Hans Reichenbach
Hans Reichenbach was a leading philosopher of science, educator and proponent of logical positivism.
Quotations
...the order of betweenness does not depend on mutual distances... betweenness is purely a relational order.
Once a definition of congruence is given, the choice of geometry is no longer in our hands; rather, the geometry is now an empirical fact.
This fact... proves that space measurements are reducible to time measurements. Time is therefore logically prior to space.
...the differential element of non-Euclidean spaces is Euclidean. This fact, however, is analogous to the relations between a straight line and a curve, and cannot lead to an epistemological priority of Euclidean geometry, in contrast to the views of certain authors.
Visual forms are not perceived differently from colors or brightness. They are sense qualities, and the visual character of geometry consists in these sense qualities.
...the mathematician uses an indirect definition of congruence, making use of the fact that the axiom of parallels together with an additional condition can replace the definition of congruence.
More Quotes >>
Encyclopedia
Hans Reichenbach was a leading philosopher of science, educator and proponent of logical positivism.
Life and work
Reichenbach is best known for founding the Berlin circle and for his logical positivism .
After completing the secondary school in
Hamburg, he studied civil engineering at the Technische Hochschule in
Stuttgart, and
physics,
mathematics and
philosophy at various universities, including
Berlin,
Erlangen,
Göttingen and
Munich. Among his teachers were Ernst Cassirer,
David Hilbert,
Max Planck,
Max Born and
Arnold Sommerfeld. Reichenbach was active in youth movements and student organizations, and published articles about the university reform, the freedom of research, and against anti-Semitic infiltrations in student organizations.
Reichenbach received a degree in
philosophy from the
University of Erlangen in 1915 and his dissertation on the theory of probability, supervised by Paul Hensel and
Emmy Noether, was published in 1916. Reichenbach served during
World War I on the Russian front, in the German army radio troops. In 1917 he was removed from active duty, due to an illness, and returned in
Berlin. While working as a physicist and engineer, Reichenbach attended
Albert Einstein's lectures on the
theory of relativity in
Berlin from 1917 to 1920.
In 1920 Reichenbach began teaching at the Technische Hochschule at
Stuttgart as
Privatdozent. In the same year, he published his first book on the philosophical implications of the
theory of relativity,
The Theory of Relativity and A Priori Knowledge, which criticized the
Kantian notion of synthetic a priori. He subsequently published
Axiomatization of the Theory of Relativity ,
From Copernicus to Einstein and
The Philosophy of Space and Time , the last stating the logical positivist view on the theory of relativity.
In 1926, with the help of
Albert Einstein,
Max Planck and
Max von Laue, Reichenbach became assistant professor in the physics department of Berlin University.
He gained notice for his methods of teaching. Specifically, he was easily approached and his courses were open to discussion and debate. This was highly unusual at the time, although the practice is nowadays a common one.
In 1928, he founded the Berlin Circle . Among its members were Carl Gustav Hempel,
Richard von Mises,
David Hilbert and Kurt Grelling. In 1930 he and
Rudolf Carnap began editing the journal
Erkenntnis .
In 1933, when
Adolf Hitler became
Chancellor of Germany, Reichenbach emigrated to
Turkey, where he headed the Department of Philosophy at the
University of Istanbul. He introduced interdisciplinary seminars and courses on scientific subjects, and in 1935 he published
The Theory of Probability.
In 1938, with the help of Charles Morris, he moved to the
United States to take up a professorship at the
University of California, Los Angeles. His work on the philosophical foundations of
quantum mechanics was published in 1944, followed by
Elements of Symbolic Logic and
The Rise of Scientific Philosophy.
Hilary Putnam may have been his most prominent student. He helped establish UCLA as a leading philosophy department in the US in the post-war period.
He died on April 9, 1953 in Los Angeles while working on problems in the philosophy of time and on the nature of scientific laws. This work resulted in two books published posthumously:
The Direction of Time and
Nomological Statements and Admissible Operations.
