Synthese (2011) 181:157–180

DOI 10.1007/s11229-009-9592-y

Hans Reichenbach in Istanbul

Gürol Irzık

Received: 13 May 2009 / Accepted: 8 June 2009 / Published online: 4 July 2009
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract Fleeing from the Nazi regime, along with many German refugees, Hans
Reichenbach came to teach at Istanbul University in 1933, accepting the invitation
of the Turkish government and stayed in Istanbul until 1938. While much is known
about his work and life in Istanbul, the existing literature relies mostly on his letters
and works. In this article I try to shed more light on Reichenbach’s scholarly activities
and personal life by also taking into account the Turkish sources and the academic
context in which Reichenbach taught and worked.

Keywords Reichenbach · Life · Work · Istanbul University · German émigrés

1 The University Reform of 1933 and the Road to Istanbul

In 1933 Adolf Hitler became the chancellor of Germany, and the very same year a
comprehensive university reform was being put into effect in the Republic of Turkey,
which had been founded only 10 years earlier in 1923 under the leadership of Mustafa
Kemal Atatürk. As a result of historical coincidence, what was a disastrous event in
Germany gave an opportunity to the Turkish government to implement its goal of
reforming higher education in Turkey.
Between 1923 and 1933 a series of revolutionary reforms—political, social, legal,
and cultural—were put into effect in order to modernize Turkish society, and reform-
ing the system of education was among the top priorities of the leaders of the young
Republic who knew that the success of modernization depended heavily on education.
For this purpose the famous philosopher John Dewey was invited by the ministry of
education back in 1924, only 1 year after the founding of the Republic. Dewey stayed

G. Irzık (B)
Philosophy Department, Boğaziçi University, 34342 Istanbul, Bebek, Turkey
e-mail: irzik@boun.edu.tr

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for two months and submitted a report about how the educational system in Turkey
should be reformed. His report, however, focused on the primary and secondary school
system and contained very little about higher education. With respect to the latter, it
said:

I was not able to give attention to higher education. In general, the university1
seems to have made a most promising beginning. Of course special attention
should be paid to the selection of its teachers, to secure men who are throughly
trained in modern methods and who are devoted to the improvement of the
intellectual condition of Turkey. A system of fellowships for foreign continued
studies to be awarded to students in subjects in which they have made the best
record and shown unusual promise would be an assistance. (Dewey 2007, p. 135)

At the time there was only one “university,” or more correctly, only one institution
of higher education in Turkey, namely, Darülfünun in Istanbul, and its condition and
function were still a matter of constant public debate almost a decade after the forma-
tion of the Republic. In 1931 the Turkish government took a decisive step to initiate
a reform regarding Darülfünun and invited Albert Malche, a professor of pedagogy
at the University of Geneva, to write a report about it. Malche visited Turkey in early
1932 and then submitted his report in May 1932. The report was very critical of the
existing state of Darülfünun and called for a comprehensive reform. Basically, the
report said that Darülfünun was no more than a teaching institution that produced no
research or publications; it had so great an autonomy that it had lost touch with the
government and the rest of the society; the teaching methods of the professors were
archaic, resulting in students’ rote memorization; professors’ salaries were low, forc-
ing them to take extra jobs; very few students knew any foreing language, and so on
(Widmann 1999, pp. 75–76). Malche came to Turkey in May 1933 again and stayed
almost a year as an official adviser to the Turkish government.
The real architect of the university reform, however, was Reşit Galib, the minister
of education at the time. Especially with his efforts, the university reform law was
passed during the last day of May of 1933, and accordingly Darülfünun was abolished
on July 31st and Istanbul University was founded the next day. It soon became clear
that the reform at the same time meant liquidation. 157 out of 240 faculty members of
Darülfünun were dismissed from their positions, and 71 of those who lost their jobs
were full professors (Bilsel 1943, p. 37).2 In a letter to Philipp Schwartz, who, as we
shall see, played a critical role in hiring refugee professors at the newly founded Istan-
bul University, Reşit Galib wrote that Darülfünun, from its buildings to its professors,
was so old that it had to be overhauled completely (Kazancıgil and Er 1999, p. 62).
With a speech he gave the very next day, in which he complained that Darülfünun
did not enthusiastically embrace, and often stayed “impartial” to the political, legal
and cultural reforms of the young Republic, Darülfünun was abolished (Bahadır 2007,

1 Dewey is referring to Darülfünun here. See below.

2 Among those who were fired was İsmail Hakkı Baltacıoğlu, one of the former rectors of Darülfünun from
1923 to 1924. However, it should be noted that a good many of them were appointed to other (often lesser)
positions at one or another level of the educational system.

