Hans Reichenbach

Hans Reichenbach (1891-1953) was a leading philosopher of science, a founder of the Berlin Circle, and a proponent of logical positivism (also known as neopositivism, or logical empiricism).

Career

Reichenbach studied physics, mathematics, and philosophy at Berlin, Erlangen, Gottingen, and Munich universities during the first decade of the 20th century. Among equally prominent philosophers, Reichenbach studied with physicists Max Planck, Max Born, and Albert Einstein. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University at Erlangen in 1915 and his dissertation on the theory of probability was published in 1916. He attended Einstein's Berlin lectures on the theory of relativity between 1917 and 1920. It was then that Reichenbach chose the theory of relativity as the subject for his own philosophical research. He became a professor at Stuttgart Polytechnic in 1920.

In exile from the Nazi regime in Turkey, Reichenbach became chairman of the Department of Philosophy at the University at Istanbul. He modernized the philosophy curriculum by introducing interdisciplinary seminars and courses on scientific subjects. Of his major books, The Theory of Probability was published in 1935 and his Experience and Prediction was published in 1938. In 1938 he took a professorship in philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he introduced European notions of logical positivism.

See also

• Rudolph Carnap

Bibliography

• Reisman, Arnold. “He Replaced Ottoman Theology with Modern Philosophy in Turkey: Hans Reichenbach in Exile from Nazi Rule 1933-1938.” Epistemologia: Italian Journal for the Philosophy of Science 30(1) (2007) June; pgs 77-100