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Max Black (24 February 1909,
Baku,
Russian Empire [now
Azerbaijan] – 27 August 1988,
Ithaca, New York,
United States) was a distinguished
British-
American -
Azeri philosopher of Jewish descent, who was a leading influence 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.
Black was born in Azerbaijan. He grew up in London, England, where his family had moved in 1912, when Black was three years old. 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 Indescernibles". By virtue of there being two objects, albeit with identical properties, the existence of two objects, even in a void, denies their identicality.
He lectured in mathematics at the Institute of Education in London from 1936 to 1940. In 1940 he moved to the United States and joined Philosophy Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 1946 he accepted a professorship in philosophy at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. In 1948, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
His younger brother was the architect Sir Misha Black.
Representative works
Black, Max (1937). "Vagueness: An exercise in logical analysis". Philosophy of Science 4: 427–455. Reprinted in R. Keefe, P. Smith (eds.): Vagueness: A Reader, MIT Press 1997, ISBN 978-0262611459
Black, Max (1949). Language and philosophy: Studies in method, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Black, Max (1954). “Metaphor,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 55, pp. 273–294.
Black, Max (1962). Models and metaphors: Studies in language and philosophy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Black, Max (1979). “More about Metaphor,” in A. Ortony (ed): Metaphor & Thought.
References
Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed.
External links
Biography at the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
Guide to the Max Black Papers, Cornell University Library
The Prevalence of Humbug, The Prevalence of Humbug and Other Essays (Cornell University Press, 1983.
Category:1909 births
Category:1988 deaths
Category:Academics of the Institute of Education
Category:Alumni of Queens' College, Cambridge
Category:Analytic philosophers
Category:Azerbaijani Jews
Category:Azerbaijani immigrants to the United States
Category:British Jews
Category:Cornell University faculty
Category:Guggenheim Fellows
Category:Jewish philosophers
Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States
Category:People from Baku
Category:Philosophers of language
Category:Philosophers of science
Category:Metaphor theorists
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![Plan of Nimrud, by Felix Jones bef.1920[4]](http://web.archive.org./web/20101229133741im_/http://cdn.wn.com/pd/a0/b6/1425e23e14eb09bf7249bf495cc9_grande.jpg "Plan of Nimrud, by Felix Jones bef.1920[4]")
![Plan of Nimrud, by Felix Jones bef.1920[4]](http://web.archive.org./web/20101229133741im_/http://cdn.wn.com/pd/a0/b6/1425e23e14eb09bf7249bf495cc9_thumb.jpg "Plan of Nimrud, by Felix Jones bef.1920[4]")
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