- Herbert Feigl
Herbert Feigl (
December 14 ,1902 –June 1 ,1988 ) was anAustria nphilosopher and a member of theVienna Circle .The son of a weaver, Feigl was born in Reichenberg (Liberec),
Bohemia , and matriculated at theUniversity of Vienna in 1922. He studiedphysics andphilosophy underMoritz Schlick , the founder of theVienna Circle , and received his doctorate in 1927 for the essay "Chance and Law: An Epistemological Analysis of the Roles of Probability and Induction in the Natural Sciences." He published his first book, "Theory and Experience in Physics", in 1929. He became an active member in the Vienna Circle during this time: he was one of the few Circle members (along with Schlick andFriedrich Waismann ) to have extensive conversations withLudwig Wittgenstein andKarl Popper .In 1930, on an International
Rockefeller Scholarship atHarvard University , Feigl met the physicistPercy Williams Bridgman , the philosopherWillard Van Orman Quine , and the psychologistStanley Smith Stevens , all of whom he saw as kindred spirits. In a 1931 paper withAlbert Blumberg , "Logical Positivism : A New European Movement," he argued for logical positivism to be re-named "logical empiricism" based upon certain realist differences between contemporaryphilosophy of science and the olderpositivist movement.In 1931, Feigl married Maria Kaspar and emigrated with her to the United States, settling in
Iowa to take up a position in the philosophy department at theUniversity of Iowa . His son, Eric Otto, was born in 1933. In 1940, he accepted a position as professor of philosophy at theUniversity of Minnesota , where he remained for 31 years. His close professional and personal relationship withWilfrid Sellars produced many different collaborative projects, including the textbook "Readings in Philosophical Analysis" and the journal "Philosophical Studies", which he and Sellars founded in 1949. In 1953, with a grant from the Hill Foundation, he established theMinnesota Center for Philosophy of Science . He was appointed Regents Professor of the University of Minnesota in 1967.He believed that empiricism is the only adequate philosophy for experimental science. Though he became a philosopher instead of a chemist, he never lost the perspective, and the scientific commonsense, of a practical scientist. He was, in the paradigmatic sense, a philosopher of science.Feigl retired in 1971 and died of
cancer on June 1, 1988 inMinneapolis .External links
* Herbert Feigl, [http://ditext.com/feigl/mp/mp.html The "Mental" and the "Physical": The Essay and a Postscript (1967)]
ee also
*
List of Austrian scientists
*List of Austrians
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