F. S. C. Northrop

Filmer Stuart Cuckow Northrop (November 27, 1893 in Janesville, Wisconsin – July 21, 1992 in Exeter, New Hampshire) was an American philosopher. After receiving a B.A. from Beloit College in 1915, and an MA from Yale University in 1919, he went on to Harvard University where he earned another MA in 1922 and a Ph.D. in 1924.

He was appointed to the Yale faculty in 1923 as an instructor in Philosophy, and later was named professor in 1932. In 1947 he was appointed Sterling Professor of Philosophy and Law. He chaired the Philosophy department from 1938 to 1940 and was the first Master of Silliman College from 1940 to 1947.

Northrop was personally acquainted with and close to a great number of leading figures in philosophy, politics, and science. These included G. H. Hardy, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Erwin Schroedinger, Hermann Weyl, Norbert Wiener, Mao Zedong, John Foster Dulles and Mohammed Iqbal, among many others. For instance, see the dedication to "Man, Nature, and God."

He was the author of twelve books and innumerable articles on all major branches of philosophy. Chapter-length studies of seven of these books can be found in Fred Seddon’s An Introduction to the Philosophical Works of F. S. C. Northrop.

Northrop’s major contribution to philosophy is in the area of epistemology, specifically his theory of concepts. He divides all concepts into two kinds: intuition and postulation. For Northrop, the source of the meaning of the concept is the source of its difference. This can be seen from the definitions of these concepts. A concept by intuition is one which denotes, and the complete meaning of which is given by something that is immediately apprehended. Northrop gives blue in "the sense of the sensed color" as an example of a concept by intuition. (The Logic of Science and Humanities, p. 82.)

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