Norwood Russell Hanson
Encyclopedia
Norwood Russell Hanson was a philosopher of science
. Hanson was a pioneer in advancing the argument that observation is theory-laden – that observation language and theory language are deeply interwoven – and that historical and contemporary comprehension are similarly deeply interwoven. His single most central intellectual concern was the comprehension and development of a logic of discovery.
for this.
Hanson's other books include The Concept of the Positron (1963). Hanson was a staunch defender of the Copenhagen interpretation
of quantum mechanics
, which regards questions such as "Where was the particle before I measured its position?" as meaningless. The philosophical issues involved were important elements in Hanson's views of perception
and epistemology. He was intrigued by paradox
es, and with the related concepts of uncertainty
, undecidability/unprovability
, and incompleteness; he sought models of cognition that could embrace these elements, rather than simply explain them away.
Hanson's posthumous works include What I Do Not Believe and Other Essays (1971) and Constellations and Conjectures (1973). He is also known for the essays What I Do Not Believe and The Agnostic's Dilemma, among other writings on belief systems.
From Michael Scriven
's preface to Hanson's posthumous Perception and Discovery:
(1962), which challenged the existing empirical methods
of scientific theory development. Both the work of Kuhn and Hanson were in criticism of empiricism
. In the same period, Hanson championed another departure from tradition: He rejected the traditional distinction between History of Science
and Philosophy of Science
, two divergent fields at the time. Hanson insisted that proper study of one demanded a deep understanding of the other – an interdisciplinary view that has since won general acceptance.
Patterns of Discovery (1958) is later cited by the philosopher Robert Nozick
in his (1974) work of Political Philosophy
, Anarchy, State, and Utopia
in order to lend support to his view of "understanding the political realm in terms of the nonpolitical," as a way of understanding the "whole political realm." Nozick cites Patterns of Discovery from pp. 119–120, quoting "Though the X (color, heat, and so on) of an object can be explained in terms of its being composed of parts of certain X-quality (colors in certain array, average heat of parts, and so on), the whole realm of X cannot be explained or understood in this manner."
The story of Hanson's short life is colorful. He studied trumpet with the legendary William Vacchiano
and played at Carnegie Hall
, but his musical career was interrupted by WWII. He enlisted in the Coast Guard, later transferring to the Marine Corps where he trained as a fighter pilot, developing a reputation as a 'hot pilot' (famously looping the Golden Gate Bridge). He served on the ill-fated USS Franklin
in the VMF-452
'Skyraiders' squadron, for which he designed the unit's logo. When the Franklin was bombed and nearly destroyed on 19 March 1945, his Corsair was described as 'the last plane off Big Ben.' After flying over 2,000 hours, he returned to civilian life, seeking an education via the G.I. Bill rather than continuing a life in music. He took degrees from the University of Chicago
and Columbia University
, then proceeded with his new wife Fay to the UK in 1949, under a Fulbright Scholarship. He completed multiple degrees at both Oxford
and Cambridge
, and stayed in Britain to continue teaching and writing.
Hanson left the life of a Cambridge Don to return to the U.S. in 1957, founding the Indiana University
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, the first of its kind, and receiving a Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study
in Princeton, New Jersey
. In 1963, Hanson moved to Yale University
. He also continued to fly – an AT-6 Texan
trainer, and later a Grumman F8F-2 Bearcat
. His unusual style and personal history, including his aerobatics over the Yale Bowl
and at airshows as 'The Flying Professor,' were noted by a generation of students – including John Kerry
. His time at Yale was strained by campus politics, where he was caught in the midst of an infamous 1964-65 fight over Yale's tenure policies (the "Bernstein Affair"). Hanson died in 1967, when his Bearcat crashed in dense fog en route to Ithaca, New York. He was survived by wife Fay and children Trevor (b. 1955) and Leslie (b. 1958).
His rich, complex life – ranging from Golden Gloves boxing to drawing illustrations for Homer's Iliad; from camping on a Harley-Davidson to testifying before the U.S. Senate; from tough city youth to distinguished scholarship – was cut short at the age of 42, with ten books in progress, including a history of aerodynamic theory.
