to characterize the defining features of English Deism

Profiles the latitudinarian Anglicans both before and after the Revolution of 1688 who used Newtonian natural philosophy as a basis for justifying a particular social order against a materialistic, Hobbesian philosophy that they regarded as atheistic that justified a competing social order. Jacob thus puts the controversies between Clarke and Collins in a meaningful and interesting historical and intellectual context.

A collection of articles dealing with a Kantian argument intended to show the partless unity of the soul and variants of that argument. It includes an article about the Clarke Collins correspondence focused in part on Collins conception of matter.

Deals with the Clarke Collins correspondence of 1707–08 in the context of the history of the debate over consciousness and personal identity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Deals with Hume’s relation to Clarke and Collins particularly in relation to the issue of whether the self is simple or compounded, and personal identity.

Explains the origins of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’ school of British emergentist philosophers.

A collection of articles on European philosophers from Descartes to Hume and including material about the Clarke Collins correspondence.

Gives a history and analysis of the simplicity argument, central to Clarke’s claims about consciousness and the soul, that Collins argues against in the Clarke Collins correspondence of 1707–08. He discusses its uses in arguing for immortality and in questions about personal identity.

Provides a good account of Collins, though significantly shorter and less detailed than the one provided here.

Provides a fine overview of Deism both in England and on the continent with brief biographies of both major and minor figures.

The first full length study of Anthony Collins. The book is strong in its account of Collins’ life, his predecessors, his theological views, and his influence on the continent. What is missing is depth in the account of Collins’ philosophical views.

Provides an excellent account of the nature of Hobbes’ determinism and its context. This is helpful in assessing Collins’ place in the history of determinism.

The second edition of the book includes selections on personal identity from the Clarke Collins correspondence of 1707–08 and an essay on Collins’ views on personal identity as well as many of the relevant chapters on personal identity from the early modern period as well as the twentieth century.

Treats Collins sympathetically in the context of the history of Freethinking.

Examines the debate over free will between Collins and Clarke and compares both views with those of Locke. Rowe explores assumptions the two sides have in common. His aim is to develop Clarke’s free agent theory.

Treats Locke, Collins and Clarke’s views concerning free will and necessity as background for an exposition of the views of Thomas Reid. Rowe sees Reid as giving the best account of libertarian free will. In discussing the Clarke Collins interaction on determinism, he focuses on Clarke’s account of agency as an important antecedent to Reid.

Treats Clarke’s original argument as a variant of the Achilles of Rationalist arguments, finds the fundamental disagreement between Clarke and Collins in their differing views of matter (apart from their disagreement about emergent properties and discusses Clarke’s emergent soul.

Discusses the debate between Clarke and Collins over emergent properties and concludes that Collins abandoned his emergentism in favor of a version of the mind-brain identity theory.

Puts the controversies between Clarke and Collins over materialism and free will and determinism in context, summarizes the controversies themselves, and then considers the influence these had on Hume.

Explains the controversy between Collins and Whiston over the argument from prophecy and makes the point that Newton believed in the argument from prophecy and that Whiston is trying to apply Newtonian methods to biblical prophecy.

Gives a detailed history of English Deism in both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and on the continent. There are several chapters devoted to Deism and one of these to Collins.

Argues that Collins found in the reports of the Jesuits about neo-Confucians, an atheistic and monistic ethic held by a government that was tolerant of different religious views

This catalog of Collins’ library, the third largest in England when he died, allows one to see what sources were available to Collins the prolific writer.

Provides a detailed context for the Clarke Collins debate and follows the debate up to mid-eighteenth century France.

Provides a context for Collins’ position about the similarities between animals and humans by explaining the views of a number of authors leading up to the Clarke Collins correspondence.

A modern edition of the Letters with an interpretative introduction suggesting that Toland uses arguments he learned from Leibniz to fix a problem in the philosophy of Spinoza. Toland holds that motion is essential to matter.

Discusses the influence Collins had on Voltaire’s conversion to determinism.

Argues that Collins has a materialist Lockean theory of personal identity and that nothing either Locke or Collins wrote committed them to a doctrine of successive persons as Bishop Butler alleged.

This includes all of the material in the Clarke Collins correspondence of 1707–08 on personal identity.

Argues that Collins has an emergent account of consciousness and defends a materialist version of Locke’s account of personal identity.

Examines some of the arguments, their strengths and weaknesses of the two protagonists in the Clarke Collins Correspondence.

Argues that Collins’ most successful arguments in the Collins Clarke exchange of 1706–08 were against Clarke’s claim that the soul is extended.

Talks about the Clarke Collins correspondence to set the stage for the Leibniz Clarke Correspondence.

• Wimsatt, William C., 1997 [2008], “Aggregativity: Reductive Heuristics for Finding Emergence”, Philosophy of Science , 64(Suppl.2): S372–S384. Reprinted in Bedau and Humphreys 2008: 99–110.

The most recent biography of Locke which includes an account of Locke’s relations with Collins in Locke’s old age and other valuable material.

Yolton’s book has a section on the beginning phases of the “thinking matter” controversy in which we see that there were a number of writers on both sides while Locke was alive and that Locke discussed some of these with Collins.

This book begins with Locke’s account of the possibility of “thinking matter” and traces the controversy over this suggestion well into the eighteenth century beginning with the Clarke Collins controversy of 1707–8

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Bibliotheca Collinsiana , Giovanni Tarantino’s catalog of Collins’ library.
• Anthony Collins, entry in the Wikipedia .
• Anthony Collins Collection , the Open Library’s collection of books by or related to Anthony Collins.

analogy: medieval theories of | Bayle, Pierre | Berkeley, George | Cambridge Platonists | Clarke, Samuel | consciousness | determinism: causal | emergent properties | free will | free will: divine foreknowledge and | Hobbes, Thomas | Locke, John | personal identity

Acknowledgments

The editors would like to thank Sally Ferguson for noticing and reporting a number of typographical and other infelicitous errors in this entry.

Copyright © 2020 by William Uzgalis < buzgalis @ gmail . com >

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Poetry — On Turning Ten: Analysis of Literary Devices in Billy Collins’ Book

On Turning Ten: Analysis of Literary Devices in Billy Collins' Book

• Categories: Poetry

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Published: Aug 18, 2021

Words: 1252 | Pages: 2 | 7 min read

In "On Turning Ten", Billy Collins effectively utilizes metaphors, imagery, and a negative connotation to convey the poignant message of the challenges one faces when transitioning to a more mature age. The poem captures the narrator's emotional journey from the single digits to double digits, portraying a sense of loss and disillusionment that accompanies this shift.

