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Hans Reichenbach 1891-1953
Reichenbach was born in Hamburg, Germany on September 26, 1891. From 1926-1933 he was a professor of philosophy at Berlin, 1933-1938 in Istanbul and from 1938 on he was a professor in Los Angeles, California. Reichenbach was one of the founders of the Berlin Circle and an associate of the Vienna Circle. He helped to found the journal Erkenntnis (Perception). Reichenbach is best known for his 1935 Theory of Probability and his 1928 Philosophy of Space and Time (Reichenbach, 2011). -
The Berlin Circle
A group of philosophers and scientists gathered around Hans Reichenbach in the late 1920s. Its members included K. Grelling, C.G. Hempel, D. Hilbert and R. von Mises. The called themselves the ‘Society for Empirical Philosophy”. The Circle organized several congresses concerning scientific philosophy beginning in 1929 in Prague. Their focus was on analyzing contemporary physics, specifically the theory of relativity. -
Logical Positivism
Logical positivism is a philosophical movement that started in Vienna during the 1920s. The followers of logical positivism believed that the basis of knowledge resides with verification or confirmation instead of personal experience. They placed a definitive divider between analyzing science and understanding science through history or psychology (which were more empirical disciplines).
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Hans Reichenbach’s Philosophy of Space and Time
In his work, Philosophy of Space and Time, Reichenbach discusses how space, time and our view of both. He examines the idea of a space-time coordinate system and the implications of such a system. The work is also a discussion on geometry, both mathematical and physical. The principle of relativity of geometry, according to Reichenbach’s work, is that all geometrical systems are equivalent.
