News

Springer has published the edited volume on

Ernest Nagel: Philosophy of Science and the Fight for Clarity
(edited by Matthias Neuber and Ádám Tamás Tuboly)

This volume is dedicated to the life and work of Ernest Nagel (1901-1985) counted among the influential twentieth-century philosophers of science. Forgotten by the history of philosophy of science community in recent years, this volume introduces Nagel’s philosophy to a new generation of readers and highlights the merits and originality of his works.

Best known in the history of philosophy as a major American representative of logical empiricism with some pragmatist and naturalist leanings, Nagel’s interests and activities went beyond these limits. His career was marked with a strong and determined intention of harmonizing the European scientific worldview of logical empiricism and American naturalism/pragmatism. His most famous and systematic treatise on, The Structure of Science, appeared just one year before Thomas Kuhn’s even more renowned, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

As a reflection of Nagel’s interdisciplinary work, the contributing authors’ articles are connected both historically and systematically. The volume will appeal to students mainly at the graduate level and academic scholars. Since the volume treats historical, philosophical, physical, social and general scientific questions, it will be of interest to historians and philosophers of science, epistemologists, social scientists, and anyone interested in the history of analytic philosophy and twentieth-century intellectual history.

Table of contents:

Matthias Neuber: Introduction: Ernest Nagel and the Making of Philosophy of Science a Profession

Yvonne Nagel: Ernest Nagel: A Biography

Sander Verhaegh: Nagel’s Philosophical Development

Fons Dewulf: The Emergence of Scientific Explanation as a Problem for Philosophy of Science: Aristotle, Nagel, and Hempel

Thomas Mormann: From Cautious Enthusiasm to Profound Disenchantment: Ernest Nagel and Carnapian Logical Empiricism

Raphael Riel: Nagel on Idealization in Science

David Atkinson (et al.): Putting the Cart Before the Horse: Ernest Nagel and the Uncertainty Principle

Marij Strien: Ernest Nagel on Determinism as a Guiding Principle and Its Compatibility with Quantum Mechanics

Maria Carla Galavotti: On Nagel’s Truth-Frequency Theory of Probability

Bohang Chen: On Ernest Nagel on Teleology in Biology

Matthias Neuber: Nagel on the Methodology of the Social Sciences

Eric Schliesser: Philosophy of Science as First Philosophy: The Liberal Polemics of Ernest Nagel

Matthias Neuber (et al.): Interview with Ernest Nagel by Remmel Nunn

Matthias Neuber (et al.): Ernest Nagel’s “The Philosophy of Science” Lecture at the Delaware Seminar

Gábor received the 2021 Craufurd Goodwin Best Article Prize for his article “Michael Polanyi’s Neutral Keynesianism and the First Economics Film, 1933—1945,” published in Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 42(3), 2020. The prize is the annual award of the History of Economics Society for the best article published in the field. Details are available here.

Tamás Demeter's paper on Hume’s epistemic ideal has been published in Belgrade Philosophical Annual.

Tamás Demeter has been offered a visiting research fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Edinburgh, for research on enlightenment methodologies in natural and moral inquiry.

Gergely Kertész is giving a talk on "Resolving the Tension Between Different Approaches to Causation Within a Dynamical Systems Framework" at the conference entitled Alternative Approaches to Causation: Difference-making and Mechanism to be held in Kent between the 28th and 30th of June 2021.