Metaphors play a significant role in illustrating the narrator's predicament. The comparison of turning ten to a litany of physical ailments, such as stomachaches, headaches, and measles of the spirit, vividly conveys the turmoil within. Imagery further enriches the poem, offering glimpses into the narrator's evolving perspective. The vivid depictions of childhood fantasies, such as being an Arabian Wizard or a soldier, contrast starkly with the harsher realities of growing up. The image of a bicycle leaning against the garage, its "dark blue speed drained," symbolizes the loss of youthful exuberance and carefree days, replaced by the weight of responsibilities.

Throughout the poem, a negative connotation permeates the narrative, emphasizing the sense of sadness and apprehension associated with growing older. The adult perspective attempts to downplay the significance of looking back, but the narrator's experiences reveal the complexities of adolescence.

Table of contents

Prompt examples for "on turning ten" essay, "on turning ten" essay example.

• Imagery and Symbolism: Analyze the use of imagery and symbolism in Billy Collins' poem "On Turning Ten," discussing how these literary devices contribute to the poem's themes and emotional impact.
• Tone and Mood: Examine the tone and mood of the poem, considering how Collins' choice of words and language create a particular atmosphere and evoke emotions in the reader.
• Metaphor and Simile: Discuss the presence of metaphors and similes in the poem, and explore how they enhance the reader's understanding of the speaker's experience of growing up.
• Irony and Ambiguity: Analyze instances of irony and ambiguity in "On Turning Ten," and explore how they add depth and complexity to the poem's meaning and the speaker's reflections.
• Rhythm and Rhyme: Discuss the poem's use of rhythm and rhyme, considering how these formal elements contribute to the overall structure and musicality of the poem, as well as their impact on the reader's engagement.

Introduction

"on turning ten": analysis of literary devices, negative connotations.

• Collins, B. (2003). On turning ten. PoemHunter. com, 13. (https://www.shawsheentech.org/cms/lib/MA50000170/Centricity/Domain/49/9134_MAY18_1.pdf)
• Bernstein, C. (2006). The Difficult Poem. Poetry & Pedagogy: The Challenge of the Contemporary, 148-150. (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-137-11449-5_9)
• Collins, B. (2011). Billy Collins, 34th Annual ODU Literary Festival. (https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/litfest-2011/5/)

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Lit. Summaries

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Unraveling the Meaning: A Literary Analysis of Billy Collins’ “The Lanyard”

• Billy Collins

Billy Collins’ poem “The Lanyard” is a touching tribute to the speaker’s mother, who has done countless things for him throughout his life. In this article, we will delve into the deeper meanings behind the poem and explore the literary devices used by Collins to convey his message. From the imagery to the structure, we will analyze every aspect of “The Lanyard” to fully understand its significance and impact.

Background Information on Billy Collins

Billy Collins is a renowned American poet who has won numerous awards for his work. He was born in New York City in 1941 and grew up in Queens. Collins attended the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in English. He later went on to earn his PhD in Romantic Poetry from the University of California, Riverside. Collins has published over a dozen collections of poetry, including “The Apple That Astonished Paris” and “Sailing Alone Around the Room.” He served as the United States Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003 and has been a professor of English at various universities, including Lehman College and City University of New York. Collins is known for his accessible and humorous style of poetry, often using everyday language and situations to explore deeper themes.

The Poem’s Structure and Form

The structure and form of Billy Collins’ “The Lanyard” play a significant role in conveying the poem’s meaning. The poem is composed of three stanzas, each with a varying number of lines. The first stanza has six lines, the second has eight, and the final stanza has seven. This structure creates a sense of progression and builds towards the poem’s climax.

Additionally, the poem’s form is free verse, meaning it does not follow a strict rhyme or meter. This allows Collins to focus on the content and message of the poem rather than adhering to a specific poetic structure. The lack of rhyme and meter also adds to the conversational tone of the poem, making it feel like a personal reflection rather than a formal piece of literature.

Overall, the structure and form of “The Lanyard” contribute to the poem’s emotional impact and help to convey Collins’ message about the complexity of love and the importance of gratitude.

The Poem’s Tone and Mood

The tone and mood of a poem are essential elements that contribute to its overall meaning. In Billy Collins’ “The Lanyard,” the tone is nostalgic and reflective, while the mood is bittersweet. The speaker reminisces about his childhood and the simple act of making a lanyard for his mother, which he now realizes was a small gesture compared to all she has done for him. The tone is wistful as the speaker reflects on the past, but there is also a sense of regret for not fully appreciating his mother’s love and sacrifice. The mood is bittersweet because the speaker is grateful for his mother’s love, but also acknowledges that he can never fully repay her. The tone and mood of “The Lanyard” work together to convey the poem’s central theme of the unbreakable bond between a mother and child.

The Significance of the Lanyard as a Symbol

The lanyard is a simple object that is often overlooked, but in Billy Collins’ poem “The Lanyard,” it takes on a significant symbolic meaning. The poem explores the relationship between a mother and son, and how the son’s childhood gift of a lanyard for his mother is a metaphor for the love and gratitude he feels towards her. The lanyard becomes a symbol of the son’s realization of the sacrifices his mother has made for him, and his own desire to repay her. Through the lanyard, Collins highlights the importance of recognizing and appreciating the love and care that others give us, and the significance of expressing our own gratitude and love in return.

The Relationship between Mother and Son

In Billy Collins’ poem “The Lanyard,” the relationship between mother and son is a central theme. The poem explores the idea of a mother’s unconditional love for her child and the son’s realization of the depth of that love. The lanyard, a simple gift made by the son for his mother at summer camp, becomes a symbol of the son’s gratitude and appreciation for his mother’s love and care. The poem highlights the importance of the mother-son relationship and the impact it can have on a person’s life. It also emphasizes the idea that a mother’s love is often taken for granted, but it is a powerful force that shapes a child’s life. Overall, “The Lanyard” is a touching tribute to the bond between mother and son and the love that exists between them.

The Theme of Gratitude

In Billy Collins’ poem “The Lanyard,” the theme of gratitude is woven throughout the narrative. The speaker reflects on a childhood memory of making a lanyard for his mother at summer camp, and how he never truly appreciated the depth of her love and sacrifice until he became a parent himself. The poem serves as a reminder to be grateful for the people in our lives who have given us so much, often without expecting anything in return. Through his use of vivid imagery and poignant language, Collins encourages readers to reflect on their own relationships and express gratitude for the love and support they have received.

