America produced one original school of philosophy, and it is named after practical consequence. In Pragmatism (1907) William James asked of any belief: what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone’s actual life? What, in short, is the truth’s cash-value in experiential terms?
He described the pragmatic method as looking away from first things, principles, categories and supposed necessities, and toward last things, fruits, consequences, facts.
And he put the conclusion as bluntly as it can be put: truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events.