Other media
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
. Hanson was a pioneer in advancing the argument that observation is theory-laden – that observation language and theory language are deeply interwoven – and that historical and contemporary comprehension are similarly deeply interwoven. His single most central intellectual concern was the comprehension and development of a logic of discovery.
Work
Hanson's best-known work is Patterns of Discovery (1958), in which he argues that what we see and perceive is not what our senses receive, but is instead filtered sensory information, where the filter is our existing preconceptions – a concept later called a 'thematic framework.' He cited optical illusions such as the famous old Parisienne woman (Patterns of Discovery, p. 11), which can be seen in different ways. Hanson drew a distinction between 'seeing as' and 'seeing that' which became a key idea in evolving theories of perception and meaning. He wanted to formulate a logic explaining how scientific discoveries take place. He used Charles Sanders Peirce's notion of abductionAbductive reasoning
Abduction is a kind of logical inference described by Charles Sanders Peirce as "guessing". The term refers to the process of arriving at an explanatory hypothesis. Peirce said that to abduce a hypothetical explanation a from an observed surprising circumstance b is to surmise that a may be true...
for this.
Hanson's other books include The Concept of the Positron (1963). Hanson was a staunch defender of the Copenhagen interpretation
Copenhagen interpretation
The Copenhagen interpretation is one of the earliest and most commonly taught interpretations of quantum mechanics. It holds that quantum mechanics does not yield a description of an objective reality but deals only with probabilities of observing, or measuring, various aspects of energy quanta,...
of quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the atomic and subatomic...
, which regards questions such as "Where was the particle before I measured its position?" as meaningless. The philosophical issues involved were important elements in Hanson's views of perception
Perception
Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
and epistemology. He was intrigued by paradox
Paradox
Similar to Circular reasoning, A paradox is a seemingly true statement or group of statements that lead to a contradiction or a situation which seems to defy logic or intuition...
es, and with the related concepts of uncertainty
Uncertainty
Uncertainty is a term used in subtly different ways in a number of fields, including physics, philosophy, statistics, economics, finance, insurance, psychology, sociology, engineering, and information science...
, undecidability/unprovability
Independence (mathematical logic)
In mathematical logic, independence refers to the unprovability of a sentence from other sentences.A sentence σ is independent of a given first-order theory T if T neither proves nor refutes σ; that is, it is impossible to prove σ from T, and it is also impossible to prove from T that...
, and incompleteness; he sought models of cognition that could embrace these elements, rather than simply explain them away.
Hanson's posthumous works include What I Do Not Believe and Other Essays (1971) and Constellations and Conjectures (1973). He is also known for the essays What I Do Not Believe and The Agnostic's Dilemma, among other writings on belief systems.
From Michael Scriven
Michael Scriven
Michael Scriven is a British-born academic, with a first degree in mathematics and a doctorate in philosophy. He has made significant contributions in the fields of philosophy, psychology, critical thinking, and, most notably, evaluation .He has produced over 400 scholarly publications and has...
's preface to Hanson's posthumous Perception and Discovery:
In a general sense Hanson continues the application of the Wittgensteinian approach to the philosophy of science, as Waissman and ToulminStephen ToulminStephen Edelston Toulmin was a British philosopher, author, and educator. Influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Toulmin devoted his works to the analysis of moral reasoning. Throughout his writings, he sought to develop practical arguments which can be used effectively in evaluating the ethics behind...
have also done. But he goes much further than they, exploring questions about perception and discovery in more detail, and ... tying in the history of science for exemplification and for its own benefit. Hanson was one of the rare thinkers in the tradition of WhewellWilliam WhewellWilliam Whewell was an English polymath, scientist, Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian, and historian of science. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.-Life and career:Whewell was born in Lancaster...
– a man he much admired – who could really benefit from and yield benefits for both the history and philosophy of science.
