-
John Stuart Mill (5/20/1806 - 5/7/1873)
The son of English philosopher James Mill, John Stuart Mill was expected to carry on the philosophical tradition of his father. John Stuart Mill was known as the greatest British philosopher, although he was mostly a logician. A classical liberalist and utilitarianist, he felt one should maximize their own happiness and well-being. He supported compulsory education of children, the abolition of slavery and women’s rights, publishing “The Subjection of Women” in 1869. -
John Tyndall (8/2/1820 - 12/4/1893)
As a philosopher, Tyndall emphasized the separation of science and religion and was accused of atheism. More famous as an Irish physicist, he is mostly known for his studies in diamagnetism, infrared radiation and the physical properties of air. In the Alps, Tyndall studied glaciers, participating in mountaineering expeditions. Tyndall was a professor of physics at the Royal Institute of Great Britain in London and published over a dozen scientific books. -
Friedrich Engels (11/20/1820 - 8/5/1895)
Born as the eldest child of a wealthy textile-mill German Protestant family, Engels' father wanted him to work in business. A friend of Vladimir Lenin and mentor to Karl Marx, he was ultimately deported from Prussia and persecuted for his left-wing beliefs, which were considered atheist and anti-capitalist. He published “The Condition of the Working Class in England” in 1845 and published the “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State” in 1884. -
Carl Gustav Hempel (1/8/1905 - 11/9/1997)
Hempel, a German philosopher, fled the Nazi regime first to Belgium and then to the U.S. With Hans Reichenbach, he helped transition philosophical thought from “logical positivism” to “logical empiricism” in the 1930s & 1940s. He also developed the standard deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation. He is famous for the raven paradox, which briefly states that since all ravens are black, if something is not black, it is not a raven.