Selected publications
- 1916. Der Begriff der Wahrscheinlichkeit für die mathematische Darstellung der Wirklichkeit. Ph.D. dissertation, Erlangen.
- 1920. Relativitätstheorie und Erkenntnis apriori. English translation: 1965. The theory of relativity and a priori knowledge. University of California Press.
- 1922. "Der gegenwärtige Stand der Relativitätsdiskussion." English translation: "The present state of the discussion on relativity" in Reichenbach .
- 1924. Axiomatik der relativistischen Raum-Zeit-Lehre. English translation: 1969. Axiomatization of the theory of relativity. University of California Press.
- 1924. "Die Bewegungslehre bei Newton, Leibniz und Huyghens." English translation: "The theory of motion according to Newton, Leibniz, and Huyghens" in Reichenbach .
- 1927. Von Kopernikus bis Einstein. Der Wandel unseres Weltbildes. English translation: 1942, From Copernicus to Einstein. Alliance Book Co.
- 1928. Philosophie der Raum-Zeit-Lehre. English translation: Maria Reichenbach, 1957, The Philosophy of Space and Time. Dover. ISBN 0486604438
- 1930. Atom und Kosmos. Das physikalische Weltbild der Gegenwart. English translation: 1932, Atom and cosmos: the world of modern physics. G. Allen & Unwin, ltd.
- 1931. "Ziele und Wege der heutigen Naturphilosophie." English translation: "Aims and methods of modern philosophy of nature" in Reichenbach .
- 1935. Wahrscheinlichkeitslehre : eine Untersuchung über die logischen und mathematischen Grundlagen der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung. English translation: 1948, The theory of probability, an inquiry into the logical and mathematical foundations of the calculus of probability. University of California Press.
- 1938. Experience and prediction: an analysis of the foundations and the structure of knowledge. University of Chicago Press.
- 1942. From Copernicus to Einstein Dover 1980: ISBN 0486239403
- 1944. Philosophic Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. University of California Press. Dover 1998: ISBN 0486404595
- 1947. Elements of Symbolic Logic. Macmillan Co. Dover 1980: ISBN 0486240045
- 1948. "Philosophy and physics" in Faculty research lectures, 1946. Univ. of California Press.
- 1949. "The philosophical significance of the theory of relativity" in Schilpp, P. A., ed., Albert Einstein: philosopher-scientist. Evanston : The Library of Living Philosophers.
- 1951. The rise of scientific philosophy. University of California Press.
- 1954. Nomological statements and admissible operations. North Holland.
- 1956. The Direction of Time. University of California Press. Dover 1971: ISBN 0486409260
- 1959. Modern philosophy of science: Selected essays by Hans Reichenbach. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Greenwood Press 1981: ISBN 0313232741
- 1978. Selected writings, 1909-1953: with a selection of biographical and autobiographical sketches . Dordrecht: Reidel. Springer paperback vol 1: ISBN 9027702926
- 1979. Hans Reichenbach, logical empiricist . Dordrecht : Reidel.
- 1991. Erkenntnis Orientated: A Centennial volume for Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach. Kluwer. Springer 2003: ISBN 0792314085
- 1991. Logic, language, and the structure of scientific theories : proceedings of the Carnap-Reichenbach centennial, University of Konstanz, 21-24 May 1991. University of Pittsburgh Press.
References
- Grünbaum, A., 1963, Philosophical Problems of Space and Time. Chpt. 3.
- Carl Hempel, 1991, Hans Reichenbach remembered, Erkenntnis 35: 5-10.
- Wesley Salmon, 1977, "The philosophy of Hans Reichenbach," Synthese 34: 5-88.
- ------, 1991, "Hans Reichenbach's vindication of induction," Erkenntnis 35: 99-122.
External links
- The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: by Mauro Murzi.
- The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "" by Frank Artzenius.
