Hans Reichenbach (born 1891 in Hamburg, Germany; died 1953 in Los Angeles, California USA) was a leading philosopher of science, educator and proponent of logical positivism.

Life and work

Reichenbach is best know for having been a founder of the Berlin circle and for his ideas on logical positivism (or neopositivism, or logical empiricism). He studied physics, mathematics and philosophy at various universities, including those of Berlin, Erlangen, Göttingen and Munich. Among his teachers were Ernst Cassirer, David Hilbert, Max Planck, Max Born and Albert Einstein.

Reichenbach received a degree in philosophy from the University of Erlangen in 1915 and his dissertation on the theory of probability was published in 1916. After attending Albert Einstein's lectures on the theory of relativity in Berlin from 1917 to 1920, Reichenbach chose the theory as the starting point for his philosophical research.

In 1920 he published his first book on the philosophical implications of the theory of relativity, The Theory of Relativity and A Priori Knowledge, in which he criticized the Kantian theory of synthetic a priori. Following this, he published Axiomatization of the Theory of Relativity (1924), From Copernicus to Einstein (1927) and The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928), the last stating the logical positivist view on the theory in question.

While a professor of philosophy of physics, he gained notice for his methods of teaching. Notably, he was known to be 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 the Berlin Circle (German: Die Gesellschaft für empirische Philosophie; English: "Society for Empirical Philosophy") was founded. Among its members were Carl Gustav Hempel, Richard von Mises, David Hilbert and Kurt Grelling. In 1930 he and Rudolf Carnap undertook the editorship of the journal Erkenntnis ("Knowledge").

In 1933, the year in which Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Reichenbach emigrated to Turkey, where he became chief of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Istanbul. While in Turkey he introduced interdisciplinary seminars and courses on scientific subjects, and in 1935 he published The Theory of Probability.

In 1938 he decided to move to the United States, where he was offered a professorship at the University of California, Los Angeles. Reichenbach's work on the philosophical foundations of quantum mechanics was published in 1944, and afterwards he published two popular books entitled Elements of Symbolic Logic and The Rise of Scientific Philosophy.

He died on April 9, 1953 in Los Angeles while working on problems of the philosophy of time. This work originated The Direction of Time, a book posthumously published.

Selected publications

• Der Begriff der Wahrscheinlichkeit fur die mathematische Darstellung der Wirklichkeit, dissertation, Erlangen, 1915.
• The theory of relativity and a priori knowledge, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965.
• Bericht uber eine Axiomatik der Einsteinschen Raum-Zeit-Lehre, in: Phys. Zeitschr., 1922.
• The present state of the discussion on relativity, in: Modern philosophy of science - selected essays by Hans Reichenbach. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; New York: Humanities press, 1959.
• Axiomatization of the theory of relativity, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.
• The theory of motion according to Newton, Leibniz, and Huyghens, in: Modern philosophy of science - selected essays by Hans Reichenbach. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; New York: Humanities press, 1959.
• Die Kausal-strukture der Welt und der Unterschied von Vergangenheit und Zukunft, in: Sitzungsber d. Bayer. Akad. d. Wiss., math-naturwiss.
• From Copernicus to Einstein, New York : Alliance book corp., 1942.
• The philosophy of space and time, New York : Dover Publications, 1958.
• Atom and cosmos; the world of modern physics, London : G. Allen & Unwin, ltd., 1932.
• Aims and methods of modern philosophy of nature, in: Modern philosophy of science - selected essays. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1959.
• The theory of probability, an inquiry into the logical and mathematical foundations of the calculus of probability, Berkeley : University of California Press, 1948.
• Experience and prediction: an analysis of the foundations and the structure of knowledge, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Philosophic foundations of quantum mechanics, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California press.
• Elements of symbolic logic, New York, Macmillan.
• Philosophy and physics, Faculty research lectures, 1946, Berkeley, University of California Press.
• The philosophical significance of the theory of relativity, in: Albert Einstein - philosopher-scientist, editted by P. A. Schillp. Evanston: The Library of Living Philosophers.
• The rise of scientific philosophy, Berkeley: University of California Press.
• The direction of time, Berkeley: University of California Press.

References

• A. Grünbaum, Philosophical Problems of Space and Time (New York, 1963), Chapter 3.
• C. G. Hempel, Hans Reichenbach remembered, Erkenntnis 35 (1-3) (1991), 5-10.
• W. C. Salmon, The philosophy of Hans Reichenbach, Synthese 34 (1) (1977), 5-88.
• W. C. Salmon, Hans Reichenbach's vindication of induction, Erkenntnis 35 (1-3) (1991), 99-122.

External links

• Reichenbach at The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive [1]
• Reichenbach at The Mathematichs Genealogy Project [2]