Region Western philosophy Name Emile Meyerson | Role Epistemologist | |
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Born 12 February 1859 Lublin, Kingdom of Poland Main interests History and philosophy of science, epistemology, general relativity Notable ideas Principle of lawfulness, principle of causality Died December 2, 1933, Paris, France Areas of interest History and philosophy of science, General relativity, Epistemology Influenced Thomas Kuhn, Gaston Bachelard Books Identité et réalité, Du cheminement de la penseé Influenced by Auguste Comte, Albert Einstein | ||
Schools of thought Epistemological realism | ||
Émile Meyerson ([mɛjɛʁsɔn]; 12 February 1859 – 2 December 1933) was a Polish-born French epistemologist, chemist, and philosopher of science. Meyerson was born in Lublin, Poland. He died in his sleep of a heart attack at the age of 74.
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Biography
Meyerson was educated at the University of Heidelberg and studied chemistry under Robert Wilhelm Bunsen. In 1882 Meyerson settled in Paris. He served as foreign editor of the Havas news agency, and later as the director of the Jewish Colonization Association for Europe and Asia Minor. He became a naturalized French citizen after World War I.
Thomas Kuhn cites Meyerson's work as influential while developing the ideas for his main work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
In La Déduction relativiste, Meyerson expressed the view that Einstein's general theory of relativity was a new version of the identification of matter with space, which he considered "the postulate upon which the whole (Cartesian) system rests."