Ernest Nagel Article Index for
Ernest
Website Links For
Ernest
 

Information About

Ernest Nagel




Nagel emigrated to the United States at the age of 10. He received a BS from New York's City College in 1923 and earned his PhD from Columbia University in 1930. He taught for one year (1966-1967) at Rockefeller University , but otherwise spent the rest of his academic career at Columbia University , where, in 1967, he became a University Professor.

His masterpiece, ''The Structure of Science'', published in 1961 , practically inaugurated the field of Analytic Philosophy Of Science . He invented the idea that, by stating analytic equivalencies (or "bridge laws") between the terms of different sciences, one reduced ontological commitment to the entities postulated by the more basic science. Alongside Rudolf Carnap , Hans Reichenbach , and Carl Hempel , he remains one of the most enduring figures of the Logical Positivist school. Nagel also served as an editor of the ''Journal of Philosophy'' (1939-1956) and of the ''Journal of Symbolic Logic'' (1940-1946).

In 1958 he published with James R. Newman ''Gödel's proof'', a celebrated monography about Gödel 's celebrated paper.