Stephan Körner
Encyclopedia
Stephan Körner, FBA (26 September 1913—17 August 2000) was a British
philosopher, who specialised in the work of Kant
, the study of concepts, and in the philosophy of mathematics
. Born to a Jewish family in Czechoslovakia
, he left the country to avoid certain death at the hands of the Nazis after the German occupation in 1939, and came to the United Kingdom
as a refugee, where he began his study of philosophy; by 1952 he was a professor of philosophy at the University of Bristol
, taking up a second professorship at Yale
in 1970. He was married to Edith Körner
, and was the father of the mathematician Thomas Körner and the biochemist, writer and translator (née) Ann M. Körner.
, then part of Austria-Hungary
, in 1913, the son of a teacher of classics and his wife. His father had studied classics in Vienna, while at the same time, winning prizes in mathematics to supplement his meager income (a fellow student was a certain Leo Trotsky, who was frequently asked, "When is that great revolution that you are always talking about going to happen?"). Despite an early wish to study philosophy, Stephan was dissuaded by his father, who feared that his son would become a penniless academic; he was persuaded to study something more practical, and took his degree in law
at Charles University in Prague
, completing it in 1935. (He practised law only briefly but retained a strong interest, attending seminars at Yale University Law School after his appointment as a visiting professor at Yale in the 1970s.) From 1936 to 1939 he carried out his military service
, serving as an officer in the cavalry
(see photograph).
After German troops moved into the country in March 1939, a schoolmate of his, an officer in the SS, warned the Jewish family that life in German-occupied Moravia
was no longer safe. His parents refused to leave, believing that they had nothing to fear since they were not communists. His mother died in Auschwitz and his father, according to Stephan, committed suicide on the way to this infamous concentration camp. His first cousin Ruth Maier
was one of many other family members who died at Auschwitz, after her arrest in and deportation from Norway. She is remembered as Norway's Anne Frank
. Stephan travelled with two friends, Otto Eisner and Willi Haas, through Poland
to the United Kingdom
, arriving a refugee just as the Second World War began. In Britain, he rejoined the army of the émigré Czechoslovak government; he saw service with them during the Battle of France
in 1940 before returning to Britain.
He received a small grant to continue his education at the University of Cambridge
, where he studied philosophy under R. B. Braithwaite
at Trinity Hall
; among others, he was taught by Ludwig Wittgenstein
. Professor Braithwaite was exceedingly kind to his refugee student. On one occasion, Braithwaite invited him to his home saying, "Someone has given me a Hungarian salami; would you come to my house and show me how to eat it?" Such invitations were welcome since Stephan made little money as a waiter in a Greek restaurant and survived on "one fourpenny meat pie per day." In 1943 he was recalled to the Czechoslovak army, serving as a sergeant in the infantry during the push through France and into Germany. He would later say that he survived the fighting outside Dunkirk due to Dickens
; recuperating in hospital from a minor wound, a doctor refused to discharge him until he had had another day to finish his novel. As a result, he missed the heavy fighting the next day, when many of his close friends were killed.
He was awarded his PhD
in 1944; shortly afterwards, he married Edith Laner
("Diti"; born Edita Leah Löwy; in 1938/39, her father changed the family name to Laner in a vain attempt to deceive the Nazis into thinking that he and his family were not Jewish), a fellow Czech refugee, whom he had met in London in 1941. He remained in the Czechoslovak army until 1946.
, tutoring students in German. He took up his first academic post in 1947, lecturing in philosophy at the University of Bristol
; he worked ten or more hours a day, six days a week, in what his son would describe as "[working] at philosophy like a man works at coal mining". Within six years, in 1952, he was appointed to the sole professorship and chairmanship of his department, which he would hold until 1979. In 1965 and 1966 he was Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and from 1968 to 1971 a Pro-Vice-Chancellor.
During this time he worked as a visiting professor of philosophy at Brown University
in 1957, Yale University
in 1960, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1963, University of Texas at Austin
in 1964 and Indiana University
in 1967. In 1970 he returned to Yale with a tenured visiting professorship in philosophy, holding it jointly with the Bristol post for nine years, and then as his sole post from 1979 to 1984. Bristol appointed him a professor emeritus on his retirement, and he subsequently held a visiting professorship at the University of Graz
from 1980 to 1989.