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p. 65; Bilsel 1943, pp. 34–35). Thus, the reasons behind the dismissals were not only
academic, but also political.
As Emily Apter has observed, firings at both ends played a critical role in the Turk-
ish university reform and it was “nothing short of historical irony that, in many cases,
a Turk’s job lost was a German’s job gained” (Apter 2003, p. 266), even though the
émigré professors could not have known this. On the other hand, what the Turkish
reformers did was simply sieze a unique opportunity that history presented to them.
In May of 1933, Malche contacted Philipp Schwartz in Zürich, informing him of pos-
sible teaching positions in Istanbul (Widmann 1999, pp. 91 and 380). Schwartz was a
doctor of medicine who had become the informal leader of a group of German scholars
in exile in Zürich, called “Emergency Assistance Organization for German Scholars”
(EAOGS, for short). The group had quickly and successfully organized itself, prepared
profiles of German scholars on exile and looked for opportunities to find them jobs.
For this purpose Schwartz visited Turkey twice, once on July 5 and another on July 25,
1933. During his brief first visit, he met Reşit Galib and his 20 staff in Ankara on the
6th of July. Schwartz presented the profiles of German scholars he had brought with
him. Hans Reichenbach’s name first came up in this meeting (Widmann 1999, p. 96).
At the end of a long day, Schwartz was thrilled that Turkey was willing to hire 30 pro-
fessors from his list. This was the first big success of EAOGS. Moreover, Reşit Galib
also offered his government’s help with those scholars who were in concentration
camps or under detention. Indeed, soon after three professors were freed from arrest
thanks to the intervention of the Turkish government. These were sociologist Gerhard
Kessler, radiologist Friedrich Dessauer and dentist Alfred Kantorowicz (Tachau 2002,
p. 237).
While visiting Turkey, Schwartz was also asked to help with the building and orga-
nization of new facilities such as an observatory. The task was beyond his powers.
Thus, upon his recommendation, three world-famous scientists from Göttingen were
brought to Turkey as advisors: mathematician Richard Courant, Nobel laurate physi-
cists Max Born and James Franck. Their stay of a few weeks was important for two
reasons. Their valuable scientific advice and evaluation not only played an important
role in convincing the Turkish officials that the reform plan would be a success, but
also created a positive image of Turkey in the eyes of the scholars in exile (Schwartz
2003, p. 51).
A definitive agreement was reached on July 6, but a temporary setback occurred
unexpectedly. In mid-August Reşit Galip, the minister of education, resigned from
his post, which was taken over temporarily by Refik Saydam, who was the minister
of health at the time. For 2 weeks the process was interrupted. At the end of August,
Schwartz demanded a statement from Turkish officials, and he got it the next day
from Refik Saydam, assuring him that the Turkish government would honor its com-
mitments. Indeed, contracts were signed by the professors and the Turkish consulate
in Geneva in the presence of Malche (Widmann 1999, pp. 95–96).3 All 30 German

3 On September 17, Albert Einstein, as the honorary president of World Union “OSE”, had sent a letter to
İsmet İnönü, the prime minister of Turkey at the time, urging him to allow “forty experienced specialists and
prominent scholars” to work in Turkey. It may be that Einstein was asked to intervene due to the temporary
setback. “Who contacted Einstein?” and “why forty?”, on the other hand, are questions whose answers I do

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refugee professors, including Hans Reichenbach, arrived in Istanbul with their families
in October 1933. Some of them, though not Reichenbach, had brought their assistants
with them. Reichenbach came with his wife and two children. It is estimated that
altogether a total of 150 refugees came at that time (Cremer and Przytulla n.d., p. 22).
The major criterion for the selection of émigré scholars invited to Turkey was
that they be “accomplished”. None of them were interviewed, their cv’s were simply
communicated in the 6th of July meeting by Schwartz to Reşit Galib and his staff,
who generally agreed. Reichenbach clearly satisfied the condition of being accom-
plished, but it is also worth mentioning that his being a leading representative of
scientific philosophy happily coincided with the “positivistic” founding ideology of
the early Republic. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s famous saying “The true path in life is
positive/natural science,” which decorates every school in Turkey even today, is a good
expression of this outlook. More tellingly, during his visit to Samsun High school in
1930 Atatürk attended a philosophy class, and after hearing the lecture that contained
much metaphysics, he turned to the students and said:

Students, I listened to your valuable teacher with attention and pleasure. I saw
that you paid similar attention and listened to the lecture with pleasure. I learned
from him and I thank him. But I did not quite get where philosophy was in
all this. For me, philosophy means science; thoughts which are founded not on
positive science, but only on metaphysical issues are not called “philosophy”,
but “theology” (“ilm-i kelam”). The philosophy wanted and longed for by the
Turkish people is a philosophy that would take them to positive science, positive
facts. Any other philosophy is a waste of time, a futile effort after useless ideas.
(Quoted in Kafadar 2000/2001, p. 55)4

2 Reichenbach’s reasons for choosing Istanbul University

Even though Reichenbach received an offer from Oxford as well, he chose to go to

Istanbul University. In a letter to Hook, he explained that Istanbul University’s offer
was better. Whereas Oxford University offered him only a one-year position, Istanbul
University’s offer was for 5 years and renewable. Furthermore, at Istanbul Univer-
sity Reichenbach would be employed as a full (“ordentlicher”) professor and paid
well: “The personal position is good, indeed. We get a salary of 6,600 pounds = 5,300
dollars, which is considerably more than the same amount over there because of the

Footnote 3 continued
not know. Einstein’s letter appeared in Turkish daily Hürriyet on 29 October 2006. A copy of the Turkish
translation of Reichenbach’s contract in Istanbul University Archives indicates that Reichenbach signed his
contract, effective from 15 October 1933, on the October 4 in the same year in Geneva.
4 Interestingly, Adnan Adıvar, a prominent doctor of medicine, politician and author who wrote the first
book on the history of Ottoman science, met Reichenbach at the philosophy of science conference in Paris
in 1935 and asked him head on whether he was chosen to teach at Istanbul University because his philo-
sophical outlook was in congruence with the new university’s ideology. Reichenbach replied that he did
not know but that he had not come across any evidence to that effect (see Adıvar 1945, p. 127).