The Role of Memory in the Poem

In Billy Collins’ poem “The Lanyard,” memory plays a crucial role in unraveling the meaning of the poem. The speaker reflects on a childhood memory of making a lanyard for his mother at summer camp, and how he now realizes the depth of her love and sacrifice for him. The memory serves as a catalyst for the speaker’s realization of the unquantifiable value of a mother’s love. Without memory, the speaker would not have been able to make this connection and the poem would lose its emotional impact. Additionally, the poem itself becomes a memory for the reader, as it evokes feelings of nostalgia and reflection on their own relationships with their mothers. Memory, therefore, is not only integral to the poem’s meaning but also to its ability to resonate with readers on a personal level.

The Use of Humor in the Poem

In “The Lanyard,” Billy Collins uses humor to add a light-hearted tone to the poem. The speaker’s recollection of making a lanyard for his mother at summer camp is filled with comical moments, such as the realization that the lanyard was “useless” and the comparison of his mother’s love to the “clasp” on the lanyard. These humorous moments not only add a sense of playfulness to the poem, but also serve to emphasize the speaker’s love and appreciation for his mother. By using humor in this way, Collins is able to convey a deeper emotional message while still keeping the poem enjoyable and relatable for readers.

The Poem’s Title and Its Meaning

The title of Billy Collins’ poem, “The Lanyard,” may seem simple and straightforward at first glance. However, upon closer examination, the title holds significant meaning and symbolism. A lanyard is a cord or strap worn around the neck to hold items such as keys or identification cards. In the poem, the speaker reflects on a childhood memory of making a lanyard for his mother at summer camp. The act of creating the lanyard represents the speaker’s love and gratitude for his mother, as well as the idea of giving back to someone who has given so much. The title, therefore, serves as a metaphor for the theme of love and gratitude that runs throughout the poem.

The Poem’s Imagery and Figurative Language

In “The Lanyard,” Billy Collins uses vivid imagery and figurative language to convey the complex emotions of a mother-son relationship. The poem’s opening lines, “The other day I was ricocheting slowly / off the blue walls of this room,” immediately create a sense of movement and disorientation. This image is further emphasized by the metaphor of the speaker as a “pinball” bouncing around the room.

Throughout the poem, Collins uses a variety of metaphors and similes to describe the mother-son relationship. For example, he compares the mother’s love to a “bright ship” sailing away, and the son’s gratitude to a “kite” soaring in the sky. These comparisons not only create vivid images in the reader’s mind, but also suggest the depth and complexity of the emotions involved.

Collins also uses repetition and allusion to reinforce the poem’s themes. The repeated phrase “And here I am” emphasizes the speaker’s sense of gratitude and indebtedness to his mother, while the allusion to the Greek myth of Prometheus highlights the idea of sacrifice and the enduring nature of love.

Overall, the poem’s imagery and figurative language serve to deepen the reader’s understanding of the mother-son relationship at the heart of the poem. Through these literary devices, Collins conveys the complexity of love and gratitude, and the enduring nature of the bond between parent and child.

The Poem’s Allusions and References

Billy Collins’ “The Lanyard” is a poem that is rich in allusions and references. The poem is a reflection on the speaker’s relationship with his mother and the ways in which he has tried to repay her for all that she has done for him. Throughout the poem, Collins makes use of a variety of literary and cultural references to help convey his message and to add depth and complexity to the poem.

One of the most prominent allusions in the poem is to the Greek myth of Prometheus. In the myth, Prometheus steals fire from the gods and gives it to humanity, an act for which he is punished by being chained to a rock and having his liver eaten by an eagle every day. In “The Lanyard,” the speaker compares his mother’s love to the fire that Prometheus stole, suggesting that it is a precious and valuable gift that he can never fully repay.

Another allusion in the poem is to the biblical story of Adam and Eve. The speaker describes his mother as “the one who fashioned from clay / the first Adam,” a reference to the biblical story of God creating Adam from the dust of the earth. This allusion serves to emphasize the idea that the speaker’s mother is responsible for his very existence and that he owes her a debt of gratitude for bringing him into the world.

In addition to these allusions, “The Lanyard” also makes reference to a number of cultural touchstones, including the poet William Wordsworth, the cartoon character Popeye, and the children’s game of “Mother May I?” These references help to ground the poem in a specific cultural context and to give readers a sense of the speaker’s personality and interests.

Overall, the allusions and references in “The Lanyard” serve to enrich the poem and to give readers a deeper understanding of its themes and message. By drawing on a variety of literary and cultural sources, Collins is able to create a poem that is both personal and universal, speaking to the experiences of all those who have ever felt indebted to their mothers for all that they have done.

The Poem’s Message and Purpose

The message and purpose of Billy Collins’ “The Lanyard” are intertwined with the themes of love, gratitude, and the passage of time. The poem is a reflection on the speaker’s relationship with his mother and the realization of the sacrifices she made for him. The lanyard, a simple object that the speaker made for his mother as a child, becomes a symbol of the depth of her love and the speaker’s own gratitude for her.

Through the use of vivid imagery and a conversational tone, Collins invites the reader to reflect on their own relationships with their parents and the ways in which they have been loved and cared for. The poem also serves as a reminder of the fleeting nature of time and the importance of cherishing the moments we have with our loved ones.

Overall, “The Lanyard” is a poignant and heartfelt exploration of the complexities of love and the enduring bond between a mother and child. Its message and purpose are universal, resonating with readers of all ages and backgrounds.

The Poem’s Reception and Criticism

Billy Collins’ “The Lanyard” has received widespread acclaim since its publication in 1998. The poem has been praised for its simplicity and accessibility, as well as its ability to evoke powerful emotions in readers. Many critics have noted the poem’s use of humor and irony to explore complex themes such as love, memory, and the passage of time. However, some have criticized the poem for being too sentimental or simplistic, arguing that it lacks the depth and complexity of other works in the literary canon. Despite these criticisms, “The Lanyard” remains a beloved and widely-read poem, and its popularity shows no signs of waning anytime soon.

The Poem’s Place in Contemporary Poetry

Billy Collins’ “The Lanyard” is a prime example of the poem’s place in contemporary poetry. Collins, a former U.S. Poet Laureate, is known for his accessible and humorous approach to poetry. “The Lanyard” is no exception, as it tells a personal story of a mother-son relationship through the lens of a childhood craft project. This type of relatable and narrative poetry has become increasingly popular in contemporary poetry, as poets strive to connect with a wider audience and make poetry more accessible. Additionally, Collins’ use of language and imagery in “The Lanyard” showcases the power of poetry to evoke emotion and create vivid mental images. Overall, “The Lanyard” exemplifies the relevance and impact of poetry in contemporary literature.

