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Hilary Putnam Lifespan
Born in Chicago, Illinois. His father was a writer and translator, an active communist, and a columnist for the Daily Worker, the newspaper of the Communist Party of the United States of America. Hilary Putnam died on March 13 at his home in Arlington, Mass. He was 89. According to his daughter, the cause was metastasized mesothelioma. -
Hilary Putnam's Education
Putnam had an extensive educational history which included earning his PhD from UCLA, teaching at Northwestern University and Harvard, Princeton, and MIT. He was widely recognized and renowned for his expertise in the fields of philosophy and mathematics. While he taught at all of these universities for a particular amount of years, his final teaching years were spent at Harvard. -
Earliest Philosophy Contributions
"The Meaning of Meaning" (1975) was one of Putnam's most early and impactful contributions to the field of philosophy. The work claimed that meanings were not mental images or conceptual constructs, but instead were ideas anchored in external reality. Some of his other important works included: The Role of Language (1983),and "Why there Isn't a Ready-Made World" (1983) -
Most Notable Approaches to Philosophy
Putnam was known to scrutinize and critique his own work just as equally as the other philosophers, both past and present. Also, in the field of epistemology, he was known for the critique of "brain in a vat" thought experiment. This thought experiment provides a strong argument for epistemological skepticism, but Putnam challenged its validity. This was the same year (1983) as two of his important works. -
Putnam's Later and Most Notable Work
Realism with a Human Face (1990), Words and Life (1994), Ethics without Ontology (2004), Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life: Rosenzweig, Buber, Levinas, Wittgenstein (2008), and Philosophy in the Age of Science: Physics, Mathematics, and Skepticism (2012)-attest to this yearning. These writings convey a deep sense of moral commitment that had become as characteristic of Putnam's thinking as his lifelong commitment to objective truth.