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cheapness of living costs”.5 In addition, Reichenbach’s contract allowed him to cover

his and his family’s moving expenses both to and from Istanbul upon his departure
for good as well as his travel expenses to attend academic meetings. Finally, in case
of illness he would receive one year’s salary and in case of death the same amount
would be paid to his wife or non-adult children.
There is another reason why Reichenbach chose to go to Istanbul University.
In the same letter to Hook, Reichenbach cited the following reason before any other:
“The prospect of contributing to the foundation of a new university in a position of
responsibility lured me a great deal…”6 This implies that he had not only heard about
the Istanbul University reform before coming to Turkey, but also held the hope that
he could contribute to it. In an interview, Maria Reichenbach confirmed this:

At the hands of Mustafa Kemal Pasha, or Atatürk, the father of the Turks, as he
used to be called, Turkey experienced quite an intellectual revolution. He saw
this great opportunity to build up the university of Istanbul with the help of about
35 refugee professors in all major fields…This foreign faculty was outstanding.
Its members were given five year contracts and ample financial support to build
up whatever institutes were needed. (Güzeldere 2005, p. 78)

Reichenbach had a clear idea about what a university must be like, or at least he did
in his lengthy article “Socializing the University”, which he wrote back in 1918 as a
young academician (Reichenbach 1918/1978). This article was the result of Reichen-
bach’s early participation with the student movements such as the Freistudentenschaft
(see Wipf 1994 for details). It summarizes his vision of the university and sheds light
on his academic activities, hopes and disappointments at Istanbul University.
In that article Reichenbach argued that both knowledge and the university as the
principal site for knowledge production are ends in themselves. In a Millian and Pop-
perian spirit before Popper, he took the critical approach as crucial to the functioning
of the university: we can err but learn from our mistakes. Thus, the plurality of view-
points and their free expression and dissemination are essential. The university must
be autonomous, and the faculty should have complete freedom over their courses.
All academic rights must be granted regardless of class, political view, religion and
sect, race, sex, or citizenship. The sole criterion for being a member of the univer-
sity community is scientific qualification. This applies not just to teachers but also
to students. The university is only for the most gifted students, not for everybody.
Of course, all students—male or female, rich or poor—must be given equal opportu-
nity to be admitted to the university, based on talent and academic achievement.
As a socialist, Reichenbach was well aware of the impact of social class on the
scholarly success of students. He discussed at some length the materialist concep-
tion of history, according to which economic conditions influence the development of

5 “Zwar, die persönliche Stellung is gut. Wir bekommen hier ein Gehalt von 6600 türkischen Pfund = 5,300
Dollar, was wegen der Billigkeit der Lebenshaltung hier noch wesentlich mehr ist als die gleiche Summe
drüben”. HR 013-46-99. Letter from Reichenbach to Hook, 31 January 1935. Reichenbach’ salary was
more than four times the highest salary paid to his Turkish equivalents (see Bilsel 1943, p. 42).
6 “Die Aussicht, an der Gründung einer neuen Universität in verantwortlicher Stelle mitzuwirken lockte
mich sehr”.

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intellectual and cultural life and argued that this should be understood probabilisti-
cally, not deterministically as if there were a one-to-one relationship between the two.
At any rate, formal democratic equality must be supplemented by economic equality,
which, he believed, could only be achieved in a socialist state. Nevertheless, there are
a number of policies that can be put into effect even in the existing system to improve
the chances of poor students, such as the removal of all fees and tuition, the building
of dormitories and the like. Reichenbach placed special emphasis on the equality of
men and women.
The selection of the faculty requires, according to Reichenbach, the highest sci-
entific standards. Scientifically unqualified teachers must be removed. All teachers
must be paid a full salary regardless of rank, and all must be included in retirement
pension schemes. They must be actively involved in the governance of the univer-
sity through faculty councils. Their teaching must conform to pedagogical principles;
that is, classes must be taught in the form of seminars in which students must learn
to think critically and independently, large classes must be divided into smaller dis-
cussion groups, exams should not measure sheer information which encourages rote
memorizing, and so on. Rich libraries (both general and special) are sine qua non for
a good education. At the end of the article, Reichenbach laments that philosophy has
degenerated into a historical discipline and demands that systematic philosophy, which
is problem oriented, must be given priority over history of philosophy. He explicitly
states that philosophy should be the systematic study of the sciences and nothing else,
signaling the conception of scientific philosophy that he later adopted and articulated
more fully. The following may serve as a conclusion of Reichenbach’s article: “But
all these improvements…can be carried out within the framework of a new university,
dedicated to science and learning” (Reichenbach 1918/1978, pp. 176–177).
By 1933 Reichenbach had become one of the leading representatives of scientific
philosophy and started teaching at Istanbul University. What was Istanbul University
like at the time? To what degree did it coincide with his vision of the new university
and how much was he able to accomplish at his new home? It is to these questions
that I now turn.