He received honorary doctorates from the Queen's University Belfast in 1981, and Graz in 1984, where he was appointed to an honorary professorship in 1986. Bristol appointed him an honorary fellow in 1987, as did Trinity Hall in 1991.
He was President of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science
in 1965, the Aristotelian Society
in 1967, the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science
in 1969, and the Mind Association
in 1973. He edited the journal Ratio from 1961 to 1980, and was on the editorial board of Erkenntnis from 1974-1999. In 1967 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.
work, went through several impressions over the next three decades and is still regarded as a minor classic in the field; it was one of the first post-war books to reintroduce Kant to the English-speaking world. The fact that in this and later works Korner mistakenly assumed that Kant's categories apply directly to ordinary empirical science, a decisive error in understanding Kant, was little noticed by a public grateful for any short work covering all of Kant's philosophy. The second, Conceptual Thinking, was a more specialised study, studying the way in which people deal with "exact" and "inexact" concepts - exact concepts, like logical constructs or mathematical ideas, could be clearly defined, whilst inexact concepts, like 'colour', would always have unclear boundaries. In 1957 he expanded on this, editing Observation and Interpretation, a collection of papers arising from a seminar which brought together both philosophers and physicists to discuss these questions.
His work led him into the philosophy of mathematics
, on which he would publish a textbook in 1960; Philosophy of Mathematics took as its central theme the question of how applied mathematics can be metaphysically possible.
He also wrote on the philosophy of science
in Experience and Theory (1966), including work on theoretical incommensurability, the concept that two directly contradictory theories - such as classical mechanics
and relativity
- can coexist, without either being specifically "wrong".
In 1969 he published What is Philosophy?, and in 1970 Categorial Frameworks, attempts to put forward his views to a general audience. Experience and Conduct, published in 1979, discussed how we evaluate and develop our own preferences and value systems; his final work, Metaphysics: Its Structure and Function (1984) was a wide-ranging study of metaphysics
.
He lived a happy and contented home life; he and Edith were remembered by friends as exceptionally close and devoted to one another. In their early married life they fitted the conventional academic mould - whilst he worked incessantly at his studies, she raised the family, looked after the house, managed the finances - but after the children had grown and left she worked at her own career, eventually becoming the chairman of the magistrates' court in Bristol and overseeing the redevelopment of the National Health Service's
information-management system. Edith managed their lives, as with everything else, in a practical, organised and forceful way, ensuring that he could work as freely as possible; he was fond of saying that "Diti does everything, but leaves the philosophy to me".
The couple had two children - Thomas, a professor of mathematics, and Ann, a biochemist, writer and translator, who married Sidney Altman
, a professor at Yale University. In 1989, Professor Altman won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
. Following Edith's diagnosis with advanced cancer in the summer of 2000, the two chose to commit suicide together. They were found, according to the police report, with plastic bags tied around their heads and pillows on top of them, that August after fifty-six years of marriage; they were survived by both children and by four grandchildren, one of whom is Daniel Altman
.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
philosopher, who specialised in the work of Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
, the study of concepts, and in the philosophy of mathematics
Philosophy of mathematics
The philosophy of mathematics is the branch of philosophy that studies the philosophical assumptions, foundations, and implications of mathematics. The aim of the philosophy of mathematics is to provide an account of the nature and methodology of mathematics and to understand the place of...
. Born to a Jewish family in Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
, he left the country to avoid certain death at the hands of the Nazis after the German occupation in 1939, and came to the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
as a refugee, where he began his study of philosophy; by 1952 he was a professor of philosophy at the University of Bristol
University of Bristol
The University of Bristol is a public research university located in Bristol, United Kingdom. One of the so-called "red brick" universities, it received its Royal Charter in 1909, although its predecessor institution, University College, Bristol, had been in existence since 1876.The University is...
, taking up a second professorship at Yale
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...
in 1970. He was married to Edith Körner
Edith Körner
Edith Körner CBE was a British magistrate and reformer of the National Health Service. She was the wife of the philosopher Stephan Körner and mother of the mathematician Thomas Körner and the biochemist, writer and translator Ann M. Körner.-Biography:Born Edita Leah Löwy in Znojmo, Czechoslovakia,...