Influence
Thomas Samuel Kuhn followed up Hanson's work when creating the revolutionary The Structure of Scientific RevolutionsThe Structure of Scientific Revolutions
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , by Thomas Kuhn, is an analysis of the history of science. Its publication was a landmark event in the history, philosophy, and sociology of scientific knowledge and it triggered an ongoing worldwide assessment and reaction in — and beyond — those scholarly...
(1962), which challenged the existing empirical methods
Empiricism
Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...
of scientific theory development. Both the work of Kuhn and Hanson were in criticism of empiricism
Empiricism
Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...
. In the same period, Hanson championed another departure from tradition: He rejected the traditional distinction between History of Science
History of science
The history of science is the study of the historical development of human understandings of the natural world and the domains of the social sciences....
and Philosophy of Science
Philosophy of science
The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...
, two divergent fields at the time. Hanson insisted that proper study of one demanded a deep understanding of the other – an interdisciplinary view that has since won general acceptance.
Patterns of Discovery (1958) is later cited by the philosopher Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick was an American political philosopher, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia , a right-libertarian answer to John Rawls's A Theory of Justice...
in his (1974) work of Political Philosophy
Political philosophy
Political philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...
, Anarchy, State, and Utopia
Anarchy, State, and Utopia
Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a work of political philosophy written by Robert Nozick in 1974. This minarchist book was the winner of the 1975 National Book Award...
in order to lend support to his view of "understanding the political realm in terms of the nonpolitical," as a way of understanding the "whole political realm." Nozick cites Patterns of Discovery from pp. 119–120, quoting "Though the X (color, heat, and so on) of an object can be explained in terms of its being composed of parts of certain X-quality (colors in certain array, average heat of parts, and so on), the whole realm of X cannot be explained or understood in this manner."
Life
William Vacchiano
William Vacchiano was a trumpeter and trumpet instructor.Originally from Portland, Maine, Vacchiano studied trumpet at age 12. At 14 years old, he was playing in the Portland Symphony. Later he performed with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra for 38 years and taught at the Juilliard School for...
and played at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
, but his musical career was interrupted by WWII. He enlisted in the Coast Guard, later transferring to the Marine Corps where he trained as a fighter pilot, developing a reputation as a 'hot pilot' (famously looping the Golden Gate Bridge). He served on the ill-fated USS Franklin
USS Franklin (CV-13)
The USS Franklin , nicknamed "Big Ben," was one of 24 s built during World War II for the United States Navy, and the fifth US Navy ship to bear the name. Commissioned in January 1944, she served in several campaigns in the Pacific Theater of Operations, earning four battle stars...
in the VMF-452
VMF-452
Marine Fighting Squadron 452 was a fighter squadron of the United States Marine Corps that was commissioned and fought during World War II. Known as the “Sky Raiders”, they flew the F4U Corsair, and the Grumman TBF Avenger, fell under the command of Marine Carrier Group 5 and fought in the...
'Skyraiders' squadron, for which he designed the unit's logo. When the Franklin was bombed and nearly destroyed on 19 March 1945, his Corsair was described as 'the last plane off Big Ben.' After flying over 2,000 hours, he returned to civilian life, seeking an education via the G.I. Bill rather than continuing a life in music. He took degrees from the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
and Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, then proceeded with his new wife Fay to the UK in 1949, under a Fulbright Scholarship. He completed multiple degrees at both Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
and Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
, and stayed in Britain to continue teaching and writing.
Indiana University Bloomington
Indiana University Bloomington is a public research university located in Bloomington, Indiana, in the United States. IU Bloomington is the flagship campus of the Indiana University system. Being the flagship campus, IU Bloomington is often referred to simply as IU or Indiana...
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, the first of its kind, and receiving a Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States, is an independent postgraduate center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It was founded in 1930 by Abraham Flexner...
in Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton is a community located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It is best known as the location of Princeton University, which has been sited in the community since 1756...
