Adolf Grünbaum

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Adolf Grünbaum (born May 15, 1923 in Cologne ; † November 15, 2018 ) was an American physicist , philosopher and scientific theorist from Germany .

Life

Adolf Grünbaum was born in 1923 as the eldest child of businessman Benjamin Grünbaum (* 1891) and his wife Anna (* 1893). He grew up with his two younger siblings, his sister Susanne and his brother Norbert, in Cologne (Rubensstrasse). The rabbi of the synagogue that the family visited often referred to Kant and Hegel in his devotions and this aroused Grünbaum's interest in philosophy . After four years of elementary school, he attended the Jawne-Gymnasium in Cologne , directed by Erich Klibansky . In 1938 his family fled from the Nazis via Belgium / Antwerp to the USA / New York. Most of his relatives also fled to Belgium, stayed there, came under the control of the Nazis after the attack on Belgium by the German Wehrmacht in May 1940 and died in extermination camps in Eastern Europe.

Leo Grünbaum, an uncle of Adolf Grünbaum, who had emigrated to the USA before 1933, took in the family before they moved into an apartment in Brooklyn . Grünbaum's father was unable to take up work due to abuse by the Gestapo , and the mother had to take care of the family. As a result, Grünbaum did not go to school in Brooklyn, but took the subway to DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx for an hour and a half because one of his friends from Cologne, whose family had also emigrated to the USA, went to school there.

From 1940 he studied physics and philosophy at Wesleyan University in Middletown ( Connecticut ). There Grünbaum received the academic degree of BA in mathematics and philosophy in 1943 . He became an American soldier in World War II . In occupied Germany, he participated in the interrogations of Ludwig Bieberbach and Philipp Lenard . At Yale University , he received his M.Sc. in Physics (1948) and the Ph.D. in philosophy (1951).

In 1949 Adolf Grünbaum and the physicist Thelma Bravermann married. The marriage has a daughter.

From 1950 Grünbaum taught at Lehigh University in Bethlehem and at the University of Minnesota . In 1960 he became Andrew Mellon Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh . In this capacity he founded the Center for the same year Philosophy of Science (Center for Philosophy of Science), whose director he was until the 1978th The Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science , founded by Herbert Feigl in 1953, served as a model for the founding project . For lectures, Grünbaum u. a. the following scientists win: Ernst Caspari , Paul Feyerabend , Carl Gustav Hempel , Ernest Nagel , Michael Scriven and Wilfrid Sellars . From 1979, Grünbaum was also Research Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh . His guest lectures included the Gifford Lectures at the Scottish University of St Andrews (1985) and the Werner Heisenberg Lectures at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich (1985).

Grünbaum published on physical cosmology and on topics related to the theory of science. He did fundamental work on the philosophy of space and time, especially on the spatial and temporal congruence relation .

Awards

Publications

  • Philosophical Problems of Space and Time. Reidel, Dordrecht / Boston 1963, second a. expanded edition 1974, ISBN 978-90-277-0357-6 .
  • Geometry, Time Measurement and Empiricism. In: Archive for Philosophy 12 / 3.4 1963, pp. 179–351
  • Modern Science and Zeno's Paradoxes. Wesleyan University Press, Middletown 1967, second edition 1968
  • Geometry and Chronometry in Philosophical Perspective. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1968
  • The Foundations of Psychoanalysis. A Philosophycal Critique. University of California Press, Berkeley / Los Angeles / London 1984, ISBN 0-520-05016-9 .
    • German edition: The basics of psychoanalysis. A philosophical criticism. Translated from English by Christa Kolbert. Reclam, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-15-028459-7 .
  • Psychoanalysis from an epistemological point of view. On Sigmund Freud's work and his reception. Universitätsverlag, Konstanz 1987
  • Critical considerations on psychoanalysis. Adolf Grünbaum's “Basics” in the discussion. Edited by Adolf Grünbaum. Springer, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-540-52555-6 .
  • Validation in the Clinical Theory of Psychoanalysis. A Study in the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis. International University Press, Madison 1993, ISBN 0-8236-6722-7 .
  • Scientific Rationality, the Human Condition, and 20th Century Cosmologies. Collected Works Volume 1, edited by Thomas Kupka. Oxford University Press, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-998992-8

literature

  • Robert S. Cohen: Adolf Grünbaum: A Memoir. In: Robert S. Cohen, Larry Laudan (Eds.): Physics, philosophy and psychoanalysis: essays in honor of Adolf Grünbaum . Reidel, Dordrecht 1983, pp. Ix-xviii

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Oral history interview with Adolf Grünbaum (March 31, 2015) (audio only)
  2. ^ Philosophy Documentation Center (The American Philosophical Association Centennial Series) Presidential Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 1981 - 1990, pp. 139-143: Biography: Adolf Grünbaum
  3. ^ A b Adolf Grünbaum: The basics of psychoanalysis. A philosophical criticism. Reclam, Stuttgart 1988, p. 469.
  4. ^ Pitt Philosophy Professor Adolf Grünbaum Is Honored by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In: Pitt Chronicle . September 23, 2013, accessed November 18, 2018 .
  5. ^ Gary L. Hardcastle: Adolf Grünbaum, Collected Works Volume 1: Scientific Rationality, the Human Condition, and 20th Century Cosmologies. In: Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews . November 14, 2014, accessed on November 18, 2018 (English, review).
personal data
SURNAME Grünbaum, Adolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American philosopher and science theorist
DATE OF BIRTH May 15, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne , Germany
DATE OF DEATH 15th November 2018