Max Black

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Max Black

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

Religion

Jewish

Era

20th-century philosophy

Region

Western Philosophy

School

Analytic philosophy

Institutions

Institute of Education
University of Illinois
Cornell University

Main interests

Philosophy of language
Philosophy of mathematics
Philosophy of science
Philosophy of art

Notable ideas

Criticism of Leibniz' Law

Influences[show]

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.
Contents
[hide]

1Life and career

2Selected bibliography

3References

4External links

Life and career[edit]

Born in Baku, Russian Empire (now Azerbaijan) of Jewish descent,[1] 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 Gttingen for a year.
From 193136, 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.

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 the Philosophy Department at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. In 1946 he accepted a professorship in philosophy at Cornell University. In
1948, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Black advised the philosophy
dissertation of American novelist William H. Gass. He was elected a Fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963.[2]Black died in Ithaca, New York age 79. His younger brother
was the architect Sir Misha Black.

Selected bibliography[edit]

Black, Max (1937). "Vagueness: An exercise in logical analysis". Philosophy of Science 4:

427455. Reprinted in R. Keefe, P. Smith (eds.): Vagueness: A Reader, MIT Press 1997, ISBN
978-0-262-61145-9

Black, Max (1949). Language and philosophy: Studies in method, Ithaca: Cornell University
Press.

Black, Max (1954). Metaphor, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 55, pp. 273294.

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[edit]
1.
2.

Jump up^ Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed.

Jump up^ "Book of Members, 17802010: Chapter B" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and
Sciences. Retrieved July 26, 2011.

External links[edit]

O'Connor, J.J. and Robertson, E.F., "Max Black: Biography", School of Mathematics and
Statistics, University of St Andrews, Scotland.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Black 7.11.16