Nicholas Rescher

Nicholas Rescher (/ˈrɛʃər/; German: [ˈʁɛʃɐ]; born 15 July 1928) is a German-American philosopher, polymath, and author, teaching at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the Chairman of the Center for Philosophy of Science and has formerly served as Chairman of the Philosophy Department.[3]

Nicholas Rescher
Born (1928-07-15) 15 July 1928
Hagen, Germany
Alma materQueens College (CUNY)
Princeton University
EraContemporary philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolAnalytic
Process philosophy
Methodological pragmatism
Pragmatic idealism
Epistemic coherentism[1]
Coherence theory of truth[2]
InstitutionsUniversity of Pittsburgh
ThesisLeibniz' cosmology: a reinterpretation of the philosophy of Leibniz in the light of his physical theories (1951)
Doctoral advisorAlonzo Church, Ledger Wood
Doctoral studentsAlexander Pruss
Ernest Sosa
Main interests
Philosophy of subjectivity, history of philosophy, epistemology, value theory
Notable ideas
Philosophical theory of everything, axiogenesis

Rescher has served as president for the American Catholic Philosophical Association, Leibniz Society of North America, American Metaphysical Society, American Philosophical Association, and Charles S. Peirce Society.[4] He is the founder of American Philosophical Quarterly,[5] History of Philosophy Quarterly, and Public Affairs Quarterly.[6]

Early life and education

Nicholas Rescher was born in the city of Hagen in the Westphalia region of Germany.[4] In his autobiography he traces his descent to Nehemias Rescher (1735-1801), a founder of Hochberg-Remseck Jewish community in Swabian Germany.[7] He relocated to the United States when he was 10. He obtained a degree in mathematics at Queens College, New York.[8] Thereafter, he attended Princeton University, graduating with his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1951 at the age of 22, the youngest person ever to have obtained a Ph.D. in that department.[3][4] From 1952 to 1954, he served a term in the United States Marine Corps, following which from 1954 to 1957 he worked for the Rand Corporation's mathematics division.[8] He has taught at the University of Pittsburgh since 1961. Rescher is a cousin of the eminent orientalist Oskar Rescher.

Career

Rescher began his career as an academic at Princeton University in 1951.[8][9] He joined the philosophy department at the University of Pittsburgh in 1961, becoming the first associate director of its new Center for Philosophy of Science the following year.[10] In 1964, he founded the American Philosophical Quarterly.[11] From 1980 to 1981, Rescher served as the chairman of the philosophy department.[8] In July 1988, Rescher changed roles at the Center for Philosophy of Science, resigning as its director and becoming its chairman.[12] In 2010, he donated his philosophy collection to the Hillman Library.[8]

An honorary member of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he has been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain, the Academia Europaea, the Royal Society of Canada, and the Institut International de Philosophie, among others.[3]

Rescher is a prolific writer, with over 100 books and 400 articles, generating the jest that Rescher is not a single person, but a committee sharing the name.[4][5][13] Philosopher Michele Marsonet, who has published extensively on Rescher's philosophy, writes that his prolific publication is in itself the most common objection against Rescher, adding "it is, indeed, a leitmotiv of all those unwilling to discuss his ideas".[13] Rescher has described his own approach to philosophy as synthesizing the idealism of Germany and Great Britain with the pragmatism of the U.S.[14]

Philosophy

Rescher's university biography describes his philosophical work thus:[3]

His work envisions a dialectical tension between our synoptic aspirations for useful knowledge and our human limitations as finite inquirers. The elaboration of this project represents a many-sided approach to fundamental philosophical issues that weaves together threads of thought from the philosophy of science, and from continental idealism and American pragmatism.

In the mid and late 1960s, his studies were focused on medieval Arabic logic, but he soon broadened his areas of inquiry in metaphysics and epistemology, moving towards the methodological pragmatism he would define.[15] In the 1970s, he began working more extensively with American pragmatism with a focus on the writings of C. S. Peirce, who was to number among his major influences.[16] In 1966, Rescher collaborated with Herbert A. Simon on a ground-breaking paper on the theory of causality.[17]

He has contributed to futuristics, and with Olaf Helmer and Norman Dalkey, invented the Delphi method of forecasting.[3] A lifelong aficionado of the philosophy of G. W. Leibniz, Rescher has been instrumental in the reconstruction of Leibniz's machina deciphratoria, an ancestor of the famous Enigma cipher machine. Rescher is also responsible for two further items of historical rediscovery and reconstruction: the model of cosmic evolution in Anaximander,[18] and the medieval Islamic theory of modal syllogistic.[19]

