Papers of Donald Cary Williams

The Papers of Donald Cary Williams document Williams’s academic work and professional activities from 1922 to 1977. The collection contains Williams’s correspondence, student papers, manuscripts of published and unpublished papers and lectures, and teaching materials for philosophy courses. His correspondence, circa 1927-1977, is chiefly with professional colleagues at Harvard and elsewhere. Much of the correspondence pertains to philosophical concerns, such as probability and induction, the theory of knowledge, ethics, analytic metaphysics, epistemology, and the logical foundations of empirical knowledge. Also included is correspondence relating to professional organizations and conferences, recommendations, assessment of contemporary philosophers and philosophy, and other topics. Student papers, circa 1922-1927, include notes, course papers, and related items from Williams’s coursework as a student at Harvard, Occidental College, and the University of California, Berkeley. Much of the material pertains to his philosophical studies, but there is also an appreciable amount of creative work in English literature. Included are notes for courses taught by Harvard professors C. I. Lewis, Ralph Barton Perry, J. Woods, and William Ernest Hocking. Manuscripts, lectures, and unpublished materials, circa 1930-1977, include manuscripts of Williams’s published works and numerous other studies, many of them relating to logic, induction, and analytic ontology. Other topics he discussed include time, fatalism, certainty, behaviorism, meaning, and knowledge. Williams’s teaching materials, circa 1930-1967, contain syllabi, lecture and class notes, course proposals and exams, reading lists, exercises and examples, comments on student papers, and other material.