The Poet’s Writing Style and Techniques

Billy Collins’ writing style in “The Lanyard” is characterized by its simplicity and accessibility. He uses everyday language and imagery to convey complex emotions and ideas. Collins also employs a conversational tone, as if he is speaking directly to the reader, which creates a sense of intimacy and connection.

One of the most notable techniques Collins uses in “The Lanyard” is the use of humor. He uses wit and irony to lighten the mood and make the poem more relatable. For example, when he describes his mother’s reaction to the lanyard he made her at camp, he writes, “She gave me life and milk from her breasts, / and I gave her a lanyard. / She nursed me in many a sickroom, / lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips, / set cold face-cloths on my forehead, / and then led me out into the airy light / and taught me to walk and swim, / and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.” This juxtaposition of the serious and the trivial highlights the absurdity of the situation and adds a touch of humor to the poem.

Another technique Collins uses is repetition. He repeats the phrase “The lanyard from my childhood” throughout the poem, emphasizing its significance and reinforcing the theme of memory and nostalgia. He also repeats the phrase “And here I am” at the beginning of each stanza, creating a sense of continuity and progression.

Overall, Collins’ writing style and techniques in “The Lanyard” contribute to the poem’s emotional impact and universal appeal. His use of humor and repetition, combined with his accessible language and conversational tone, make the poem relatable and memorable.

The Poem’s Connection to Collins’ Other Works

Billy Collins’ “The Lanyard” is a poem that is deeply connected to his other works. Collins is known for his ability to take ordinary moments and turn them into something profound, and “The Lanyard” is no exception. The poem is a reflection on the relationship between a mother and son, and it is a theme that Collins has explored in other works as well. In his poem “The Best Cigarette,” Collins writes about his mother’s smoking habit and the way it affected their relationship. In “The Lanyard,” he reflects on the way his mother made him a lanyard when he was a child, and how he never fully appreciated the love and care that went into that gift until he became a parent himself. These themes of love, family, and the passage of time are recurring motifs in Collins’ work, and they are what make “The Lanyard” such a powerful and moving poem.

The Poem’s Cultural and Historical Context

Billy Collins’ poem “The Lanyard” is a reflection on the relationship between a mother and her son. However, the poem’s cultural and historical context adds another layer of meaning to the work. The lanyard, a woven cord used to hold keys or identification cards, has a long history of use in various cultures. In the United States, lanyards were commonly used by military personnel to hold whistles or other small items. This connection to the military adds a sense of duty and sacrifice to the poem’s themes of love and gratitude. Additionally, the poem’s references to childhood activities such as making lanyards at summer camp and giving them as gifts to parents highlight the importance of tradition and family in American culture. Overall, the cultural and historical context of “The Lanyard” enriches the poem’s themes and adds depth to its meaning.

The Poem’s Impact on Readers and Society

Billy Collins’ “The Lanyard” has had a profound impact on readers and society since its publication in 1998. The poem’s exploration of the complex relationship between a mother and son has resonated with readers of all ages and backgrounds. Many have found themselves reflecting on their own relationships with their parents or children, and the ways in which love and gratitude can be expressed.

In addition to its personal impact, “The Lanyard” has also had a broader societal impact. The poem’s themes of love, gratitude, and the passage of time have been embraced by educators, who have used it as a teaching tool in classrooms across the country. The poem’s accessibility and relatability make it an ideal choice for introducing students to the power of poetry and the ways in which it can illuminate the human experience.

Furthermore, “The Lanyard” has been praised for its ability to bridge the gap between the literary world and the general public. Collins’ use of everyday language and relatable subject matter has made poetry more accessible to those who may have previously felt intimidated by the genre. This has helped to broaden the audience for poetry and to demonstrate its relevance in contemporary society.

Overall, “The Lanyard” has had a significant impact on readers and society, both in its personal resonance and its broader cultural influence. Its enduring popularity is a testament to the power of poetry to connect us to one another and to the world around us.

Francis Collins: Why I’m going public with my prostate cancer diagnosis

I served medical research. now it’s serving me. and i don’t want to waste time..

Over my 40 years as a physician-scientist, I’ve had the privilege of advising many patients facing serious medical diagnoses. I’ve seen them go through the excruciating experience of waiting for the results of a critical blood test, biopsy or scan that could dramatically affect their future hopes and dreams.

But this time, I was the one lying in the PET scanner as it searched for possible evidence of spread of my aggressive prostate cancer . I spent those 30 minutes in quiet prayer. If that cancer had already spread to my lymph nodes, bones, lungs or brain, it could still be treated — but it would no longer be curable.

Why am I going public about this cancer that many men are uncomfortable talking about? Because I want to lift the veil and share lifesaving information, and I want all men to benefit from the medical research to which I’ve devoted my career and that is now guiding my care.

Five years before that fateful PET scan, my doctor had noted a slow rise in my PSA, the blood test for prostate-specific antigen. To contribute to knowledge and receive expert care, I enrolled in a clinical trial at the National Institutes of Health, the agency I led from 2009 through late 2021.

At first, there wasn’t much to worry about — targeted biopsies identified a slow-growing grade of prostate cancer that doesn’t require treatment and can be tracked via regular checkups, referred to as “active surveillance.” This initial diagnosis was not particularly surprising. Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men in the United States, and about 40 percent of men over age 65 — I’m 73 — have low-grade prostate cancer . Many of them never know it, and very few of them develop advanced disease.

Why am I going public about this cancer that many men are uncomfortable talking about? Because I want to lift the veil and share lifesaving information.

But in my case, things took a turn about a month ago when my PSA rose sharply to 22 — normal at my age is less than 5. An MRI scan showed that the tumor had significantly enlarged and might have even breached the capsule that surrounds the prostate, posing a significant risk that the cancer cells might have spread to other parts of the body.

New biopsies taken from the mass showed transformation into a much more aggressive cancer. When I heard the diagnosis was now a 9 on a cancer-grading scale that goes only to 10, I knew that everything had changed.

Thus, that PET scan, which was ordered to determine if the cancer had spread beyond the prostate, carried high significance. Would a cure still be possible, or would it be time to get my affairs in order? A few hours later, when my doctors showed me the scan results, I felt a rush of profound relief and gratitude. There was no detectable evidence of cancer outside of the primary tumor.

Later this month, I will undergo a radical prostatectomy — a procedure that will remove my entire prostate gland. This will be part of the same NIH research protocol — I want as much information as possible to be learned from my case, to help others in the future.