Honors

Rescher has been honored many times for his work. In 1984, he received the Humboldt Prize for Humanistic Scholarship.[4] In 2005, he received the Cardinal Mercier Prize, and in 2007 the American Catholic Philosophical Society's Aquinas Medal. In 2011, his contributions as a German-American to philosophy were recognized with the premier cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Founder's Medal of the American Metaphysical Society (2016), and the Helmholtz Medal of the German Academy of Sciences Berlin-Brandenburg.[3] He holds eight honorary degrees. Having held visiting lectureships at Oxford, Konstanz, Salamanca, Munich, and Marburg, he has been awarded fellowships by the Ford, Guggenheim, and National Science Foundations.[3]

The Nicholas Rescher Prize and Medal

In 2010, the University of Pittsburgh created the Dr. Nicholas Rescher Fund for the Advancement of the Department of Philosophy which bestows the Nicholas Rescher Prize for Contributions to Systematic Philosophy.[8] The first recipient of the prize was Rescher's former student, Ernest Sosa. As of 2012, the prize included a gold medal and $25,000, subsequently raised to $30,000. Later awardees include Alvin Plantinga, Juergen Mittelstrass, Hilary Putnam, and Ruth Millikan.[20] When the American Philosophical Association inaugurated its own Rescher Prize for Systematic Philosophy in 2018, the University of Pittsburgh redesignated its award as the Rescher Medal.

Eponymous concepts

Membership in learned societies

Selected works

For a more complete list of publications (books) from 1960–2016, see the Chronological List of Books by Nicholas Rescher.

OUP = Oxford University Press. PUP = Princeton University Press. SUNY Press = State University of New York Press. UPA = University Press of America. UPP = University of Pittsburgh Press.

