Richard, who was born in 1899, became a well-known geographer; he died in 1992.
From his parents Hartshorne learned a tolerant and liberal form of Christianity. In his autobiography, The Darkness and the Light: A Philosopher Reflects upon His Fortunate Career and Those Who Made It Possible (1990), he recalls his mother telling him, "Charles, life is big!" The family moved to Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, in 1909. From 1911 to 1915 Hartshorne attended Yeates Boarding School in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where he read Ralph Waldo Emerson's Essays (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844) and Matthew Arnold's Literature and Dogma: An Essay towards a Better Apprehension of the Bible (1873). After reading Emerson, he says in the preface to The Logic of Perfection and Other Essays in Neoclassical Metaphysics (1962), he resolved to "trust reason to the end." In Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne (1984), edited by John B. Cobb Jr. and Franklin L. Gamwell, he says that "Arnold's book was almost like an explosion in my mind" and, to the distress of his parents, was the catalyst for his break with orthodox Christianity. He did not become an atheist, however: throughout his career he attempted to formulate a concept of God that is at once rationally defensible and religiously satisfying.
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