3 The best German University of its time

Although numerous German professors came to teach at Istanbul University in the

thirties, this was not the first time German scholars were employed at Darülfünun, the
precursor of Istanbul University. For example, about 20 of them taught there between
1915 and 1918. Their areas of specialization varied more or less evenly among natural
sciences, social sciences including law, and humanities. None were philosophers. Due
to the war, however, their impact was extremely limited.7 After the war, the interest
shifted to the French. Between 1920 and 1933 about two dozen French teachers were
employed in the faculties of medicine, science, letters, law and theology. Some of them
continued to teach even after the 1933 reform. With the exception of two, however,

7 For a list of them see Dölen (2007, pp. 97–98).

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none held PhD degrees, and again there were no philosophers among them.8 Thus,
before the influx of German émigré scholars, Istanbul University was mainly under
French influence in most disciplines.
This situation changed radically after 1933. German scholars flooded into Istanbul
University, and scientific quality skyrocketed. As Friedrich Riemann, an émigré pro-
fessor of medicine put it, Istanbul University was “the best German university of its
time” and this was especially true of medicine (Widmann 1999, p. 118, footnote 28).
Indeed, even a cursory look at some of the names would confirm this. But first some
numbers.
In the 1933–1934 academic year, there were 65 full (“ordentlicher”) professors,
38 of whom were non-Turkish, 22 professors (“ausserer ordentlicher”), four of whom
were non-Turkish, and 98 instructors (“Privatdozenten”), all of whom were Turkish
(Aslanapa 1983, p. 27; see also Widmann 1999, p. 107). A vast majority of the non-
Turkish faculty was German. In the 1936–1937 academic year, there were 31 Turkish
and 38 non-Turkish full professors, 20 Turkish and six non-Turkish professors, and 86
lecturers, all of whom were Turkish. As can be seen, all non-Turkish faculty had high
ranks; moreover, almost all of the full professors were department heads. Interestingly,
none of the foreign professors (full or otherwise) were women. In addition, there were
a total of 33 non-Turkish assistants and technicians, some of whom were females,
mostly in the faculty of medicine (Dölen 2007, p. 128). While some left, many more
scholars kept coming to Istanbul University well after 1933, and according to one
estimate, the total number of émigré scholars (including assistants and technicians) at
Istanbul University was over a hundred (Tachau 2002, p. 240). There were a number
of French, Italian, Austrian and Hungarian scholars as well. Clearly, in the 1930s and
1940s Istanbul University was truly cosmopolitan.
As for the scientific quality of the scholars, consider just the following names:
Richard von Mises, Erwin Finley Freundlich, William Prager, Arthur von Hippel, Eric
Auerbach, Leo Spitzer, Helmut Ritter, Andreas Tietze, Alexander Rüstow, Wilhelm
Köpke, Gerhard Kessler, Fritz Neumark, and Ernest Hirsh.9
Along with Reichenbach, the most famous of them was the mathematician Richard
von Mises. Mises left his position at Berlin University and became the chair of mathe-
matics and statistics at Istanbul University in 1933, and taught until 1939, after which
he left for the USA and became a professor of mathematics at Harvard.10 He wrote
Kleines Lehrbuch des Positivismus (translated as Positivism) when he was in Turkey.
Erwin Finley Freundlich was an astronomer who received his PhD at Göttingen
under Felix Klein and was the director of the Einstein Institute in Berlin before join-
ing the Astronomy Department of Istanbul University in 1933. He published a number
of books and articles on relativity theory and was famous for successfully testing Ein-
stein’s general theory of relativity in 1929. He taught at Istanbul University for 3 years,
established an observatory there and later went to the St. Andrews University.11

8 For a complete list see Dölen (2007, pp. 104–105).

9 For a comprehensive list with brief biographical remarks see Widmann (1999) and Reisman (2006).
10 For a scientific biography of Mises, see Siegmund-Schultze (2004).
11 See Klüjber (1965) for a short biography of Freundlich.

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Before coming to Istanbul University, William Prager served as the director of