  • 1964. The Development of Arabic Logic. UPP.
  • 1966. Galen and the Syllogism. UPP.
  • 1966. The Logic of Commands. Dover Publications, New York, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.
  • 1967. Studies in Arabic Philosophy. UPP.
  • 1969. Introduction to Value Theory. (Reissued 1982) UPA.
  • 1973. The Coherence Theory of Truth. (Reissued 1982) UPA.
  • 1977. Methodological Pragmatism: A Systems-Theoretic Approach to the Theory of Knowledge. Basil Blackwell; New York University Press.
  • 1978. Scientific Progress: A Philosophical Essay on the Economics of Research in Natural Science. UPP
  • 1983. Risk: A Philosophical Introduction to the Theory of Risk Evaluation and Management. UPA.
  • 1984. The Limits of Science. (Reissued 1999) UPP.
  • 1985. The Strife of Systems: An Essay on the Grounds and Implications of Philosophical Diversity. UPP.
  • 1988. Rationality. OUP.
  • 1989. Cognitive Economy: Economic Perspectives in the Theory of Knowledge. UPP.
  • 1989. A Useful Inheritance: Evolutionary Epistemology in Philosophical Perspective. Rowman & Littlefield.
  • 1990. Human Interests: Reflections on Philosophical Anthropology. Stanford University Press.
  • A System of Pragmatic Idealism
    • 1991. Volume I: Human Knowledge in Idealistic Perspective. PUP.
    • 1992. Volume II: The Validity of Values: Human Values in Pragmatic Perspective. PUP.
    • 1994. Volume III: Metaphilosophical Inquiries. PUP.
  • 1993. Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus. OUP.
  • 1993 "In Matters of Religion," in Kelly James Clark, ed., Philosophers Who Believe: The Spiritual Journeys of 11 Leading Thinkers, pp. 127–136. InterVarsity Press.
  • 1995. Luck. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
  • 1995. Essays in the History of Philosophy. UK: Aldershot.
  • 1995. Process Metaphysics. SUNY Press.
  • 1996. Instructive Journey: An Autobiographical Essay. UPA.
  • 1997. Predicting The Future: An Introduction To The Theory Of Forecasting. SUNY Press
  • 1998. Complexity: A Philosophical Overview. Transaction Publishers.
  • 1999. Kant and the Reach of Reason. Cambridge University Press.
  • 1999. Realistic Pragmatism: An Introduction to Pragmatic Philosophy. SUNY Press.
  • 2000. Nature and Understanding: A Study of the Metaphysics of Science. OUP.
  • 2001. Paradoxes: Their Roots, Range, and Resolution. Open Court Publishing.
  • 2001. Process Philosophy: A Survey of Basic Issues. UPP.
  • 2003. Epistemology: On the Scope and Limits of Knowledge. SUNY Press.
  • 2003. On Leibniz. UPP.
  • 2005. Epistemic Logic. UPP.
  • 2005. Reason and Reality: Realism and Idealism in Pragmatic Perspective. Rowman & Littlefield.
  • 2005-2006. Collected Papers in 10 vols. Ontos.
  • 2006. Metaphysics: The Key Issues from a Realist Perspective. Prometheus Books.
  • 2006. Epistemetrics. Cambridge University Press.
  • 2006. Error: On Our Predicament When Things Go Wrong. UPP.
  • 2007. Conditionals. MIT Press.
  • 2007. Dialectics: A Classical Approach to Inquiry. Ontos.
  • 2009. Aporetics. UPP.
  • 2009. Free Will. Transaction Books.
  • 2009. Ignorance: On the Wider Implications of Deficient Knowledge. UPP.
  • 2009. Unknowability. Lexington Books.
  • 2009. Wishful Thinking and Other Philosophical Reflections. Ontos.
  • 2009. Epistemological Studies. Ontos.
  • 2010. Ideas in Process: A Study of the Development of Philosophical Concepts. Ontos.
  • 2010. Studies in Quantitative Philosophy. Ontos.
  • 2010. Reality and Its Appearance. Continuum.
  • 2010. A Free Will Bibliography. Ontos. With Estelle Burris
  • 2010. Philosophical Inquiries. UPP.
  • 2010. Infinite Regress. Transaction Books
  • 2010. Axiogenesis: An Essay in Metaphysical Optimalism. Lexington Books.
  • 2010. Philosophical Textuality: Studies on Issues of Discourses in Philosophy. Ontos.
  • 2010. On Rules and Principles: A Philosophical Study of their Nature and Function. Ontos.
  • 2010. Finitude: A Study of Cognitive Limits and Limitations. Ontos.
  • 2010. Beyond Sets: A Venture in Collection-Theoretico Revisionism. Ontos. With Patrick Grim.
  • 2011. On Certainty: And Other Philosophical Essays. Ontos.
  • 2011. Philosophical Explorations. Ontos.
  • 2011. Philosophical Episodes. Ontos.
  • 2011. Productive Evolution. Ontos.
  • 2012. Pragmatism. Transaction Books.
  • 2012. Reflexivity. (With Patrick Grim) Ontos.
  • 2012. On Explaining Existence. Ontos.
  • 2012. Philosophische Vorsellungen. Ontos.
  • 2012. Philosophical Deliberations. Ontos.
  • 2012. On Leibniz. UPP. [Second, revised and expanded edition of the 2003 edition.]
  • 2012. Epistemic Merit: And Other Essays in Epistemology. Ontos.
  • 2013. On Leibniz: Expanded Edition. University of Pittsburgh Press.
  • 2013. Reason and Religion. ONTOS.
  • 2014. Philosophical Progress, And Other Philosophical Studies. De Gruyter.
  • 2014. The Pragmatic Vision: Themes in Philosophical Pragmatism. Rowman & Littlefield.
  • 2014. Logical Inquiries. De Gruyter.
  • 2014. The Vagaries of Value: Basic Issued in Value Theory. Transaction.
  • 2014. Metaphilosophy. Lexington Books.
  • 2015. A Journey through Philosophy in 101 Anecdotes. University of Pittsburgh Press.
  • 2015. Ethical Considerations: Basic Issues in Moral Philosophy. Mellen Press.
  • 2015. Cognitive Complications: Epistemology in Pragmatic Perspective. Lexington Books.
  • 2016. Pragmatism in Philosophical Inquiry. Springer.
  • 2016. Concept Audits: A Philosophical Method. Lexington Books.
  • 2018. Leibniz Essays. LAP Lambert Academic Publishing.[21]
  • 2018. Philosophical Encounters. LAP Lambert Academic Publishing.[22]
  • 2018. Family Matters. LAP Lambert Academic Publishing.[23]
  • 2018. Kant Essays. LAP Lambert Academic Publishing.[24]
  • 2018. A PHILOSOPHER'S STORY: The Autobiography of an American Philosopher. LAP Lambert Academic Publishing.[25]
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See also