While there are no guarantees, my doctors believe I have a high likelihood of being cured by the surgery.

My situation is far better than my father’s when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer four decades ago. He was about the same age that I am now, but it wasn’t possible back then to assess how advanced the cancer might be. He was treated with a hormonal therapy that might not have been necessary and had a significant negative impact on his quality of life.

Because of research supported by NIH, along with highly effective collaborations with the private sector, prostate cancer can now be treated with individualized precision and improved outcomes.

As in my case, high-resolution MRI scans can now be used to delineate the precise location of a tumor. When combined with real-time ultrasound, this allows pinpoint targeting of the prostate biopsies. My surgeon will be assisted by a sophisticated robot named for Leonardo da Vinci that employs a less invasive surgical approach than previous techniques, requiring just a few small incisions.

Advances in clinical treatments have been informed by large-scale, rigorously designed trials that have assessed the risks and benefits and were possible because of the willingness of cancer patients to enroll in such trials.

I feel compelled to tell this story openly. I hope it helps someone. I don’t want to waste time.

If my cancer recurs, the DNA analysis that has been carried out on my tumor will guide the precise choice of therapies. As a researcher who had the privilege of leading the Human Genome Project , it is truly gratifying to see how these advances in genomics have transformed the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

I want all men to have the same opportunity that I did. Prostate cancer is still the No. 2 cancer killer among men. I want the goals of the Cancer Moonshot to be met — to end cancer as we know it. Early detection really matters, and when combined with active surveillance can identify the risky cancers like mine, and leave the rest alone. The five-year relative survival rate for prostate cancer is 97 percent, according to the American Cancer Society , but it’s only 34 percent if the cancer has spread to distant areas of the body.

But lack of information and confusion about the best approach to prostate cancer screening have impeded progress. Currently, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends that all men age 55 to 69 discuss PSA screening with their primary-care physician, but it recommends against starting PSA screening after age 70.

Other groups, like the American Urological Association , suggest that screening should start earlier, especially for men with a family history — like me — and for African American men, who have a higher risk of prostate cancer. But these recommendations are not consistently being followed.

Our health-care system is afflicted with health inequities. For example, the image-guided biopsies are not available everywhere and to everyone. Finally, many men are fearful of the surgical approach to prostate cancer because of the risk of incontinence and impotence, but advances in surgical techniques have made those outcomes considerably less troublesome than in the past. Similarly, the alternative therapeutic approaches of radiation and hormonal therapy have seen significant advances.

A little over a year ago, while I was praying for a dying friend, I had the experience of receiving a clear and unmistakable message. This has almost never happened to me. It was just this: “Don’t waste your time, you may not have much left.” Gulp.

Having now received a diagnosis of aggressive prostate cancer and feeling grateful for all the ways I have benefited from research advances, I feel compelled to tell this story openly. I hope it helps someone. I don’t want to waste time.

Francis S. Collins served as director of the National Institutes of Health from 2009 to 2021 and as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at NIH from 1993 to 2008. He is a physician-geneticist and leads a White House initiative to eliminate hepatitis C in the United States, while also continuing to pursue his research interests as a distinguished NIH investigator.

An earlier version of this article said prostate cancer is the No. 2 killer of men. It is the No. 2 cause of cancer death among men. The article has been updated.

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A Poet on Taylor Swift’s Complicated Embrace of Tortured Poets

W ho was the first tortured poet? Maybe the ancient Egyptian who wrote, sometime in the 15th century BCE, "My beloved stirs my heart with his voice. He causes illness to seize me.... My heart is smitten." Maybe the poet Catullus, whose heartbreaks lit up ancient Rome: "I hate and love," he explained in Latin, "and it's excruciating," or (depending on the translator) "it crucifies me." Petrarch's sonnets, in 14th century Italy, complained that love both scorched and chilled. Mary Wroth, a contemporary of Shakespeare, agreed: love made her "burn and yet freeze: better in hell to be."

All those poets felt tortured by erotic love—and their strife sometimes hurt other people, too, if they came too close. The trope of the tortured poet whose gifts would destroy him (or, less often, her) came about later, when European writers began to see poets as especially sensitive, anguished, or fragile. "We poets in our youth begin in gladness," William Wordsworth mused in 1802, "But thereof in the end come despondency and madness." That second line lengthens as if unfolding hard truth. A genuine poet in France might be a "poète maudit" ("cursed poet"), like Charles Baudelaire or Arthur Rimbaud, marked by fate, mental illness, or alcohol addiction. By the 20th century the type (or stereotype, really) could fit all manner of wild and self-destructive creators, especially men, from Dylan Thomas to the Doors' Jim Morrison.

By calling her new album The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift points back to this tradition. She also makes fun of it, comments on it, and rejects it, as the prose that accompanied the album implies. "There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed," Swift wrote in an Instagram post. "Our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it."

Seeing her work as ink on a page, not only as song in the air, Swift claims herself as a literary writer—the modern age’s most notorious poet. Fans first speculated that she appropriated the "tortured" mantle from the group chat co-run by her ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn, which Alwyn called "The Tortured Man Club.” Could be—but it’s so much more than that, and it might also point to other recent relationships . Taylor creates some distance between herself and the stereotype she invokes. "You're not Dylan Thomas, I'm not Patti Smith," Swift's title track declares. "This ain't the Chelsea Hotel. We're modern idiots." He's not that gifted, and she's not that dramatic. Or rather she's dramatic in a different, far more deliberate way: one that fits her own, always thoughtful, but rarely raw, art.

Read More: All the References in Taylor Swift’s Title Track ‘The Tortured Poets Department’

Swift also takes back for herself—and for other women artists—the power that supposedly comes from chronic distress, from feeling like a tortured mess. "You wouldn't last an hour in the asylum where they raised me," Swift warns on "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?" If she feels tortured and reacts with poetry, that's not endemic to poets; it's the logical consequence of a romance gone wrong and a live lived in public. "I was tame, I was gentle till the circus life made me mean,” she sings. “You caged me and then you called me crazy/ I am what I am 'cause you trained me.”

But if Swift has become the chair of the Tortured Poets Department, she didn't get there by being born this way: the rest of the department did it to her. Her barbed words, sharp hooks, and sarcastic replies are more like Wroth's burning and freezing than they are like Baudelaire's doom. They share, and make fun, of her own emotional extremes. "Whether I'm gonna be your wife or gonna smash up your bike I don't know yet," she explains on “imgunnagetyouback,” punningly. "But I'm gonna get you back”—either get you to come back to me, or get back at you. Her phrases present a feminist revenge, turning her pain into (what else?) song. "I cry a lot but I am so productive it's an art," she croons on one of the most upbeat new tracks “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.” "You know you're good when you can even do it with a broken heart."

