Ernest Nagel, the American philosopher of science, was born at Nove Mesto, Czechoslovakia and came to the United States at the age of ten, becoming naturalized in 1919. He was graduated from City College in 1923 and received an MA in mathematics from Columbia in 1925 and a PhD in philosophy in 1930. He served as the John Dewey professor of philosophy at Columbia University from 1955 to 1966, then took the position of university professor there until 1970, becoming emeritus in 1970. He expressed indebtedness to the teachings of Morris R. Cohen, John Dewey, and Frederick J. E. Woodbridge and to the writings of Charles S. Peirce, Bertrand Russell, and George Santayana.

Philosophy of Science

Nagel belonged to the naturalist and logical empiricist movements, and he is primarily noted for his contributions to the philosophy of science. In 1934 he published, with Morris R. Cohen, An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method...