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Coming to America
Ernest Nagel was born on November 16, 1901 in what is now Prague and immigrated to New York city when he was ten. -
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Becoming a doctor
Nagel started his academic career at the City College of New York where he earned a Bachelors in science. He then moved onto Columbia University to receive his doctorate in pursuit of the philosophy of science. -
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His stance
Nagel was an advocate of logical realism, something his teacher Morris Cohen influenced. He held that the principals of logic represent the universal and eternal traits of nature. Later on, Ernest adapted the teachings of Wittgenstein and European logical positivist to the naturalism of the American pragmatist. Contextualistic analysis was “a method for interpreting ‘the meaning of theoretical constructions in terms of their manifest functions in identifiable context.’”. -
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Professor Nagel
After earning his doctorate he went on to teach philosophy. Minus his first year, which he taught at the City College of New York and a year at Rockefeller University, Nagel taught his whole career at Columbia University. In 1967 he earned the most distinguished academic rank, University Professor. -
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On the side
Aside from works as a teacher, he also was the an editor of the "Journal of Philosophy"(1939-1956) as well as six years at the "Journal of Symbolic Logic"(1940-1941) A couple years prior (1936) he actually made a contribution to the "Journal of Philosophy" when he introduced the works of European philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and Rudolf Carnap in his essay "Impressions and Appraisals of Analytic Philosophy in Europe." -
Works Cited
Ernest Nagel S. Satkar and J. Pfeifer, eds. 2006. The Philosophy of Science: An Encyclopedia, v. 2, pp. 491-496. New York: Routledge. Collected Works of Patrick Suppes.