Like all Swift's albums, The Tortured Poet Department contains multitudes and multiple takes on the same situation, just as it contain several pop styles, from the 1980s-style synths in the album’s single “Fortnight,” composed with Post Malone, to the acoustic guitar and string sweeps of "The Albatross," created with reference to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Wordsworth's ex-friend, a self-sabotaging poet for the ages). In "But Daddy I Love Him" Swift strikes back, with extra reverb, at fans who insist on telling her who to date and how. In "Down Bad" she encapsulates her toughest, most immature moments in elegant half-rhyme: "everything comes out teenage petulance. I might just die, it would make no difference." But Swift for most of the album, for all her passion and all her pain, knows better than to blow up her life for love. Like her character in "The Bolter," she knows how to save herself, even when love feels like drowning.

The tortured modern poet—the poète maudit—the trope that Swift's new album takes up and plays with and against, remains a powerful metaphor (she is no authority on literal torture, and never pretends to be one). Listeners who have been sorting through The Tortured Poets Department since both halves of it dropped, two hours apart, have already found our own favorites, mirrors for our own falls through thin ice.

Read More: Taylor Swift Is Embracing the 5 Stages of Grief. Should You?

It's surprising, even staggering, to see the range of her responses to love, to poetry, and to "torture." Sometimes she magnifies, even celebrates, her own and her characters' emotional turmoil. Other times (as in the title track) she makes fun of the way they, as would-be "tortured poets," cannot get out of their own heads. And sometimes—to quote another poet, William Butler Yeats—she mocks mockers after that, telling us to stop telling her what to do.

Always, though, she shows us the craft she shares with the great poets, and songwriters, of times past: the ability, as Yeats also put it, "to articulate sweet sounds together," and to "work harder than all these"—harder than anybody—at turning all those feelings into art.

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How Pew Research Center will report on generations moving forward

Journalists, researchers and the public often look at society through the lens of generation, using terms like Millennial or Gen Z to describe groups of similarly aged people. This approach can help readers see themselves in the data and assess where we are and where we’re headed as a country.

Pew Research Center has been at the forefront of generational research over the years, telling the story of Millennials as they came of age politically and as they moved more firmly into adult life . In recent years, we’ve also been eager to learn about Gen Z as the leading edge of this generation moves into adulthood.

But generational research has become a crowded arena. The field has been flooded with content that’s often sold as research but is more like clickbait or marketing mythology. There’s also been a growing chorus of criticism about generational research and generational labels in particular.

Recently, as we were preparing to embark on a major research project related to Gen Z, we decided to take a step back and consider how we can study generations in a way that aligns with our values of accuracy, rigor and providing a foundation of facts that enriches the public dialogue.

A typical generation spans 15 to 18 years. As many critics of generational research point out, there is great diversity of thought, experience and behavior within generations.

We set out on a yearlong process of assessing the landscape of generational research. We spoke with experts from outside Pew Research Center, including those who have been publicly critical of our generational analysis, to get their take on the pros and cons of this type of work. We invested in methodological testing to determine whether we could compare findings from our earlier telephone surveys to the online ones we’re conducting now. And we experimented with higher-level statistical analyses that would allow us to isolate the effect of generation.

What emerged from this process was a set of clear guidelines that will help frame our approach going forward. Many of these are principles we’ve always adhered to , but others will require us to change the way we’ve been doing things in recent years.

Here’s a short overview of how we’ll approach generational research in the future:

We’ll only do generational analysis when we have historical data that allows us to compare generations at similar stages of life. When comparing generations, it’s crucial to control for age. In other words, researchers need to look at each generation or age cohort at a similar point in the life cycle. (“Age cohort” is a fancy way of referring to a group of people who were born around the same time.)

When doing this kind of research, the question isn’t whether young adults today are different from middle-aged or older adults today. The question is whether young adults today are different from young adults at some specific point in the past.

To answer this question, it’s necessary to have data that’s been collected over a considerable amount of time – think decades. Standard surveys don’t allow for this type of analysis. We can look at differences across age groups, but we can’t compare age groups over time.

Another complication is that the surveys we conducted 20 or 30 years ago aren’t usually comparable enough to the surveys we’re doing today. Our earlier surveys were done over the phone, and we’ve since transitioned to our nationally representative online survey panel , the American Trends Panel . Our internal testing showed that on many topics, respondents answer questions differently depending on the way they’re being interviewed. So we can’t use most of our surveys from the late 1980s and early 2000s to compare Gen Z with Millennials and Gen Xers at a similar stage of life.

This means that most generational analysis we do will use datasets that have employed similar methodologies over a long period of time, such as surveys from the U.S. Census Bureau. A good example is our 2020 report on Millennial families , which used census data going back to the late 1960s. The report showed that Millennials are marrying and forming families at a much different pace than the generations that came before them.

Even when we have historical data, we will attempt to control for other factors beyond age in making generational comparisons. If we accept that there are real differences across generations, we’re basically saying that people who were born around the same time share certain attitudes or beliefs – and that their views have been influenced by external forces that uniquely shaped them during their formative years. Those forces may have been social changes, economic circumstances, technological advances or political movements.

When we see that younger adults have different views than their older counterparts, it may be driven by their demographic traits rather than the fact that they belong to a particular generation.

The tricky part is isolating those forces from events or circumstances that have affected all age groups, not just one generation. These are often called “period effects.” An example of a period effect is the Watergate scandal, which drove down trust in government among all age groups. Differences in trust across age groups in the wake of Watergate shouldn’t be attributed to the outsize impact that event had on one age group or another, because the change occurred across the board.

Changing demographics also may play a role in patterns that might at first seem like generational differences. We know that the United States has become more racially and ethnically diverse in recent decades, and that race and ethnicity are linked with certain key social and political views. When we see that younger adults have different views than their older counterparts, it may be driven by their demographic traits rather than the fact that they belong to a particular generation.

Controlling for these factors can involve complicated statistical analysis that helps determine whether the differences we see across age groups are indeed due to generation or not. This additional step adds rigor to the process. Unfortunately, it’s often absent from current discussions about Gen Z, Millennials and other generations.

When we can’t do generational analysis, we still see value in looking at differences by age and will do so where it makes sense. Age is one of the most common predictors of differences in attitudes and behaviors. And even if age gaps aren’t rooted in generational differences, they can still be illuminating. They help us understand how people across the age spectrum are responding to key trends, technological breakthroughs and historical events.