, and was the father of the mathematician Thomas Körner and the biochemist, writer and translator (née) Ann M. Körner.
Early life
Körner was born in OstravaOstrava
Ostrava is the third largest city in the Czech Republic and the second largest urban agglomeration after Prague. Located close to the Polish border, it is also the administrative center of the Moravian-Silesian Region and of the Municipality with Extended Competence. Ostrava was candidate for the...
, then part of Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
, in 1913, the son of a teacher of classics and his wife. His father had studied classics in Vienna, while at the same time, winning prizes in mathematics to supplement his meager income (a fellow student was a certain Leo Trotsky, who was frequently asked, "When is that great revolution that you are always talking about going to happen?"). Despite an early wish to study philosophy, Stephan was dissuaded by his father, who feared that his son would become a penniless academic; he was persuaded to study something more practical, and took his degree in law
Juris Doctor
Juris Doctor is a professional doctorate and first professional graduate degree in law.The degree was first awarded by Harvard University in the United States in the late 19th century and was created as a modern version of the old European doctor of law degree Juris Doctor (see etymology and...
at Charles University in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
, completing it in 1935. (He practised law only briefly but retained a strong interest, attending seminars at Yale University Law School after his appointment as a visiting professor at Yale in the 1970s.) From 1936 to 1939 he carried out his military service
Military service
Military service, in its simplest sense, is service by an individual or group in an army or other militia, whether as a chosen job or as a result of an involuntary draft . Some nations require a specific amount of military service from every citizen...
, serving as an officer in the cavalry
Cavalry
Cavalry or horsemen were soldiers or warriors who fought mounted on horseback. Cavalry were historically the third oldest and the most mobile of the combat arms...
(see photograph).
After German troops moved into the country in March 1939, a schoolmate of his, an officer in the SS, warned the Jewish family that life in German-occupied Moravia
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was the majority ethnic-Czech protectorate which Nazi Germany established in the central parts of Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia in what is today the Czech Republic...
was no longer safe. His parents refused to leave, believing that they had nothing to fear since they were not communists. His mother died in Auschwitz and his father, according to Stephan, committed suicide on the way to this infamous concentration camp. His first cousin Ruth Maier
Ruth Maier
Ruth Maier was an Austrian woman whose diaries describing her experiences of the Holocaust in Austria and Norway were published in 2007 to generally favorable reviews, leading her to be described as "Norway's Anne Frank."Ruth Maier was born in Vienna to a largely assimilated Jewish family...
was one of many other family members who died at Auschwitz, after her arrest in and deportation from Norway. She is remembered as Norway's Anne Frank
Anne Frank
Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank is one of the most renowned and most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Acknowledged for the quality of her writing, her diary has become one of the world's most widely read books, and has been the basis for several plays and films.Born in the city of Frankfurt...
. Stephan travelled with two friends, Otto Eisner and Willi Haas, through Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
to the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, arriving a refugee just as the Second World War began. In Britain, he rejoined the army of the émigré Czechoslovak government; he saw service with them during the Battle of France
Battle of France
In the Second World War, the Battle of France was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries, beginning on 10 May 1940, which ended the Phoney War. The battle consisted of two main operations. In the first, Fall Gelb , German armoured units pushed through the Ardennes, to cut off and...
in 1940 before returning to Britain.
He received a small grant to continue his education at the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
, where he studied philosophy under R. B. Braithwaite
R. B. Braithwaite
Richard Bevan Braithwaite was an English philosopher who specialized in the philosophy of science, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. He was a lecturer in moral science at the University of Cambridge from 1934 to 1953, then Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy there from 1953 to 1967...
at Trinity Hall
Trinity Hall, Cambridge
Trinity Hall is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It is the fifth-oldest college of the university, having been founded in 1350 by William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich.- Foundation :...
; among others, he was taught by Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
. Professor Braithwaite was exceedingly kind to his refugee student. On one occasion, Braithwaite invited him to his home saying, "Someone has given me a Hungarian salami; would you come to my house and show me how to eat it?" Such invitations were welcome since Stephan made little money as a waiter in a Greek restaurant and survived on "one fourpenny meat pie per day." In 1943 he was recalled to the Czechoslovak army, serving as a sergeant in the infantry during the push through France and into Germany. He would later say that he survived the fighting outside Dunkirk due to Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
; recuperating in hospital from a minor wound, a doctor refused to discharge him until he had had another day to finish his novel. As a result, he missed the heavy fighting the next day, when many of his close friends were killed.
