Branislav Petronijević

Branislav Petronijević (Serbian Cyrillic: Бранислав Петронијевић; 6 April 1875 – 4 March 1954) was a Serbian philosopher and scientist (paleontologist) who wrote books primarily in three languages, Serbian, German and French fluently. Researched abroad and in Serbia, his major work is the two-volume, 1904-1911 Prinzipien der Metaphysik (Principles of Metaphysics), first published in Heidelberg in 1904. He later became a professor at the University of Belgrade. As a scientist, he was the first to distinguish between the genus Archaeopteryx and the genus Archaeornis; he also discovered new characteristics of the genera Tritylodon and Moeritherium. Petronijević's great scientific fame, however, is nearly eclipsed by his still greater philosophical renown, which he owes to his three principal philosophical works, Principi Metafizike (Principles of Metaphysics), O Vrednosti života (About Value of Life), Istorija novije filozofije (History of a Newer Philosophy).

Branislav Petronijević, world-renowned Serbian philosopher and paleontologist, was born in a small village of Sovljak, near Ub, Serbia, on 25 March 1875, the son of a priest, originally from Montenegro. He had as a youth a taste for collecting objects of natural history and other curiosities while a student at a gymnasium (high school) in Valjevo and the Grande école in Belgrade. This led him to the study of medicine, which he went to Vienna to pursue, eventually after the third semester directing his attention to psychiatry, philosophy, biology and paleontology. Petronijević joined the Philosophical Society of the University of Vienna and studied under Ludwig Boltzmann. After years in Vienna he travelled to Germany with a view to further philosophical study. There he studied at the University of Leipzig under Johannes Volkelt, Wilhelm Ostwald, and Ernst Mach. With his metaphysical writings,"Der ontologische Beweis fűr das Dasein des Absoluten," he proved himself a worthy student of Professor Wilhelm Wundt, "the father of experimental psychology," successfully defending his thesis in 1898. From Leipzig he went back to Belgrad, where he wrote and published "Der Satz vom Grunde" in 1898. It was during this period, however, that he thought out and developed what is distinctive in his philosophical doctrine. His eclecticism, his ontology and his philosophy of history were declared in principle and in most of their salient details in the "Prinzipen der Metaphysik" (2 volumes, Heidelberg, 1904–1911) and "Die typischen Geometrien und das Unendliche" (Heidelberg, 1907).

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