Oxford professor, Daniel Robinson, observes that philosophy deals with three problems: the problem of knowledge (epistemology and metaphysics), the problem of conduct (ethics and moral philosophy), and the problem of governance (political science and law) I have capsuled brief descriptions of many philosophers with links to longer articles on their thinking. I will also try […]
1889-1976 Heidegger, Martin German philosopher counted among the main exponents of existentialism. His 1927 Being and Time determined the course of 20th-century philosophy on the European continent and exerted an enormous influence on virtually every other humanistic discipline, including literary criticism, hermeneutics, psychology, and theology. He later turned away from his earlier work toward view
1902-1994 Popper, Karl Austrian-born British philosopher of natural and social science who subscribed to anti-determinist metaphysics, believing that knowledge evolves from experience of the mind. Popper’s rejected the inductive method in the empirical sciences and argued instead that hypotheses are deductively validated by what he called the “falsifiability criterion.”
1903-1969 Adorno, Theodor W. German philosopher and social commentator, who along with Henry Marcuse and Max Horkheimer developed Critical Theory, a broad-based Marxist-oriented approach to the study of society. In Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), Horkheimer and Adorno argued that the celebration of reason by thinkers of the 18th-century Enlightenment had led to the development of
1905-1997 Hempel, Carl German writer and philosopher. He was a major figure in logical empiricism, a 20th-century movement in the philosophy of science. He is especially well known for his articulation of the deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation.
1906-1978 GÖdel, Kurt Austrian-born mathematician, logician, and philosopher whose famous incompleteness theorem states that within any axiomatic mathematical system there are propositions that cannot be proved or disproved on the basis of the axioms within that system; thus, such a system cannot be simultaneously complete and consistent.
1908-2000 Quine, Willard van Orman American logician and philosopher produced highly original and important work in several areas of philosophy, including logic, ontology, epistemology, and the philosophy of language.
1912-1954 Turing, Alan British mathematician and logician, who made major contributions to mathematics, cryptanalysis, logic, philosophy, and mathematical biology and also to the new areas later named computer science, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and artificial life.
1922-1996 Kuhn, Thomas American historian and philosopher of science noted for The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), in which he argued that scientific research is defined by “paradigms,” that consist of formal theories, classic experiments, and trusted methods. Scientists typically accept a prevailing paradigm and try to extend its scope by refining theories, explaining puzzling
1930-2004 Derrida, Jacques French philosopher whose critique of Western philosophy and analyses of the nature of language, writing, and meaning were highly controversial yet immensely influential in much of the intellectual world in the late 20th century.