Michael Friedman (philosopher)

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Michael Lee Friedman (born April 2, 1947 in Brookline , Massachusetts ) is an American philosopher of science and professor at Stanford University .

Friedman attended Flushing High School in Queens and was a semi-professional musician (clarinet, saxophone, guitar). He first studied music and then philosophy at Queens College, City University of New York with a bachelor's degree in 1968 and received his doctorate in 1973 from Princeton University . There he studied with Carl Gustav Hempel, among others . From 1972 he was an assistant professor at Harvard University and from 1975 at the University of Pennsylvania , where he became an associate professor in 1978. In 1982 he became Associate Professor and 1984 Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago , where he was Research Professor of the Humanities from 1998 to 1994. From 1994 to 2002 he was Ruth N. Hall Professor of Arts and Humanities at Indiana University , where he was Professor of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science and History. From 2000 he was Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University ( Frederick P. Rehmus Family Professor of Humanities ). From 2004 to 2013 he was director of the Patrick Suppes Center for the History and Philosophy of Science in Stanford .

In 1986 he was visiting professor at Harvard (as a George Santayana Fellow), in 1987 in Berkeley, in 1993 at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Bielefeld and in 1994 in Konstanz. From 1988 he was an honorary professor at the University of Western Ontario . In 2010/11 he was a visiting scientist at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin (with a Humboldt Research Prize ).

He deals with the philosophy of science, including that of Immanuel Kant (and his influence and transformation of his ideas in the history of science), logical empiricism ( Rudolf Carnap , Vienna Circle ), the foundations of the theory of relativity (space-time structure) and the logical foundations of Quantum theory. He advocates a post- Kuhn synthesis of the philosophy of science based on the relationship between the history of philosophy and the history of science (from Kant in relation to Newtonian physics to the logical empiricists in relation to modern physics) and using a dynamic, historical conception of nature based on a priori knowledge Kant. He also integrates this into another cultural context.

In 2009 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Athens. In 1997 he became a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Since 1985 he has been on the editorial board of Philosophy of Science (1999 to 2008 Associate Editor). He is one of the editors of Rudolf Carnap's edition of the Open Court Publishing and was the author of The Philosophy of Logical Positivism in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Fonts

  • Foundations of Space-Time Theories. Relativistic Physics and Philosophy of Science, Princeton University Press 1983
  • Kant and the Exact Sciences, Harvard University Press 1992
  • Reconsidering Logical Empirism, Cambridge University Press 1999
  • A parting of the ways: Carnap, Cassirer and Heidegger, Open Court Publ. Company 2000
    • German translation: Carnap, Cassirer, Heidegger - shared ways, Fischer Verlag 2004
  • Dynamics of Reason: The 1999 Kant Lectures at Stanford University, CSLI Publ. 2001
  • Editor, commentator and translator: Kant: Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, Cambridge UP 2004
  • with A. Nordmann (Ed.): The Kantian Legacy in Nineteenth-Century Science, MIT Press 2006
  • Editor with R. Creath: The Cambridge Companion to Carnap, Cambridge University Press, 2007.
    • Therein von Friedman: Introduction: Carnap's Revolution in Philosophy, The Aufbau and the Rejection of Metaphysics
  • Editor with M. Domski and M. Dickson: Discourse on a New Method: Reinvigorating the Marriage of History and Philosophy of Science, Open Court Publ. 2010 (essays on the work of Friedman)
  • Kant's Construction of Nature: A Reading of the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Cambridge University Press, 2013.
  • A Post-Kuhnian Philosophy of Science. Spinoza Lectures. Van Gorcum, 2014.

Some essays:

  • with C. Glymour: If Quanta Had Logic, Journal of Philosophical Logic, Volume 1, 1972, pp. 16-28
  • with John Earman : The nature and status of Newton's law of inertia, Philosophy of Science, Volume 40, 1973, pp. 329-359
  • Explanation and Scientific Understanding, Journal of Philosophy, Volume 71, 1974, pp. 5-19
  • Kant's theory of geometry, The Philosophical Review, Volume 94, 1985, pp. 455-506
  • The metaphysical foundations of Newtonian Science, in R. Butts (Ed.), Kant's Philosophy of Physical Science, Reidel 1986
  • Carnap's Construction reconsidered, Nous, Volume 21, 1987, pp. 531-545
  • The Re-Evaluation of Logical Positivism, Journal of Philosophy, Volume 88, 1991, pp. 505-519
  • Poincaré's Conventionalism and the Logical Positivists, Foundations of Science, Volume 1, 1995/96, pp. 299-314
  • Carnap and Weyl and the Foundations of Geometry and Relativity Theory, Knowledge, Volume 42, 1995, pp. 247-260
  • Objectivity and History, Knowledge, Volume 44, 1996, pp. 379-395
  • with Graciela de Perris: Kant and Hume on Causality, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • Ernst Cassirer, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ John R. Shook (Ed.), The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Philosophy in America, 2016
  2. ^ Partly inspired by a visit by Carl Gustav Hempel to Queens College
personal data
SURNAME Friedman, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Friedman, Michael Lee (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American philosopher of science
DATE OF BIRTH April 2, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Brookline , Massachusetts