John Oulton Wisdom

John Oulton Wisdom (29 December 1908 - 30 January 1993), cousin of Cambridge professor John Wisdom (with whom he is sometimes confused[1]) was "an important contributor to philosophy and to psychoanalysis" who made "original contributions to the mind-body problem, to philosophy of science, to cybernetics, to the theory of psychosomatic disorder, and to psychoanalytic theory".[2]

J.O. Wisdom pictured in 1928 after coming second in the.Irish Amateur Close golfing championship

Born in Dublin. J. O. Wisdom (as he was often cited) was educated at Earlsfort House School and then at Trinity College Dublin, where he studied under the Hegelian scholar H. S. Macran. Graduating in 1931, J.O. Wisdom continued postgraduate studies until 1933 when he received a doctoral degree for a thesis on Hegel. He was then to move to Cambridge where he encountered the analytical philosophy of G.E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein. His first teaching post was in Cairo, where he published The Metamorphosis of Philosophy in 1947. In 1948 he was appointed as a lecturer at the London School of Economics, (where he would meet with Karl Popper) before being appointed as a Reader in 1953, a position he retained until 1965. Wisdom also served as an editor of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science from 1952 until 1963, In the mid-sixties Wisdom would move to North America, teaching at several US universities before finally moving to Canada and to a professorship in philosophy and social science at York University, Toronto, where he remained until his retirement in 1979. He died at his home in Castlebridge, Co. Wexford, in 1993.[3][2]

Works
  • Causation and the Foundations of Science (Paris, 1946).
  • Foundations of Inference in Natural Science (1952).
  • The Unconscious Origin of Berkeley's Philosophy (1953).
  • Philosophy and its Place in our Culture (1975).
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References
  1. Passmore, John (1957). One Hundred Years Of Philosophy. pp. 437. It strikes one as odd that a philosopher should be called ‘Wisdom'; that two bearers of the name should be contemporary philosophers passes beyond the limits of the reasonable; that they should both be interested in psycho-analysis has produced in many minds the justifiable conviction that the two are one. But it must be none the less insisted that J. O. Wisdom of the London School of Economics ..is not identical with his cousin Professor John Wisdom of the University of Cambridge.
  2. "Obituary: J. O. Wisdom". The Independent. 1993-03-04. Retrieved 2018-12-29.
  3. Duddy, Thomas (2006). "Wisdom, John Oulton (1908–93)". The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy [edited by A.C. Grayling, Naomi Goulder, and Andrew Pyle]. Continuum. doi:10.1093/acref/9780199754694.001.0001. ISBN 9780199754694.

Further reading

Words of Wisdom: the life and work of J. O. Wisdom by C. M. Barry at Irish Philosophy

John Oulton Wilson [$] In Memoriam: Tributes. (1993). Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 23(3), 279–286. https://doi.org/10.1177/004839319302300301

Publications by John Oulton Wisdom [$] (1993). Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 23(3), 287–297. https://doi.org/10.1177/004839319302300302

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