the Institute of Applied Mathematics at Göttingen. He was best known for his work
on elastic solids. He taught applied mathematics and mechanics at Istanbul Univer-
sity and was very productive there. In addition to articles in international journals,
he published two books for Turkish readers, one in descriptive geometry and one on
mechanics. He stayed in Turkey until 1941, after which he became the director of
Advanced Instruction and Research in Mechanics at Brown University.12
Arthur von Hippel obtained his PhD in physics in 1924. In his autobiographical
article he remarked that “the ‘Bohr Festspiele’ (festival) in Göttingen in June 1922,
organized by Hilbert, Franck, and Born, proved a decisive event” for him to pursue a
career in physics (Hippel 1980, p. 2). Before joining the physics department at Istanbul
University in 1933, he had worked at the Second Physics Institute, under the direc-
torship of James Franck of Göttingen University. Hippel was a pioneer in material
science, radar technology, and what we today call “nanotechnology.” He taught at
Istanbul University for only a year and a half, after which he first went to the Niels
Bohr Institute in Copenhagen upon Bohr’s invitation and then joined the engineering
faculty at MIT in 1936.
In addition to these eminent scientists, there were also a number of very good social
scientists and professors of law at Istanbul University during the same period. Consider,
for example, Alexander Rüstow, who had an extraordinary background and career.
He first studied mathematics, economics, law, and philosophy at Göttingen, Munich
and Berlin, and then received a PhD at the University of Erlangen, where Reichenbach
had also received his PhD, by writing a dissertation on Russellian set theoretical par-
adoxes in 1908, which was published under the title Der Lügner. Theorie, Geschichte
und Auflösung 2 years later (Peckhaus 1995). Apparently, he was also knowledgable
about the pre-Socratic philosophers, especially Parmenides. Afterwards, he served as
an expert for the Ministry of Economy and made a reputation as one of the forerun-
ners of German social market economics, which enabled him to get a professorship
of economics at Istanbul University from 1933 to 1949. He then moved to Germany
and taught at the University of Heidelberg until his retirement.
Wilhem Röpke was a professor of economics who taught at Jena, Graz and Marburg
before joining the department of economics at Istanbul University in 1933. His views
about economics were similar to those of Rüstow, who had had a shaping influence
on him, along with Ludwig von Mises, the brother of Richard von Mises. In 1937
Röpke left for a position at the Institute of International Studies in Geneva. Röpke and
Rüstow were known as “ordoliberals,” associated with the journal Ordo, and played an
important role in shaping the principles of economic policy (known as social market
economics) in Germany after the War (Reisman 2006, pp. 109–112).
Gerhard Kessler studied social sciences at the Universities of Berlin and Leipzig.
Among his teachers were Wilhelm Wundt and Karl Büchner. He received a PhD at the
University of Leipzig in 1905. He was a socialist and a pioneer in the field of social
policy and taught at Jena and Leipzig Universities. He played an important role in the
founding of Turkish Worker’s Syndicate. After leaving Istanbul University, he taught

12 For more on Prager, see O’Connor and Robertson (2005).

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at the University of Göttingen with the help of his old friend Theodore Heuss, the
president of Germany between 1949 and 1959 (Hanlein 2006).
Fritz Neumark remained in Turkey for nearly two decades from 1933 to 1952 and
made significant contributions to Turkey’s modernization, especially in finance law.
Before coming to Istanbul University he taught economics and finance at the University
of Frankfurt, where he later twice served as its rector. His memoirs, published under
the title Zuflucht am Bosphorus, sheds much light on the lives and experiences of the
refugee scholars between 1933 and 1952 (Neumark 2008).
Leaving his post at the University of Frankfurt, Ernest Hirsch taught philosophy of
law, sociology of law, and commercial law at Istanbul University from 1933 to 1943,
after which he taught at Ankara University until 1952. Like Neumark, he contributed
much to the modernization of Turkish law and, like him, published a very detailed
autobiography under the title Aus des Kaisers Zeiten Durch Weimarer Republik in das
Land Atatürks. Upon returning to Germany, he twice served as the rector of the Free
University, Berlin (Hirsch 1997).
Finally, there is a distinguished group of scholars in humanities that is worth men-
tioning. The most famous of them were Eric Auerbach and Leo Spitzer, the founding
fathers of the discipline we call “comparative literature” today. Spitzer was a brilliant
linguist and literary critic who received his PhD under Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke. After
teaching at the universities of Marburg and Cologne, he came to Istanbul University in
1933 and became the chair of Romance Languages and Literatures and the director of
the School of Foreign Languages. In 1936 he left for USA and became a professor of
Romance Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Although he stayed only for 3 years in
Turkey, Spitzer was instrumental in attracting a number of bright scholars to Istanbul
University, including Eric Auerbach, Herbert Dieckmann, Adreas Titze and Traugott
Fuchs. I will mention only Auerbach.
Before coming to Turkey, Auerbach taught philology at the University of Marburg.
He took the position in 1936 that later Spitzer had occupied and taught at Istanbul Uni-
versity until 1947. He wrote his masterpiece, Mimesis, considered to be the founding
text of comparative literature, while in Istanbul. After moving to USA, he taught at
Penn State University, spent some time at Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton
and finally became a professor of Romance philology at Yale.
This list would not be complete without including the names of Helmut Ritter and
Ernst von Aster. Ritter was a famous arabist who taught at the University of Hamburg.
He came to Istanbul University in 1936 and served as the chair of Oriental Studies
until 1949, after which he moved to University of Frankfurt a.M. By all counts, Istan-
bul University had some of the best minds in literary criticism, philology and oriental
studies.
Other than Reichenbach, Ernst von Aster was the only philosopher among the
émigré scholars who taught at Istanbul University during this period. He was a well-
known historian of philosophy and Reichenbach’s teacher back in Germany. It was
Reichenbach who brought him to Turkey. I will say more about him in the next section.
This completes my cursory biographical summary of some of the most eminent
professors at Istanbul University in the thirties. The list above does not include the
professors of medicine. They formed the largest group by far, and modern medicine
in Turkey owes a great deal to them and their students.