Each stage of life comes with a unique set of experiences. Young adults are often at the leading edge of changing attitudes on emerging social trends. Take views on same-sex marriage , for example, or attitudes about gender identity .

Many middle-aged adults, in turn, face the challenge of raising children while also providing care and support to their aging parents. And older adults have their own obstacles and opportunities. All of these stories – rooted in the life cycle, not in generations – are important and compelling, and we can tell them by analyzing our surveys at any given point in time.

When we do have the data to study groups of similarly aged people over time, we won’t always default to using the standard generational definitions and labels. While generational labels are simple and catchy, there are other ways to analyze age cohorts. For example, some observers have suggested grouping people by the decade in which they were born. This would create narrower cohorts in which the members may share more in common. People could also be grouped relative to their age during key historical events (such as the Great Recession or the COVID-19 pandemic) or technological innovations (like the invention of the iPhone).

By choosing not to use the standard generational labels when they’re not appropriate, we can avoid reinforcing harmful stereotypes or oversimplifying people’s complex lived experiences.

Existing generational definitions also may be too broad and arbitrary to capture differences that exist among narrower cohorts. A typical generation spans 15 to 18 years. As many critics of generational research point out, there is great diversity of thought, experience and behavior within generations. The key is to pick a lens that’s most appropriate for the research question that’s being studied. If we’re looking at political views and how they’ve shifted over time, for example, we might group people together according to the first presidential election in which they were eligible to vote.

With these considerations in mind, our audiences should not expect to see a lot of new research coming out of Pew Research Center that uses the generational lens. We’ll only talk about generations when it adds value, advances important national debates and highlights meaningful societal trends.

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AI’s ability to write for us—and our inability to resist ‘The Button’—will spark a crisis of meaning in creative work

Soon, every major office application and email client will include a button to help you create a draft of your work. It deserves capital letters: The Button.

When faced with the tyranny of the blank page, people are going to push The Button. It is so much easier to start with something than nothing. Students are going to use it to start essays. Managers will use it to start emails, reports, or documents. Teachers will use it when providing feedback. Scientists will use it to write grants. Concept artists will use it for their first draft. Everyone is going to use The Button.

The implications of having AI write our first drafts (even if we do the work ourselves, which is not a given) are huge. One consequence is that we could lose our creativity and originality. When we use AI to generate our first drafts, we tend to anchor on the first idea that the machine produces, which influences our future work. Even if we rewrite the drafts completely, they will still be tainted by the AI’s influence. We will not be able to explore different perspectives and alternatives, which could lead to better solutions and insights.

Another consequence is that we could reduce the quality and depth of our thinking and reasoning. When we use AI to generate our first drafts, we don’t have to think as hard or as deeply about what we write. We rely on the machine to do the hard work of analysis and synthesis, and we don’t engage in critical and reflective thinking ourselves. We also miss the opportunity to learn from our mistakes and feedback and the chance to develop our own style.

AI can do it

There is already evidence that this is going to be a problem. A recent MIT study found that ChatGPT mostly serves as a substitute for human effort, not a complement to our skills. In fact, the vast majority of participants didn’t even bother editing the AI’s output. This is a problem I see repeatedly when people first use AI: they just paste in the exact question they are asked and let the AI answer it.

A lot of work is time-consuming by design. In a world in which the AI gives an instant, pretty good, near universally accessible shortcut, we’ll soon face a crisis of meaning in creative work of all kinds. This is, in part, because we expect creative work to take careful thought and revision, but also that time often operates as a stand-in for work. Take, for example, the letter of recommendation. Professors are asked to write letters for students all the time, and a good letter takes a long time to write. You have to understand the student and the reason for the letter, decide how to phrase the letter to align with the job requirements and the student’s strengths, and more. The fact that it is time-consuming is somewhat the point. That a professor takes the time to write a good letter is a sign that they support the student’s application. We are setting our time on fire to signal to others that this letter is worth reading.

Or we can push The Button.

And the problem is that the letter the AI generates is going to be good. Not just grammatically correct, but persuasive and insightful to a human reader. It is going to be better than most letters of recommendation that I receive. This means that not only is the quality of the letter no longer a signal of the professor’s interest, but also that you may actually be hurting people by not writing a letter of recommendation by AI, especially if you are not a particularly strong writer. So people now have to consider that the goal of the letter (getting a student a job) is in contrast with the morally correct method of accomplishing the goal (the professor spending a lot of time writing the letter). I am still doing all my letters the old-fashioned way, but I wonder whether that will ultimately do my students a disservice.

Now consider all the other tasks whose final written output is important because it is a signal of the time spent on the task and of the thoughtfulness that went into it—performance reviews, strategic memos, college essays, grant applications, speeches, comments on papers. And so much more.

Reconstructing meaning

Then The Button starts to tempt everyone. Work that was boring to do but meaningful when completed by humans (like performance reviews) becomes easy to outsource—and the apparent quality actually increases. We start to create documents mostly with AI that get sent to AI-powered inboxes, where the recipients respond primarily with AI. Even worse, we still create the reports by hand but realize that no human is actually reading them. This kind of meaningless task, what organizational theorists have called mere ceremony, has always been with us. But AI will make a lot of previously useful tasks meaningless. It will also remove the facade that previously disguised meaningless tasks. We may not have always known if our work mattered in the bigger picture, but in most organizations, the people in your part of the organizational structure felt it did. With AI-generated work sent to other AIs to assess, that sense of meaning disappears.

We are going to need to reconstruct meaning, in art and in the rituals of creative work. This is not an easy process, but we have done it before, many times. Where musicians once made money from records, they now depend on being excellent live performers. When photography made realistic oil paintings obsolete, artists started pushing the bounds of photography as art. When the spreadsheet made adding data by hand unneeded, clerks shifted their responsibilities to bigger-picture issues. This change in meaning is going to have a large effect on work.

Excerpted with permission from Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI , by Ethan Mollick, in agreement with Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Ethan Mollick, 2024.

Ethan Mollick is a professor of management at Wharton, specializing in entrepreneurship and innovation. He writes the AI-focused blog One Useful Thing and is the creator of numerous educational games on a variety of topics. 

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NPR defends its journalism after senior editor says it has lost the public's trust

David Folkenflik

NPR is defending its journalism and integrity after a senior editor wrote an essay accusing it of losing the public's trust. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

NPR is defending its journalism and integrity after a senior editor wrote an essay accusing it of losing the public's trust.

NPR's top news executive defended its journalism and its commitment to reflecting a diverse array of views on Tuesday after a senior NPR editor wrote a broad critique of how the network has covered some of the most important stories of the age.

