Ernest Nagel

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Ernest Nagel (born November 16, 1901 in Nové Mesto nad Váhom , Austria-Hungary , † September 20, 1985 in New York City ) was a Slovak-American philosopher and scientific theorist .

Life

Nagel came to the United States in 1911 and became a US citizen in 1919. He studied at City College of New York (Bachelor in 1923) and at Columbia University , where he made his master's degree in philosophy in 1925 and received his doctorate in 1931. He then stayed at Columbia University; he was there from 1931 instructor , from 1937 associate professor and from 1939 full professor . In 1954 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , 1962 to the American Philosophical Society , 1963 to the British Academy and 1978 to the National Academy of Sciences . In 1970 he retired.

Nagel's spiritual mentors were mainly John Dewey (his teacher at Columbia University) and Morris R. Cohen . As a philosopher of science, he was looking for connections to other disciplines. Well known was his seminar at Columbia University on methodology of the social sciences with Paul Lazarsfeld . He emerged as a critic of Rudolf Carnap and wrote a well-known popular science book with James R. Newman on Gödel's incompleteness theorem .

Publications (selection)

  • An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method (with Morris R. Cohen, 1934)
  • Principles of the Theory of Probability (= International Encyclopedia of Unified Science . Volume 1, No. 6). University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1938; 12th edition 1969.
  • Sovereign Reason (1954, essays)
  • Logic without Metaphysics (1956, articles)
  • Gödel's Proof (with James R. Newman, 1958)
  • The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation (1961)
  • Observation and Theory in Science (together with others, 1971).
  • Teleology Revisited and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science (1979)

literature

  • Patrick Suppes: Ernest Nagel . Ed .: National Academy of Sciences (=  Biographical Memoirs . Volume 65 ). National Academy Press, Washington DC 1994, ISBN 0-309-05037-5 , pp. 257-274 ( nasonline.org [PDF]).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Nagel, Ernest
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Slovak-American philosopher and science theorist
DATE OF BIRTH November 16, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Nové Mesto nad Váhom , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH 20th September 1985
Place of death New York City