Ernest Nagel

Ernest Nagel ( November 16, 1901 in Nové Mesto nad Váhom, Austria - Hungary, now Slovakia, † 20 September 1985 in New York City ) was an American philosopher and philosopher of science.

Nail came in 1911 in the United States and in 1919 U.S. citizen. He studied at the City College of New York (Bachelor 1923) and at Columbia University, where he in 1925 made ​​his master's degree in philosophy and a doctorate in 1931. He thereafter remained at Columbia University; he was there from 1931 Instructor, since 1937 associate professor and full professor from 1939. In 1970 he went into retirement.

Nail spiritual mentors were especially John Dewey ( his teacher at Columbia University), and Morris R. Cohen. As a philosopher of science, he sought connections to other disciplines. It was known his seminar at Columbia University on the methodology of the social sciences with Paul Lazarsfeld. He emerged as a critic of Rudolf Carnap and wrote a well-known popular science book by James R. Newman on the Gödel's incompleteness theorem.

Works

• An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method (along with Morris R. Cohen, 1934)
• Sovereign Reason (1954, essays )
• Logic without Metaphysics (1956, essays )
• Godel 's Proof (along with James R. Newman, 1958)
• The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation ( 1961)
• Observation and Theory in Science (together with others, 1971).
• Teleology Revisited and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science ( 1979)