"An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don't have an audience that reflects America," writes Uri Berliner.

A strategic emphasis on diversity and inclusion on the basis of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation, promoted by NPR's former CEO, John Lansing, has fed "the absence of viewpoint diversity," Berliner writes.

NPR's chief news executive, Edith Chapin, wrote in a memo to staff Tuesday afternoon that she and the news leadership team strongly reject Berliner's assessment.

"We're proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories," she wrote. "We believe that inclusion — among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage — is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world."

NPR names tech executive Katherine Maher to lead in turbulent era

She added, "None of our work is above scrutiny or critique. We must have vigorous discussions in the newsroom about how we serve the public as a whole."

A spokesperson for NPR said Chapin, who also serves as the network's chief content officer, would have no further comment.

Praised by NPR's critics

Berliner is a senior editor on NPR's Business Desk. (Disclosure: I, too, am part of the Business Desk, and Berliner has edited many of my past stories. He did not see any version of this article or participate in its preparation before it was posted publicly.)

Berliner's essay , titled "I've Been at NPR for 25 years. Here's How We Lost America's Trust," was published by The Free Press, a website that has welcomed journalists who have concluded that mainstream news outlets have become reflexively liberal.

Berliner writes that as a Subaru-driving, Sarah Lawrence College graduate who "was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother ," he fits the mold of a loyal NPR fan.

Yet Berliner says NPR's news coverage has fallen short on some of the most controversial stories of recent years, from the question of whether former President Donald Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 election, to the origins of the virus that causes COVID-19, to the significance and provenance of emails leaked from a laptop owned by Hunter Biden weeks before the 2020 election. In addition, he blasted NPR's coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

On each of these stories, Berliner asserts, NPR has suffered from groupthink due to too little diversity of viewpoints in the newsroom.

The essay ricocheted Tuesday around conservative media , with some labeling Berliner a whistleblower . Others picked it up on social media, including Elon Musk, who has lambasted NPR for leaving his social media site, X. (Musk emailed another NPR reporter a link to Berliner's article with a gibe that the reporter was a "quisling" — a World War II reference to someone who collaborates with the enemy.)

When asked for further comment late Tuesday, Berliner declined, saying the essay spoke for itself.

The arguments he raises — and counters — have percolated across U.S. newsrooms in recent years. The #MeToo sexual harassment scandals of 2016 and 2017 forced newsrooms to listen to and heed more junior colleagues. The social justice movement prompted by the killing of George Floyd in 2020 inspired a reckoning in many places. Newsroom leaders often appeared to stand on shaky ground.

Leaders at many newsrooms, including top editors at The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times , lost their jobs. Legendary Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron wrote in his memoir that he feared his bonds with the staff were "frayed beyond repair," especially over the degree of self-expression his journalists expected to exert on social media, before he decided to step down in early 2021.

Since then, Baron and others — including leaders of some of these newsrooms — have suggested that the pendulum has swung too far.

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New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger warned last year against journalists embracing a stance of what he calls "one-side-ism": "where journalists are demonstrating that they're on the side of the righteous."

"I really think that that can create blind spots and echo chambers," he said.

Internal arguments at The Times over the strength of its reporting on accusations that Hamas engaged in sexual assaults as part of a strategy for its Oct. 7 attack on Israel erupted publicly . The paper conducted an investigation to determine the source of a leak over a planned episode of the paper's podcast The Daily on the subject, which months later has not been released. The newsroom guild accused the paper of "targeted interrogation" of journalists of Middle Eastern descent.

Heated pushback in NPR's newsroom

Given Berliner's account of private conversations, several NPR journalists question whether they can now trust him with unguarded assessments about stories in real time. Others express frustration that he had not sought out comment in advance of publication. Berliner acknowledged to me that for this story, he did not seek NPR's approval to publish the piece, nor did he give the network advance notice.

Some of Berliner's NPR colleagues are responding heatedly. Fernando Alfonso, a senior supervising editor for digital news, wrote that he wholeheartedly rejected Berliner's critique of the coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict, for which NPR's journalists, like their peers, periodically put themselves at risk.

Alfonso also took issue with Berliner's concern over the focus on diversity at NPR.

"As a person of color who has often worked in newsrooms with little to no people who look like me, the efforts NPR has made to diversify its workforce and its sources are unique and appropriate given the news industry's long-standing lack of diversity," Alfonso says. "These efforts should be celebrated and not denigrated as Uri has done."

After this story was first published, Berliner contested Alfonso's characterization, saying his criticism of NPR is about the lack of diversity of viewpoints, not its diversity itself.

"I never criticized NPR's priority of achieving a more diverse workforce in terms of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. I have not 'denigrated' NPR's newsroom diversity goals," Berliner said. "That's wrong."

Questions of diversity

Under former CEO John Lansing, NPR made increasing diversity, both of its staff and its audience, its "North Star" mission. Berliner says in the essay that NPR failed to consider broader diversity of viewpoint, noting, "In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans."

Berliner cited audience estimates that suggested a concurrent falloff in listening by Republicans. (The number of people listening to NPR broadcasts and terrestrial radio broadly has declined since the start of the pandemic.)

Former NPR vice president for news and ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin tweeted , "I know Uri. He's not wrong."

Others questioned Berliner's logic. "This probably gets causality somewhat backward," tweeted Semafor Washington editor Jordan Weissmann . "I'd guess that a lot of NPR listeners who voted for [Mitt] Romney have changed how they identify politically."

Similarly, Nieman Lab founder Joshua Benton suggested the rise of Trump alienated many NPR-appreciating Republicans from the GOP.

In recent years, NPR has greatly enhanced the percentage of people of color in its workforce and its executive ranks. Four out of 10 staffers are people of color; nearly half of NPR's leadership team identifies as Black, Asian or Latino.

"The philosophy is: Do you want to serve all of America and make sure it sounds like all of America, or not?" Lansing, who stepped down last month, says in response to Berliner's piece. "I'd welcome the argument against that."

"On radio, we were really lagging in our representation of an audience that makes us look like what America looks like today," Lansing says. The U.S. looks and sounds a lot different than it did in 1971, when NPR's first show was broadcast, Lansing says.

A network spokesperson says new NPR CEO Katherine Maher supports Chapin and her response to Berliner's critique.

The spokesperson says that Maher "believes that it's a healthy thing for a public service newsroom to engage in rigorous consideration of the needs of our audiences, including where we serve our mission well and where we can serve it better."

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editor Gerry Holmes. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no NPR corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.