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Needless to say, the quality of the teaching staff is only one (even if the most impor-
tant) component of a first-rate university. Its infrastructure (its buildings, libraries, labs
and equipment), its student body and personnel, a collegiate atmosphere, and above
all, a sense of what a university must be like are equally crucial. Istanbul University
did not lack buildings, but had still a long way to go in other aspects, as the memoirs
of émigré scholars amply demonstrate. According to Cemil Bilsel, who served as the
rector of Istanbul University between 1934 and 1943, overall Istanbul University was
at the level of a central European University (Bilsel 1943, p. 55). Even if one found
the title of “the best German university of its time” exaggerated, Istanbul University
certainly came close to Reichenbach’s vision of a university so far as the scientific
qualifications of its professors are concerned.

4 Reichenbach as a teacher and the Chair of the Philosophy Department

As we saw, Istanbul University as a whole was changing rapidly after the 1933 reform.
This was also true of the philosophy department under Reichenbach’s leadership.
Indeed, both the teaching staff and the structure of the department went through a
complete overhaul. While professor Mustafa Şekip Tunç (who taught psychology
and pedagogy) and lecturer Orhan Sadettin (who taught history of philosophy) kept
their positions, professors Ahmet Naim Babanzade (who taught metaphysics, clas-
sical logic and morality), Halil Nimetullah Öztürk (who taught classical logic), and
İsmail Hakkı Baltacıoğlu (who taught pedagogy) were dismissed from theirs (Bahadır
2007, pp. 79 and 83). Mustafa Şekip Tunç had studied psychology and pedagogy at
the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute in Geneva. He was a follower of Bergson and
critical of the excessive holism of Durkheimian sociology, which tended to overem-
phasize the importance of the social over the individual. Back then it was customary to
keep philosophy, psychology and pedagogy under the same organizational structure,
so the philosophy department continued to offer courses in psychology and pedagogy
even after the reform, and to these were added courses in general philosophy, logic,
sociology, and also the history of Turkish civilization. On the other hand, courses in
metaphysics, and in Islamic thought and philosophy, were either shut down or moved
to the faculty of theology (Kafadar 2000/2001, pp. 51–52). Although not initiated by
Reichenbach, this was certainly a right move from his perspective; scientific philoso-
phy had nothing to do with them.
Since Turkish students had very little knowledge of Western philosophy, Reichen-
bach wanted to strengthen the area of history of philosophy by recommending to the
university administration that a full professor in this area be hired. He lobbied very hard
for Ernst von Aster. Aster was a neo-Kantian philosopher and Reichenbach’s teacher
in Münich during the 1912–1913 academic year. Reichenbach respected Aster very
much and wanted to secure a descent job for him in Turkey since at the time Aster’s
financial situation in Sweden was bad. Reichenbach met an unexpected resistance
in his efforts, coming from his German colleagues Spitzer and Mises, who tried to
appoint Karl Löwitz, a student of Heidegger, and lobbied against Aster on the grounds
that he was not much different from Reichenbach, philosophically speaking. In return,
Reichenbach obtained strong letters in support of Aster from Edmund Husserl, Ernst

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Cassirer, Henri Bergson and Léon Brunschvicg, and convinced the Istanbul Univer-
sity administration to appoint Aster.13 However, the final word in regard to the hiring
of foreign faculty belonged to the ministry of education in Ankara, and they thought
that another candidate should also be considered. This was how Cassirer’s name came
up, and Reichenbach informed Cassirer of the situation,14 but unfortunately, Cassirer
cabled back saying that he had already accepted a four-year position at the University
of Göteborg.15 Aster, on the other hand, did accept the offer and taught from the Fall
of 1936 until his unexpected death in 1948.16 After Reichenbach left, the department
became heavily historical under Aster’s influence. One cannot help wondering how
events would have turned out if Cassirer rather than Aster had joined the philosophy
department.
In addition to strengthening the history of philosophy component of the philosophy
department, Reichenbach tried to do the same with respect to psychology. Although
there was Şekip Tunç as a professor of psychology in the department, Reichenbach
was not satisfied with him, since he lectured “in the French tradition”. He finally
convinced the Istanbul University administration that a full professor of psychology
should be recruited in the “scientific direction,” and the offer was made to Adhemar
Gelb. Gelb, who had studied with Carl Stumpf, was a gestalt psychologist. Later he
became a collaborator of Kurt Goldstein’s, a very philosophically oriented pioneer
in neuroscience (Pickren 2003).17 Gelb was also highly esteemed by philosophers
such as Cassirer.18 However, he died unexpectedly before coming to Istanbul, so a
new search began. Reichenbach contacted Kurt Lewin in desperation and asked him
whether he would be willing to accept the position even though he knew that it would
not be attractive to him.19 As is known, Lewin was Reichenbach’s close friend and
colleague who had helped him found the journal Erkenntnis. He too had studied with
Carl Stumpf and was involved with gestalt psychology and the early Frankfurt School.
As expected, Lewin declined the offer. In the end, the position went to David Katz.20
Katz too was a gestalt psychologist and had contributed to the journal Psychologische
Forschung like Reichenbach.21
That all three names, Gelb, Lewin, and Katz, whom Reichenbach tried hard to
recruit, were associated with gestalt psychology is not a coincidence. Reichenbach
was very much interested in gestalt psychology and emphasized the “gestalt charac-

