Everything about Nicholas Rescher totally explained
Nicholas Rescher (born
July 15,
1928 in
Hagen,
Germany) is an
American philosopher, affiliated for many years with the
University of Pittsburgh, where he's currently University Professor of Philosophy and Chairman of the Center for Philosophy of Science. Born in Germany, he came to the United States at the age of nine.
Career
Rescher obtained his Ph.D. in Philosophy from
Princeton University in 1951, the youngest person—22 at the time—ever to do so in that department
(External Link
) He is among the most prolific of contemporary scholars, having written about 400 articles and 100 books, ranging over many areas of philosophy, over a dozen of which have been translated into other languages.
He was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Prize for Humanistic Scholarship in 1984 and the American Catholic Philosophical Society's Aquinas medal in 2007. He has served as a President of the
American Philosophical Association, American Catholic Philosophy Association, American G. W. Leibniz Society, C. S. Peirce Society, and the American Metaphysical Society. He has held visiting lectureships at Oxford, Constance, Salamanca, Munich, and Marburg, and his work has been recognized by seven honorary degrees from universities on three continents. Rescher serves on the editorial board of
Process Studies, the principal academic journal for both
process philosophy and
theology.
He is currently teaching at the University of Pittsburgh with a status of University Professor.
Ideas
Rescher has written on a wide range of topics, including
logic,
epistemology, the
philosophy of science,
metaphysics, and the
philosophy of value. He is best known as an advocate of
pragmatism and, more recently, of
process philosophy.
Over the course of his six decade research career, Rescher has established himself as a systematic philosopher of the old style, and the author of a system of pragmatic idealism that combines elements of continental
idealism with American
pragmatism. To this end, he:
- Has developed a system of pragmatic idealism, in which the activity of the human mind makes a positive and constitutive contribution to knowledge, and "valid" knowledge contributes to practical success;
- Defends a coherence theory of truth in a manner differing somewhat from that of classical idealism; see for example his exchange in The Philosophy of Brand Blanshard (in the Library of Living Philosophers series);
- Advocates an "erotetic propagation" of science, asserting that scientific inquiry will continue without end because each newly answered question adds a presupposition for at least one more open question to the current body of scientific knowledge.
Apart from this larger program, Rescher has made significant contributions to:
Historical studies on Leibniz, Kant, Charles Peirce, and on the medieval Arabic theory of modal syllogistic and logic.
Logic (the conception autodescriptive systems of many-sided logic);
The theory of knowledge (epistemetrics as a quantitative approach in theoretical epistemology);
The philosophy of science (the theory of a logarithmic returns in scientific effort).
Rescher has also contributed to futuristics, and with Olaf Helmer and Norman Dalkey, invented the Delphi method of forecasting.
Partial bibliography
OUP = Oxford University Press. PUP = Princeton University Press. SUNY Press = State University of New York Press. UPA = University Press of America. UPP = University of Pittsburgh Press.
1964. The Development of Arabic Logic. UPP.
1968. Studies in Arabic Philosophy. UPP.
1977. Methodological Pragmatism: A Systems-Theoretic Approach to the Theory of Knowledge. Basil Blackwell; New York University Press.
1978. Scientific Progress: A Philosophical Essay on the Economics of Research in Natural Science. UPP
1982 (1973). The Coherence Theory of Truth. UPA.
1982 (1969). Introduction to Value Theory. UPA.
1983. Risk: A Philosophical Introduction to the Theory of Risk Evaluation and Management. UPA.
1985. The Strife of Systems: An Essay on the Grounds and Implications of Philosophical Diversity. UPP.
1988. Rationality. OUP.
1989. Cognitive Economy: Economic Perspectives in the Theory of Knowledge. UPP.
1989. A Useful Inheritance: Evolutionary Epistemology in Philosophical Perspective. Rowman & Littlefield.
1990. Human Interests: Reflections on Philosophical Anthropology. Stanford University Press.
1993. Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus. OUP.
A System of Pragmatic Idealism
- 1991. Volume I: Human Knowledge in Idealistic Perspective. PUP.
- 1992. Volume II: The Validity of Values: Human Values in Pragmatic Perspective. PUP.
- 1994. Volume III: Metaphilosophical Inquiries. PUP.
1995. Luck. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
1995. Essays in the History of Philosophy. UK: Aldershot.
1995. Process Metaphysics. SUNY Press.
1996. Instructive Journey: An Autobiographical Essay. UPA.
1998. Complexity: A Philosophical Overview. Transaction Publishers.
1999. Kant and the Reach of Reason. Cambridge University Press.
1999. Realistic Pragmatism: An Introduction to Pragmatic Philosophy. SUNY Press.
1999 (1984). The Limits of Science. UPP.
2000. Nature and Understanding: A Study of the Metaphysics of Science. OUP.
2001. Paradoxes: Their Roots, Range, and Resolution. Open Court Publishing.
2001. Process Philosophy: A Survey of Basic Issues. UPP.
2003. Epistemology: On the Scope and Limits of Knowledge. SUNY Press.
2003. On Leibniz. UPP.
2004. Epistemic Logic. UPP.
2005. Metaphysics: The Key Issues from a Realist Perspective. Prometheus Books.
2005. Reason and Reality: Realism and Idealism in Pragmatic Perspective. Rowman & Littlefield.
2005-2006. Collected Papers in 14 vols. Ontos Verlag.
2006. Epistemetrics. Cambridge University Press.
2006. Conditionals. MIT Press.
2007. Error: On Our Predicament When Things Go Wrong. UPP.
Eponymous concepts
Logic: Rescher quantifier
Non-classical logic: Dienes-Rescher inference engine (also Rescher-Dienes implication); Rescher-Manor consequence relation
Paraconsistent logic: Rescher-Brandom semantics
Temporal logic: Rescher operator
Scientometrics: Rescher's Law of logarithmic returns
Distributive justice: Rescher's effective average measure
Dialectics: Rescher's theory of formal disputationFurther Information
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