Best Selling Books by Philipp Frank

A distinguished mathematician traces the history of science, illustrating philosophy''s ongoing role, explaining technology''s erosion of the rapport between the two fields, and offering suggestions for their reunion. 1962 edition.

Much has been written about Albert Einstein, technical and biographical, but very little remains as valuable as this unique hybrid of a book written by Einstein''s colleague and contemporary. Both rich in personal insights and grounded in a deep knowledge of twentieth-century science, Phillip Frank''s biography anchors the reader with a lucid overview of physics and draws an intimate portrait of the Nobel Prize-winner.

The Law of Causality and its Limits was the principal philosophical work of the physicist turned philosopher, Philipp Frank. Born in Vienna on March 20, 1884, Frank died in Cambridge, Massachusetts on July 21, 1966. He received his doctorate in 1907 at the University of Vienna in theoretical physics, having studied under Ludwig Boltzmann; his sub sequent research in physics and mathematics was represented by more than 60 scientific papers. Moreover his great success as teacher and expositor was recognized throughout the scientific world with publication of his collaborative Die Differentialgleichungen der Mechanik und Physik, with Richard von Mises, in 1925-27. Frank was responsible for the second volume, on physics, and especially noted for his authoritative article on classical Hamiltonian mechanics and optics. Among his earliest papers were those, beginning in 1908, devoted to special relativity, which together with general relativity and physical cosmology occupied him throughout his life. Already in 1907, Frank published his seminal paper ''Kausalgesetz und Erfahrung'' (''Experience and the Law of Causality''), much later collected with a splendid selection of his essays on philosophy of science, in English (1941c and 1949g, in our Bibliography). Joining the first ''Vienna Circle'' in the first decade of the 20th century, with Hans Hahn, mathematician, and Otto Neurath, sociologist and economist, and deeply influenced by studies of Ernst Mach''s critical conceptual histories of science and by the striking challenge of Poincare and Duhem, Frank continued his epistemological investigations.

Philipp Frank (1884–1966) was an influential philosopher of science, public intellectual, and Harvard educator whose last book, The Humanistic Background of Science, is finally available. Never published in his lifetime, this original manuscript has been edited and introduced to highlight Frank''s remarkable but little-known insights about the nature of modern science—insights that rival those of Karl Popper and Frank''s colleagues Thomas Kuhn and James Bryant Conant. As a leading exponent of logical empiricism and a member of the famous Vienna Circle, Frank intended his book to provide an accessible, engaging introduction to the philosophy of science and its cultural significance. The book is steadfastly true to science; to aspirations of peace, unity, and human flourishing after World War II; and to the pragmatic philosophies of Charles S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey that Frank embraced in his new American home. Amidst the many recent surveys and retrospective analyses of midcentury philosophy of science, The Humanistic Background of Science offers an original, first-hand view of Frank''s post-European life and of intellectual dramas then unfolding in Chicago, New York City, and Boston.

Dieser Buchtitel ist Teil des Digitalisierungsprojekts Springer Book Archives mit Publikationen, die seit den Anfängen des Verlags von 1842 erschienen sind. Der Verlag stellt mit diesem Archiv Quellen für die historische wie auch die disziplingeschichtliche Forschung zur Verfügung, die jeweils im historischen Kontext betrachtet werden müssen. Dieser Titel erschien in der Zeit vor 1945 und wird daher in seiner zeittypischen politisch-ideologischen Ausrichtung vom Verlag nicht beworben.