Background
John was born on March 30, 1842, in Hartford, Connecticut, United States, he was from an early age extremely bookish. He was the only child of Edmund Brewster Green, of Smyrna, Delaware, and Mary Fiske Bound, of Middletown, Connecticut. His father was editor of newspapers in Hartford, New York City, and Panama, where he died in 1852, and his widow married Edwin W. Stoughton, of New York, in 1855. On the second marriage of his mother, Edmund Fiske Green assumed the name of his maternal great-grandfather, John Fiske.
Education
John entered to Harvard in 1860 but was disappointed to find the curriculum old-fashioned; he displeased college authorities with his unorthodox religious views. After graduation, Fiske entered Harvard Law School and passed his bar exam in 1864.
Career
John turned from the practice of law to writing to solve his financial difficulties. In 1869 he obtained a teaching position at Harvard and in 1872 became an assistant librarian. At the same time, he also began the career of public lecturer that he would continue until his death.
Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy (1874) revealed his basic philosophical premise: societies evolve like biological organisms, and the laws of their evolution, like the Darwinian laws of biological evolution, can be discovered.
His best-known work, The Critical Period of American History (1888), dealt with the period between the end of the Revolutionary War and the adoption of the Constitution. He published several books during the next decade.
By the 1890 Fiske had a considerable reputation as a lecturer, his previously unorthodox religious views having mellowed so that his middle-class public regarded him as a reconciler of science and Christianity. His scholarly reputation declined, however, as his popularity increased; professional historians noted the lack of original research in his books. For the last few years of his life, Fiske suffered from bad health, complicated by obesity.
Religion
His investigation of current scientific theories led him to doubt the validity of orthodox Christianity.
Views
Though Fiske never succeeded in formulating any laws of history, he never doubted their existence. At this point Fiske turned from philosophy to the study of history. In preparing a series of lectures on American history in 1879, he treated the United States as the climax of a historical evolution toward a free democratic republic.
Fiske to believe in the racial superiority of the "Anglo-Saxon race". Fiske's beliefs on race did not preclude his commitment to abolitionist causes. Indeed, so anti-slavery was he that twenty-three years after the cessation of the American Civil War, he declared the North's victory complete despite the feeble wails of unteachable bigots.
Quotations:
"In reality there has never been any conflict between religion and science, nor is any reconciliation called for where harmony has always existed. "
Membership
Fiske was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1884.
Personality
While his mind was not deep, it was broad, and he had a genius for explaining other men's ideas clearly.