13 HR 013-39-29. Letter from Reichenbach to Ernest von Aster, dated 24 May 1936.
14 HR 013-41-71. Letter from Reichenbach to Cassirer, dated 27 August 1936.
15 The cable is dated 1 September 1936. Courtesy of the archive of Istanbul University Rectorate personnel
office.
16 The website of the Philosophy Department of Istanbul University. http://felsefe.istanbul.edu.tr/node/49.
Accessed on 1 February 2009.
17 Interestingly, Goldstein and Cassirer were related; Cassirer was a cousin of Goldstein.
18 HR 013-41-72. Letter from Reichenbach to Cassirer, dated 19 January 1936.
19 HR 013-49-35. Letter from Reichenbach Letter to Lewin, dated 24 September 1936.
20 HR 013-48-05. Letter from Reichenbach to David Katz, dated 22 September 1936.
21 For more details about the relationship between scientific philosophers and gestalt psychol-
ogists, see Ash (1994, 1995) and Feest at http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/en/research/projects/
DeptIII_Feest_Gestaltpsy. Accessed on 19 February 2009.

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168 Synthese (2011) 181:157–180

ter” of our experiences in his writings, most notably in his Experience and Predic-
tion. He wrote: “We do not see things as amorphous but always as framed within
a certain description…In the same sense the objects of our sensations have always a
“Gestalt character.” They appear as if pressed into a certain conceptual frame; it is their
being seen within this frame which we call existence” (Reichenbach 1938, p. 221).
This is an early and remarkable denial of “the myth of the given,” and a statement
of the theory-dependence, or, more accurately, the concept-ladenness of experience.
Nevertheless, I did not come across any evidence of a collaboration between Katz and
Reichenbach in Istanbul.
After Reichenbach became the chair, a number of young and promising assis-
tants such as Nusret Hızır, Macit Gökberk, Vehbi Eralp, Hilmi Ziya Ülken, Niyazi
Berkes and Neyire Adil Arda joined the department. There is also some evidence
that presiding over the philosophy department with full authority, Reichenbach wrote
negative reports about some members of the department, disputing their competence.
This caused resentment within the department (Kaynardağ 1986b, p. 12).22 Further-
more, he changed the philosophy curriculum radically, in line with his conception of
philosophy, requiring philosophy majors to take “two theoretical science [courses]
and one experimental one each semester for four years” (Kamber 1978, p. 37). It is
fair to say, therefore, that under Reichenbach the philosophy department had little in
common with the one that existed before the 1933 reform.
Reichenbach also tried hard to build a good library for the philosophy depart-
ment. The government had allocated a good sum of money for this purpose. Although
Reichenbach faced some bureaucratic difficulties, eventually he did succeed in getting
many books and journals for the departmental library, which his students remembered
with gratitude even years later (Kaynardağ 1986a, pp. 37 and 181; compare, however,
Traiger 1984). It is worth mentioning in this context that Reichenbach showed no
tolerance for philosophies which he thought were antithetical to the scientific outlook.
He removed all of Bergson’s and other similar philosophers’ books from the depart-
ment library and sent them to the library of the literature department despite the fact
that his colleague Şekip Tunç, the only Turkish professor left in the philosophy depart-
ment after the 1933 reform, was a follower of Bergson (Berkes 1997, p. 105).23 It is
not difficult to imagine how he must have felt.
As a teacher, Reichenbach was “the star of the department” (Berkes 1997, p. 105).
He brought not only a new philosophy but also a fresh air. His lectures were clear,
lively and exciting. He encouraged students to ask questions, valued their opinions,

22 According to Kaynardağ, Ziyaeddin Fahri Fındıkoğlu was one of them, and this explains, Kaynardağ
argues, why he later wrote a bitter paper about Reichenbach with the title “A Page from the History of Edu-
cation in Philosophy or the Problem of Reichenbach.” Fındıkoğlu had studied sociology and philosophy at
Strasbourg University and then became a lecturer in sociology and moral philosophy at Istanbul University
from 1933 to 1937. In 1937 he moved to the department of economics and taught sociology there. I do not
know whether Reichenbach’s report played a role in this change of position.
23 Regarding the philosophical systems of Bergson, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Spencer,
Reichenbach wrote: “Yet, considered historically, these systems would better be compared to the dead end
of a river that after flowing through fertile lands finally dries out in the desert” (Reichenbach 1951, p. 122).
Notice that this did not prevent Reichenbach from using Bergson’s letter in support of Aster.