He was awarded his PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in 1944; shortly afterwards, he married Edith Laner
Edith Körner
Edith Körner CBE was a British magistrate and reformer of the National Health Service. She was the wife of the philosopher Stephan Körner and mother of the mathematician Thomas Körner and the biochemist, writer and translator Ann M. Körner.-Biography:Born Edita Leah Löwy in Znojmo, Czechoslovakia,...
("Diti"; born Edita Leah Löwy; in 1938/39, her father changed the family name to Laner in a vain attempt to deceive the Nazis into thinking that he and his family were not Jewish), a fellow Czech refugee, whom he had met in London in 1941. He remained in the Czechoslovak army until 1946.
Academic career
After his army service, he worked at Cardiff UniversityCardiff University
Cardiff University is a leading research university located in the Cathays Park area of Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom. It received its Royal charter in 1883 and is a member of the Russell Group of Universities. The university is consistently recognised as providing high quality research-based...
, tutoring students in German. He took up his first academic post in 1947, lecturing in philosophy at the University of Bristol
University of Bristol
The University of Bristol is a public research university located in Bristol, United Kingdom. One of the so-called "red brick" universities, it received its Royal Charter in 1909, although its predecessor institution, University College, Bristol, had been in existence since 1876.The University is...
; he worked ten or more hours a day, six days a week, in what his son would describe as "[working] at philosophy like a man works at coal mining". Within six years, in 1952, he was appointed to the sole professorship and chairmanship of his department, which he would hold until 1979. In 1965 and 1966 he was Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and from 1968 to 1971 a Pro-Vice-Chancellor.
During this time he worked as a visiting professor of philosophy at Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
in 1957, 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...
in 1960, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1963, University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
in 1964 and Indiana University
Indiana University
Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...
in 1967. In 1970 he returned to Yale with a tenured visiting professorship in philosophy, holding it jointly with the Bristol post for nine years, and then as his sole post from 1979 to 1984. Bristol appointed him a professor emeritus on his retirement, and he subsequently held a visiting professorship at the University of Graz
University of Graz
The University of Graz , a university located in Graz, Austria, is the second-largest and second-oldest university in Austria....
from 1980 to 1989.
He received honorary doctorates from the Queen's University Belfast in 1981, and Graz in 1984, where he was appointed to an honorary professorship in 1986. Bristol appointed him an honorary fellow in 1987, as did Trinity Hall in 1991.
He was President of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science
British Society for the Philosophy of Science
The British Society for the Philosophy of Science is a philosophical society based in England whose purpose is to promote the study of philosophy of science....
in 1965, the Aristotelian Society
Aristotelian Society
The Aristotelian Society for the Systematic Study of Philosophy was founded at a meeting on 19 April 1880, at 17 Bloomsbury Square which resolved "to constitute a society of about twenty and to include ladies; the society to meet fortnightly, on Mondays at 8 o'clock, at the rooms of the Spelling...
in 1967, the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science
International Union of History and Philosophy of Science
The International Union of History and Philosophy of Science is one of the members of the International Council for Science . It was founded in 1955 by merging the International Union of History of Science and the International Union of Philosophy of Science , and consists of two divisions, the...
in 1969, and the Mind Association
Mind Association
The Mind Association is a philosophical society whose purpose is to promote the study of philosophy. The association publishes the journal Mind quarterly....
in 1973. He edited the journal Ratio from 1961 to 1980, and was on the editorial board of Erkenntnis from 1974-1999. In 1967 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.
Philosophical work
In 1955 he published his first two major works. Kant, an introduction for non-specialists to Immanuel Kant'sImmanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
work, went through several impressions over the next three decades and is still regarded as a minor classic in the field; it was one of the first post-war books to reintroduce Kant to the English-speaking world. The fact that in this and later works Korner mistakenly assumed that Kant's categories apply directly to ordinary empirical science, a decisive error in understanding Kant, was little noticed by a public grateful for any short work covering all of Kant's philosophy. The second, Conceptual Thinking, was a more specialised study, studying the way in which people deal with "exact" and "inexact" concepts - exact concepts, like logical constructs or mathematical ideas, could be clearly defined, whilst inexact concepts, like 'colour', would always have unclear boundaries. In 1957 he expanded on this, editing Observation and Interpretation, a collection of papers arising from a seminar which brought together both philosophers and physicists to discuss these questions.
