Patrick Suppes

Patrick Colonel Suppes

Full name	Patrick Colonel Suppes
Born	17 March 1922 (1922-03-17) (age 89) Tulsa, Oklahoma
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
Main interests	Philosophy of science Foundations of Quantum mechanics Foundations of Neuroscience Foundations of Probability and measurement Theories of Learning
Influenced by Aristotle · Hume  · Ernest Nagel · Tarski

Patrick Colonel Suppes (b. 1922, Tulsa, OK) is an American philosopher who has made significant contributions to philosophy of science, the theory of measurement, the foundations of quantum mechanics, decision theory, psychology, and educational technology. He is currently the Lucie Stern Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the Stanford University School of Education.

Early life and career

Suppes was born on March 17, 1922, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He grew up as an only child, later with a half brother George who was born in 1943 after Patrick had entered the army. His grandfather, C.E. Suppes, had moved to Oklahoma from Ohio. Suppes' father and grandfather were independent oil men. His mother died when he was a young boy. He was raised by his stepmother, who married his father before he was six years old. His parents did not have much formal education.^[1]

Suppes began college at the University of Oklahoma in 1939, but transferred to the University of Chicago in his second year, citing boredom with intellectual life in Oklahoma as his primary motivation. In his third year, at the insistence of his family, Suppes attended the University of Tulsa, majoring in physics, before entering the Army Reserves in 1942. In 1943 he returned to the University of Chicago and graduated with a B.S. in meteorology, and was stationed shortly thereafter at the Solomon Islands to serve during World War II.^[1]

He was discharged from the Army Air Force in 1946.^[1]

In January 1947, he entered Columbia University as a graduate student in philosophy as a student of Ernest Nagel and received a PhD in 1950.^[1]

In 1952 he went to Stanford University, and from 1959 to 1992 he was the director of the Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences (IMSSS). (He was later to become the Lucie Stern Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Stanford)

Computer Aided Learning

In the 1960s, Suppes and Richard C. Atkinson (the future president of the University of California) conducted experiments in using computers to teach math and reading to schoolchildren in the Palo Alto area. Stanford's Education Program for Gifted Youth and Computer Curriculum Corporation (CCC, now named Pearson Education Technologies) is an indirect descendant of those early experiments.^[2] At Stanford, Suppes was instrumental in encouraging the development of high-technology companies that were springing up in the field of educational software up into the 1990s, (such as Bien Logic).

One computer used in Suppes and Atkinson's Computer-assisted Instruction (CAI) experiments was the specialized IBM 1500 Instructional System. Seeded by a research grant in 1964 from the U.S. Department of Education to the Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences at Stanford University, the IBM 1500 CAI system was initially prototyped at the Brentwood Elementary School (Ravenswood City School District) in East Palo Alto, California by Suppes. The students first used the system in 1966.^[3][4]

Decision Theory

During the 1950s and 1960s Suppes collaborated with Donald Davidson on decision theory, at Stanford. Their initial work followed lines of thinking which had been anticipated in 1926 by Frank P. Ramsey, and involved experimental testing of their theories, culminating in the 1957 monograph Decision Making: An Experimental Approach. Such commentators as Kirk Ludwig trace the origins of Davidson's theory of radical interpretation to his formative work with Suppes.^[5]

Awards and honors

• In 1965 he was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences for his work on mathematical psychology.
• On November 13, 1990, President George H. W. Bush awarded Suppes with the prestigious President's National Medal of Science for work in Behavioral and Social Science.^[6]
• In 1994 he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. He is the laureate of the 2003 Lakatos Award for his contributions to the philosophy of science.
• He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.^[7]

Bibliography

• 1972 (1960). Axiomatic Set Theory. Dover. Spanish translation by H. A. Castillo, Teoria Axiomatica de Conjuntos.
• 1984. Probabilistic Metaphysics, Blackwell Pub; Reprint edition (October 1986)
• 1994. Patrick Suppes: Scientific Philosopher, P. Humphreys, ed. Synthese Library (Springer-Verlag).
  • Vol. 1: Probability and Probabilistic Causality.
  • Vol. 2: Philosophy of Physics, Theory Structure and Measurement, and Action Theory.
• 1999 (1957). Introduction to Logic. Dover. Spanish translation by G. A. Carrasco, Introduccion a la logica simbolica. Chinese translation by Fu-Tseng Liu.
• 2001. Representation and Invariance of Scientific Structures. CSLI (distributed by the University of Chicago Press).
• 2002 (1964) (with Shirley Hill). A First Course in Mathematical Logic. Dover. Spanish translation.
• 2007 (1972) (with R. Duncan Luce, David Krantz, and Amos Tversky). Foundations of Measurement, Vols. 1-3. Dover.

See also

• American philosophy
• Richard C. Atkinson
• Nancy Cartwright (philosopher)
• Frederick Suppe
• List of American philosophers

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} Cf. Suppes autobiography
2. ^ Kulik, James A., "School Mathematics and Science Programs Benefit From Instructional Technology", NSF Info Brief, NSF 03-301, November 2002.
3. ^ Suppes, Patrick, "Computer-assisted Instruction at Stanford", Technical Report No.174, May 19, 1971, Psychology and Education series, Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences, Stanford University
4. ^ Hunka, Stephen; Buck, George (1996) "The Rise and Fall of CAI at the University of Alberta's Faculty of Education". Canadian Journal of Educational Communication, 21(2), 153-170. (also: full journal issue)
5. ^ http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam033/2002035082.pdf
6. ^ National Medal of Science page (archived copy 2007) Citation: "For his broad efforts to deepen the theoretical and empirical understanding of four major areas: the measurement of subjective probability and utility in uncertain situations; the development and testing of general learning theory; the semantics and syntax of natural language; and the use of interactive computer programs for instruction."
7. ^ "Gruppe 3: Idéfag" (in Norwegian). Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. http://www.dnva.no/c26849/artikkel/vis.html?tid=40104. Retrieved 16 January 2011. 

• Suppes's autobiography and complete subject bibliography - Stanford University
• Suppes's papers (pdf), and chronological bibliography. - Stanford University

External links

• Suppes on Computer Chronicles TV program. "Computer Chronicles: Computers In Education (1984): An early look at how computers are being used in formal education. Guests include Professor Patrick Suppes of Stanford University and Glenn Kleiman, author of 'Brave New Schools'. Includes demonstrations of the LOGO and BASIC languages. Guest host is Herb Lechner of SRI International."

Educational offices
Preceded by Robert L. Ebel	President of the American Educational Research Association 1973-1974	Succeeded by Robert Thorndike

Persondata
Name	Suppes, Patrick
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	March 17, 1922
Place of birth	Tulsa, Oklahoma
Date of death
Place of death