Region Western Philosophy Role Philosopher | Name Lawrence Sklar | |
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Awards Guggenheim Fellowship for Humanities, US & Canada Influenced by Isaac Newton, Hans Reichenbach, Ludwig Boltzmann Books Space - Time - and Spacetime, Physics and Chance, Philosophy and the Foundati, Theory and Truth, Explanation - Law - and Cause Similar People Isaac Newton, Hans Reichenbach, Ludwig Boltzmann, Carl Gustav Hempel, Bas van Fraassen | ||
Main interests Philosophy of physics | ||
Lawrence Sklar (born June 25, 1938) is an American philosopher. He is the Carl G. Hempel and William K. Frankena Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan.
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Education
Sklar was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1938 and educated at Oberlin College (B.A., 1954–1958) and Princeton University (M.A., Ph.D., 1959–1964).
Career
He worked at Swarthmore College from 1962 to 1966, first as an instructor and then as an assistant professor. He then worked at Princeton University until 1968. Since 1968, he has been at The University of Michigan, where he is now a Distinguished University Professor.
He has held visiting professorships at The University of Illinois (1963), The University of Pennsylvania (1968), Harvard University (1970), UCLA (1973) and Wayne State University (1977).
He specializes in the Philosophy of physics, approaching a wide range of issues from a position best described as highly skeptical of many of the metaphysical conclusions commonly drawn in the physical sciences. He advocates the 'MIMO' (metaphysics in, metaphysics out) principle, claiming that much of the metaphysical content of interpreted theories in the special sciences arises from metaphysical assumptions made during their formulation.