His work led him into the philosophy of mathematics
Philosophy of mathematics
The philosophy of mathematics is the branch of philosophy that studies the philosophical assumptions, foundations, and implications of mathematics. The aim of the philosophy of mathematics is to provide an account of the nature and methodology of mathematics and to understand the place of...
, on which he would publish a textbook in 1960; Philosophy of Mathematics took as its central theme the question of how applied mathematics can be metaphysically possible.
He also wrote on the 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...
in Experience and Theory (1966), including work on theoretical incommensurability, the concept that two directly contradictory theories - such as classical mechanics
Classical mechanics
In physics, classical mechanics is one of the two major sub-fields of mechanics, which is concerned with the set of physical laws describing the motion of bodies under the action of a system of forces...
and relativity
Theory of relativity
The theory of relativity, or simply relativity, encompasses two theories of Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity. However, the word relativity is sometimes used in reference to Galilean invariance....
- can coexist, without either being specifically "wrong".
In 1969 he published What is Philosophy?, and in 1970 Categorial Frameworks, attempts to put forward his views to a general audience. Experience and Conduct, published in 1979, discussed how we evaluate and develop our own preferences and value systems; his final work, Metaphysics: Its Structure and Function (1984) was a wide-ranging study of metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
.
Personal life
Körner was remembered by colleagues and pupils as "extraordinarily handsome with an astonishing Czech accent ... [with] a certain sense of grandeur about him". He retained an old-fashioned sense of manners, formal but courteous, as well as a formal appearance. Even on the hottest days, he was never seen without a tie and jacket.He lived a happy and contented home life; he and Edith were remembered by friends as exceptionally close and devoted to one another. In their early married life they fitted the conventional academic mould - whilst he worked incessantly at his studies, she raised the family, looked after the house, managed the finances - but after the children had grown and left she worked at her own career, eventually becoming the chairman of the magistrates' court in Bristol and overseeing the redevelopment of the National Health Service's
National Health Service
The National Health Service is the shared name of three of the four publicly funded healthcare systems in the United Kingdom. They provide a comprehensive range of health services, the vast majority of which are free at the point of use to residents of the United Kingdom...
information-management system. Edith managed their lives, as with everything else, in a practical, organised and forceful way, ensuring that he could work as freely as possible; he was fond of saying that "Diti does everything, but leaves the philosophy to me".
The couple had two children - Thomas, a professor of mathematics, and Ann, a biochemist, writer and translator, who married Sidney Altman
Sidney Altman
Sidney Altman is a Canadian American molecular biologist, who is currently the Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and Chemistry at Yale University. In 1989 he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Thomas R...
, a professor at Yale University. In 1989, Professor Altman won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature,...
. Following Edith's diagnosis with advanced cancer in the summer of 2000, the two chose to commit suicide together. They were found, according to the police report, with plastic bags tied around their heads and pillows on top of them, that August after fifty-six years of marriage; they were survived by both children and by four grandchildren, one of whom is Daniel Altman
Daniel Altman
Daniel Altman is an American-born economist and writer. He is Director of Thought Leadership at Dalberg Global Development Advisors. He is also the founder and president of North Yard Economics, a not-for-profit consulting firm that provides high-quality economic analysis to governments and...
.
Publications
- Kant. 1955.
- Conceptual Thinking. 1955.
- (ed) Observation and Interpretation: a symposium of philosophers and physicists. 1957.
- The Philosophy of Mathematics. 1960, Dover Publications, ISBN 0-486-25048-2.
- Experience and Theory 1966.
- What is Philosophy?. 1969.
- Categorial Frameworks. 1970.
- (ed) Practical Reason. 1974.
- (ed) Explanation. 1976.
- Experience and Conduct. 1976.
- Metaphysics: its structure and function. 1984.
See also
- Schema (Kant)Schema (Kant)In Kantian philosophy, a schema is the procedural rule by which a category or pure, non-empirical concept is associated with a mental image of an object...