Gustav Bergmann
Gustav Bergmann ( born May 4, 1906 in Vienna, † April 21, 1987 in Iowa City, United States) was an Austrian philosopher of science and philosopher.
Life
Gustav Bergmann enrolled after high school to study mathematics and philosophy at the University of Vienna. Even before the completion of the PhD in mathematics in 1928 on the subject of contributions to the metric differential geometry he was introduced by his former classmates Kurt Gödel in the Vienna Circle, where Bergmann was particularly influenced by Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap and Friedrich Waismann. 1929-1930 taught Bergmann mathematics at the Vienna high school and went into the subsequent years in Berlin, where he worked as an assistant to Albert Einstein.
Due to the constant discrimination against Jews at German universities increasingly discouraged, Bergmann went back to Vienna, where he studied law and with the Dr. jur. completed. He then took a job in a law firm.
After the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938 Bergmann emigrated with the help of Albert Einstein and through financial support of the Vienna Circle member Otto Neurath in the United States.
In 1939 he received a post as assistant to the psychologist Kurt Lewin at the University of Iowa. Bergmann worked here on a study of mathematical representation of Lewin 's psychological field theory. 1940 Bergmann was then assistant professor, from 1950, professor of philosophy and psychology at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Through his published in 1944 in the Journal of Symbolic Logic essay Pure Semantics, Sentences, and Propositions, which took a critical look at Carnap's semantic theory and the Carnap with the retort Hall and Bergmann on Semantics responded ( Mind 54, 214, 1945), miner began move away from the circle of Logical Empiricism: the title of Bergmann's rejoinder, A positivistic metaphysics of Consciousness ( Mind 54, 215, 1945), expresses that Bergmann now to went over to look at Carnap's avowedly antimetaphysiche position of his hand as a form of reprehensible metaphysics.
Especially in the 1960's and 1970 's had Bergmann a large influence on contemporary philosophy, especially in the areas of ontology and epistemology, so that the Philosophy Department at the University of Iowa became one of the leading universities in the United States. This meant that he attracted excellent students not only from the United States ( Laird Addis, Herbert Hochberg, Reinhardt Grossmann, L. Nathan Oaklander and others) from his or her own philosophical school was formed, now sometimes referred to as " Iowa School" or as the " Iowa realists" is called.
1967 Gustav Bergmann was elected president of the American Philosophical Association ( Western Division ). He was honored with the Carver Chair of the College of Liberal Art from the University of Iowa in 1972. Bergmann 1974 emeritus and died 1987.
In contemporary analytic ontology -based miner is now considered a classic. On his 100th birthday found international congresses held in Iowa City, Paris and Rome. During the congress in Paris in 2006, the International Gustav Bergmann Society was founded.
Writings
- The Philosophy of Science. Wisconsin in 1966.
- The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism. Wisconsin in 1954.
- Meaning and Existence. Wisconsin in 1959.
- Logic and Reality. Wisconsin in 1964.
- Realism: A Critique of Brentano and Meinong. Wisconsin in 1967.
- William Heald, Edwin B. Allaire (ed.): New Foundations of Ontology. Wisconsin in 1992.
- Erwin Tegtmeier (ed.): Collected Papers. 3 volumes. ontos, Heusenstamm. Volume I: Selected Papers 1, 2003, Volume II: . Selected Papers 2 2004 Volume III. Realism. , 2004.