Max Black
| Max Black | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
February 24, 1909 Baku, Russian Empire |
| Died | August 27, 1988 (aged 79) Ithaca, New York |
| Nationality | British American (naturalized) |
| Alma mater | Queens' College, Cambridge |
| Notable work | The Identity of Indiscernibles |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western Philosophy |
| School | Analytic philosophy |
| Institutions |
Institute of Education University of Illinois Cornell University |
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Main interests
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Philosophy of language Philosophy of mathematics Philosophy of science Philosophy of art |
|
Notable ideas
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Criticism of Leibniz' Law |
Max Black (24 February 1909 – 27 August 1988) was a British-American philosopher, who was a figure in analytic philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century. He made contributions to the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mathematics and science, and the philosophy of art, also publishing studies of the work of philosophers such as Frege. His translation (with Peter Geach) of Frege's published philosophical writing is a classic text.
Born in Baku, Russian Empire (now Azerbaijan) of Jewish descent, Black grew up in London, where his family had moved in 1912. He studied mathematics at Queens' College, Cambridge where he developed an interest in the philosophy of mathematics. Russell, Wittgenstein, G. E. Moore, and Ramsey were all at Cambridge at that time, and their influence on Black may have been considerable. He graduated in 1930 and was awarded a fellowship to study at Göttingen for a year.
From 1931–36, he was mathematics master at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle.
His first book was The Nature of Mathematics (1933), an exposition of Principia Mathematica and of current developments in the philosophy of mathematics.
Black had made notable contributions to the metaphysics of identity. In his "The Identity of Indiscernibles", Black presents an objection to Leibniz' Law by means of a hypothetical scenario in which he conceives two distinct spheres having exactly the same properties, thereby contradicting Leibniz' second principle in his formulation of "The Identity of Indiscernibles". By virtue of there being two objects, albeit with identical properties, the existence of two objects, even in a void, denies their identicality.
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