I think James is wrong about a lot of stuff ;) , but he didn't say that anybody could _know_ objective, unsituated truth. He said that reality is independent of your knowledge (or beliefs, or interpretations) of it.
--- On Wed, 9/2/09, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote: If you take the position that science historcally progresses towards deeper truth then how can you claim that anyone along the way could know objective, unsituated truth? Again, philosophers, historians and sociologists of science - many of them Marxists, and feminists - have been over this ground quite thoroughly... without being the constructivists and relativists you find so tedious.