Notes
  1. Coherentist Theories of Epistemic Justification (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  2. The Coherence Theory of Truth (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  3. University of Pittsburgh 2014
  4. Marsonet 2014
  5. Sosa & Cohen 1979, p. ix
  6. John Kekes (1995). "Nicholas Rescher, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, p. 771.
  7. Nicholas Rescher, Autobiography: Second Edition, Walter de Gruyter (2010), p. 308
  8. University of Pittsburgh 2011
  9. "History - Department of Philosophy". Princeton University. Retrieved April 4, 2014.
  10. Center for Philosophy of Science 2001, pp. 2–3
  11. University of Illinois Press 2014
  12. Center for Philosophy of Science 2001, p. 4
  13. Marsonet 2008, p. iv-v
  14. Jacquette 2009, p. 1
  15. Jacquette 2009, p. 2
  16. Jacquette 2009, pp. 3–4
  17. Herbert Simon and Nicholas Rescher, "Cause and Counterfactual," Philosophy of Sciences, vol. 34 (1966). pp.323-340.
  18. 2001, Robert Hahn, Anaximander and the Architects (Albany: SUNY Press).
  19. 2000, Tony Street, "Toward a History of Syllogistic after Avicenna: A Note on Rescher's Studies in Arabid Modal Logic," Journal of Islamic Studies, vol. 11, pp. 209-28.
  20. Anderson 2012
  21. Rescher, Nicholas (2018-02-16). "Leibniz Essays". MoreBooks!. Retrieved 2018-10-25.
  22. Rescher, Nicholas (2018-03-22). "Philosophical Encounters". MoreBooks!. Retrieved 2018-10-25.
  23. Rescher, Nicholas (2018-05-28). "Family Matters". MoreBooks!. Retrieved 2018-10-25.
  24. Rescher, Nicholas (2018-08-01). "Kant Essays". MoreBooks!. Retrieved 2018-10-25.
  25. Rescher, Nicholas (2018-09-06). "A PHILOSOPHER'S STORY: The Autobiography of an American Philosopher". MoreBooks!. Retrieved 2018-10-25.

References

Further reading
  • Ernest Sosa (ed), The Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher (Dordrecht, 1979).
  • Robert Almeder (ed.), Praxis and Reason: Studies in the Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982).
  • Heinrich Coomann, Die Kohaerenztheorie der Wahrheit: Eine kritische Darstellung der Theorie Reschers von Ihrem historischen Hintergrund (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Verlag, 1983).
  • Andrea Bottani, Veritá e Coerenza: Suggio su'll epistemologia coerentista di Nicholas Rescher (Milano: Franco Angeli Liberi, 1989).
  • Michele Marsonet, The Primacy of Practical Reason: An Essay on Nicholas Rescher's Philosophy (Lanham MD: University Press of America, 1995).
  • A. Wüstehube and M. Quante (ed's.), Pragmatic Idealism: Critical Essays on Nicholas Rescher's System of Pragmatic Idealism (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998).
  • Martin Carrier et. al (eds.), Science at the Century's End: Philosophical Questions on the Progress and Limits of Science (Pittsburgh and Konstanz: University of Pittsburgh Press and University of Konstanz Press, 2000).
  • Lotfallah Nabavi, Avicennan Logic Based on Nicholas Rescher's Point of View (Tehran: Scientific and Cultural Publication Co., 2003).
  • Michel Weber (ed.), After Whitehead: Rescher and Process Philosophy: Critiques and Replies (Frankfurt: ONTOS Verlag, 2004).
  • Robert Almeder (ed.), Rescher Studies: A Collection of Essays on the Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher (Frankfurt: ONTOS Verlag, 2008).
  • Wenceslao González, La predicción científica: concepciones filosófico-metodológicas desde H. Reichenbach a N. Rescher (Barcelona: Editorial-Montesinos, 2010).
  • Wulf Kellerwessel, Nicholas Rescher: Das philosophische System (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014).
  • Sami Piltsröm (ed.), Pragmatism and Objectivity: Essays Sparked by the Work of Nicholas Rescher (London: Routledge, 2017).
  • F. L. Giralido Gutiérrez, Racionalidad technológia en el uso y consumede technológia (Bogala: Institutio Technológico Metropolitano, 2017).
  • Amanda Guillán, Pragmatic Idealism and Scientific Predication (Berlin: Springer, 2017).
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