Max Black
Max Black (24 February 1909, Baku, Russian Empire [present-day Azerbaijan] – 27 August 1988, Ithaca, New York, United States) was a distinguished Anglo-American philosopher, who was a leading influence in analytic philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century. He made contributions to the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mathematics and science, and the philosophy of art, also publishing studies of the work of philosophers such as Frege. His translation (with Peter Geach) of Frege's published philosophical writing is a classic text.
Black was born in Azerbaijan. He grew up in London, England, where his family had moved in 1912, when Black was three years old. He studied mathematics at Queens' College, Cambridge where he developed an interest in the philosophy of mathematics. Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, G. E. Moore, and Frank P. Ramsey were all at Cambridge at that time, and their influence on Black may have been considerable.
He graduated in 1930 and was awarded a fellowship to study at Göttingen for a year.
From 1931-36, he was mathematics master at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle.
He received a Ph.D. from the University of London in 1939. He immigrated to the United States in 1940 and became a naturalized citizen in 1948.
His first book was The nature of mathematics (1933), an exposition of Principia Mathematica and of current developments in the philosophy of mathematics.
Black had made notable contributions to the metaphysics of identity. In his "The Identity of Indiscernables," Black presents an objection to Leibniz' Law by means of a hypothetical in which he conceives two distinct spheres having exactly the same properties.
He lectured in mathematics at the Institute of Education in London from 1936 to 1940. In 1940 he moved to the United States and joined Philosophy Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 1946 he accepted a professorship in philosophy at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. In 1948, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
His brother was the architect Sir Misha Black.
Representative Works
- Black, M. (1937). "Vagueness: An exercise in logical analysis." Philosophy of Science 4: 427–455. Reprinted in R. Keefe, P. Smith (eds.): Vagueness: A Reader, MIT Press 1997, ISBN 978-0262611459
- Black, M. (1962). Models and metaphors: Studies in language and philosophy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed.
External links
- Biography at the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
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