HAMILTON, SIR WILLIAM, BART. (1788-1856), Scot tish metaphysician, was born in Glasgow on Mar. 8, 1788, the son of Dr. William Hamilton, professor of anatomy and botany in Glasgow university. He was educated at Glasgow, Edinburgh and Balliol college, Oxford, taking his B.A. in 1811 and becoming a member of the Scottish bar two years later.
Two visits to Germany in 1817 and 1820 led to his study of German and later on to that of contemporary German philosophy, which was then almost entirely neglected in the British uni versities. In 1821 he was appointed professor of civil history at Edinburgh, after having failed to secure the chair of moral philosophy, which fell vacant on the death of Thomas Brown.
In 1829 appeared his well-known essay on the "Philosophy of the Unconditioned" (a critique of Cousin's Cours de philoso phie). In 1836, he was elected to the Edinburgh chair of logic and metaphysics, and from this time dates the influence which, during the next twenty years, he exerted over the thought of the younger generation in Scotland through his extensive knowledge embrac ing anatomy, physiology, literature and theological lore as well as his own particular subjects. His edition of Reid's works ap peared in 1846 with only seven of the intended dissertations. During the next few years he elaborated his scheme of logic, an account of his controversy with Augustus de Morgan being con tained in the appendices to his Lectures on Logic. In 1852 ap peared his Discussions in Philosophy, Literature and Educa tion, a reprint, with additions, of his contributions to the Edin burgh Review. He died in Edinburgh on May 6, 1856.
Hamilton was not a great originator, but he stimulated a spirit of criticism in his pupils, by insisting on the importance of psychology as opposed to the older metaphysical method, and recognized the importance of Aristotle and his commentators and of German philosophy, especially that of Kant, and so brought English philosophy out of insularity.
In logic, Hamilton is now known chiefly as the inventor of the doctrine of the "quantification of the predicate," i.e. that the judgment "All A is B" should really mean "All A is all B," where as the ordinary universal proposition should be stated "All A is some B." BIBLIOGRAPHY.-His posthumous works are his Lectures on MetaBibliography.-His posthumous works are his Lectures on Meta- physics and Logic, 4 vols., ed. H. L. Mansel, Oxford, and John Veitch (Metaphysics, 1858; Logic, 186o) ; and Additional Notes to Reid's Works, from Sir W. Hamilton's MSS., ed. H. L. Mansel (1862) . See J. Veitch, A Memoir of Sir W. Hamilton (1869) ; J. S. Mill, Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy (1865) ; Hutcheson Sterling, Sir W. Hamilton (1881) ; M. P. Bolton, Inquisitio Philosophica (1868) ; W. H. Monck, Sir W. Hamilton (1881) ; S. V. Rasmussen, The Philosophy of Sir W. Hamilton (1925) ; and J. McCosh, Scottish Philosophy (1875).