. In 1963, Hanson moved to Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
. He also continued to fly – an AT-6 Texan
T-6 Texan
The North American Aviation T-6 Texan was a single-engine advanced trainer aircraft used to train pilots of the United States Army Air Forces, United States Navy, Royal Air Force and other air forces of the British Commonwealth during World War II and into the 1950s...
trainer, and later a Grumman F8F-2 Bearcat
F8F Bearcat
The Grumman F8F Bearcat was an American single-engine naval fighter aircraft of the 1940s. It went on to serve into the mid-20th century in the United States Navy and other air forces, and would be the company's final piston engined fighter aircraft...
. His unusual style and personal history, including his aerobatics over the Yale Bowl
Yale Bowl
The Yale Bowl is a football stadium in New Haven, Connecticut on the border of West Haven, about 1½ miles west of Yale's main campus. Completed in 1914, the stadium seats 61,446, reduced by renovations from the original capacity of 70,869...
and at airshows as 'The Flying Professor,' were noted by a generation of students – including John Kerry
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to former President George W...
. His time at Yale was strained by campus politics, where he was caught in the midst of an infamous 1964-65 fight over Yale's tenure policies (the "Bernstein Affair"). Hanson died in 1967, when his Bearcat crashed in dense fog en route to Ithaca, New York. He was survived by wife Fay and children Trevor (b. 1955) and Leslie (b. 1958).
His rich, complex life – ranging from Golden Gloves boxing to drawing illustrations for Homer's Iliad; from camping on a Harley-Davidson to testifying before the U.S. Senate; from tough city youth to distinguished scholarship – was cut short at the age of 42, with ten books in progress, including a history of aerodynamic theory.
Works
Books- Patterns of Discovery: An Inquiry into the Conceptual Foundations of Science. Cambridge University Press, 1958. ISBN 0-521-05197-5.
- The Concept of the Positron. Cambridge University Press, 1963. ISBN 0-521-05198-3.
- Perception and Discovery: An Introduction to Scientific Inquiry. Freeman, Cooper & Co., 1969 [Wadsworth, 1970]. ISBN 0-87735-509-6.
- Observation and Explanation: A Guide to Philosophy of Science. (Harper Essays in Philosophy) Harper & Row, 1971. ISBN 0-06-131575-3.
- What I Do Not Believe and Other Essays, (ToulminStephen ToulminStephen Edelston Toulmin was a British philosopher, author, and educator. Influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Toulmin devoted his works to the analysis of moral reasoning. Throughout his writings, he sought to develop practical arguments which can be used effectively in evaluating the ethics behind...
/Woolf, eds). Synthese Library, D. Reidel, 1971. ISBN 90-277-0191-1. - Constellations and Conjectures, (Humphreys, ed). D. Reidel, 1973. ISBN 90-277-0192-X.
Other media
- "Philosophy of Science: Observation and Interpretation", Voice of America broadcast from 1964 (recorded 1963), ARC Identifier 106673, Local Identifier 306-FORUM-EN-L-T-6456-I, Record Group 306: Records of the U.S. Information Agency, 1900 - 1992 (cited at http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action/ShowArchivalDescriptions?%24submitId=1&%24showFullDescriptionTabs.selectedPaneId=&%24resultsDetailPageModel.pageSize=1&%24resultsDetailPageModel.search=true&%24showArchivalDescriptionsTabs.selectedPaneId=&%24highlight=false&%24digiSummaryPageModel.targetModel=true&%24digiDetailPageModel.currentPage=0&%24resultsPartitionPageModel.search=true&%24resultsPartitionPageModel.targetModel=true&%24resultsSummaryPageModel.pageSize=10&%24resultsSummaryPageModel.targetModel=true&%24searchId=11&%24partitionIndex=0&%24sort=RELEVANCE_ASC&%24digiDetailPageModel.resultPageModel=true&%24resultsDetailPageModel.currentPage=0http://research.archives.gov/search], retrieved by searching for "philosophy science observation interpretation")
See also
- American philosophyAmerican philosophyAmerican philosophy is the philosophical activity or output of Americans, both within the United States and abroad. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that while American philosophy lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can nevertheless be seen as both reflecting and...
- List of American philosophers