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Ernest Nagel 1901-1985

By dara.shirley

  • Birth

    Ernest Nagel was born in the Austro Hungarian Empire in 1901 and at 10 years old immigrated to the United States with his family. Nagel is known for his work in bridging philosophy and science together through his various works in his life. Attached is a video on Nagel's reduction theory which is his way or process of explaining how multiple theories relate to each other and can be reduced into the same theory.

  • Successful works

    In 1934, Nagel along with his former teacher, Morris Cohen, at the City College of New York published "An Introduction to Logic and the Scientific Method". It was one of the first books to establish the scientific method in a refined way that layed out the importance of developing hypotheses and using observations through experimentation. The book is one of the most successful works on describing the scientific method.

  • Important Works

    Ernest Nagels most prominent work of his life was his examination of multiple sciences and the structure of them titled "The Structure of Science". In it, he cross examines various fields of sciences and introduces his theory of reduction as well as bridge the natural sciences with social science. It is considered to be one of the most important works in the philosophy of science.

  • Death

    Nagel died at the age of 83 in New York on September 22, 1985. His lifes work consisted of over 10 published books and his tenure as a professor at Columbia University lasted from 1931 to 1970 with the exception of one year where he was a professor at Rockefeller University from 1966-1967. He is considered to be a founder on the field of philosophy of science.