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Synthese (2011) 181:157–180 169

and taught that philosophy was more than repeating what this or that philosopher said
(Kaynardağ 1986a, pp. 67 and 181).
Since his students did not speak any language other than Turkish, his lectures had
to be translated consecutively by an assistant. Reichenbach was lucky in this respect.
His first assistant, Macit Gökberk, was fluent in German and served as Reichenbach’s
assistant during the 1933–1934 academic year, after which he went to Germany and
received a PhD in philosophy under Eduard Spranger. Before each class Reichenbach
either gave his lecture notes to his assistant or summarized his lecture to him (Kay-
nardağ 1986a, p. 22). His second assistant was Nusret Hızır. Hızır had studied physics,
mathematics and philosophy in Germany and served as Reichenbach’s assistant from
1934 to 1937. He enthusiastically embraced the new logic and scientific philosophy.
Hızır became a well-known philosopher of science and successfully disseminated
logical empiricism in Turkey. Vehbi Eralp, who was appointed as a lecturer in the phi-
losophy department in 1933, also translated Reichenbach’s lectures. Eralp had studied
philosophy at Bordeaux and Sorbonne. Since at the time Eralp spoke only French and
not German, Reichenbach had to lecture in French (Kaynardağ 1986a, p. 67).
According to some commentators, Reichenbach rarely taught his specialty and
concentrated on the history of philosophy because of the poor level of students (see,
for example, Traiger 1984 and Gerner 1997). This is an exaggeration. It is true that
he taught history of philosophy, but probably no more than for a year when Orhan
Saadettin, who normally taught it, became ill (Kaynardağ 1986a, p. 67).24 As we saw,
Aster joined the department in 1936 and took over the history of philosophy classes.
Reichenbach taught, especially during his last two years, symbolic logic, epistemol-
ogy and what we today call philosophy of science, though not at advanced levels.
In a letter to Philipp Frank, for instance, Reichenbach named symbolic logic, episte-
mology, and philosophy of space and time among the topics he taught.25 This is also
well documented by the memoirs of his assistants and students, by the prefaces of
books Reichenbach wrote while in Turkey (see Reichenbach 1938, p. viii, Reichen-
bach 1947, p. ix, Kamber 1978, p. 37, and Kaynardağ 1986a, p. 67). Moreover, a plan
for the philosophy curriculum of the 1937–1938 academic year also confirms this.26
The plan shows all the courses, including the name of instructors next to each, a phi-
losophy student must take within four years. Reichenbach was assigned the following
courses: logic and theory of knowledge (to be taught to freshmen and sophomores),
contemporary philosophy (to be taught with Aster on a rotational basis), space and
time, the image of the world in natural sciences, and advanced logic (to be taught to
juniors and seniors).27 Finally, I must also mention that Reichenbach’s logic lectures

24 This must be in the year 1935. See also Reichenbach’s letter to Carl Hempel dated 25 February 1935
(HR 013-46-12) in which Reichenbach wrote that he was teaching some history of philosophy. That same
year Adnan Adıvar met Reichenbach in the Paris conference who told him that “I am for now also teaching
some history of philosophy…But I am bringing a professor of history of philosophy” (Adıvar 1945, p. 127;
my emphasis). As we saw, that professor turned out to be Ernest von Aster.
25 HR 013-44-08. Letter from Reichenbach to Frank, dated 26 February 1938.
26 Courtesy of the Istanbul University archive.
27 Each of these courses were to be taught for 2 h per week. It is to be noted that at the time Istanbul
University did not have a semester system. Each course was for the whole academic year.

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were translated into Turkish by Vehbi Eralp and published under the title Lojistik in
1939. Lojistik is a 95-page booklet that includes the following topics: propositional
logic, functions, classes, classical logic, induction, paradoxes, infinity, and axiomatic
systems. Chapter of Two, entitled “Introduction to Symbolic Logic”, of his The Theory
of Probability is entirely contained in that booklet, which also found its place in his
Elements of Symbolic Logic.
Reichenbach organized many interdisciplinary seminars and lectures, both formal
and informal. Among those attending were members of the philosophy department,
especially his assistants, Aster, Rustow, Auerbach, and Eleanor Bisbee, who was at
the time a teacher of philosophy at the American College for Girls at Arnavutköy,
Istanbul.28 Reichenbach also continued his editorship of Erkenntnis from Istanbul for
a while. In 1934 he became a founding member of the “Turkish Association of Phys-
ics and Natural Sciences” and gave lectures there (Kaynardağ 1986b, p. 5). He was
much respected both inside and outside Istanbul University, and even gained some
popularity in non-academic spheres. News about him appeared in French newspapers
published in Istanbul (Kaynardağ 1986b, p. 14).

5 Reichenbach’s works between 1933 and 1938

Reichenbach was extremely productive during his five-year stay at Istanbul University.
As is well known, he wrote Experience and Prediction, published in 1938, in Istanbul.
This was the first book he wrote and published in English. He also wrote The Theory
of Probability (in German, 1935) and more than a dozen essays, some of which were
written for international conferences such as the one in Prague in 1934 and the one
in Paris in 1935. Most of his essays in this period appeared in Erkenntnis and Philos-
ophy of Science. In addition, several of his lectures appeared in Istanbul University
publications in Turkish. In those days, Istanbul University had the custom of opening
the academic year with general lectures in each discipline by a professor, often the
department chair. Four of these were delivered by Reichenbach, and it appears that all
of them found their place in The Rise of Scientific Philosophy:

(1) “Felsefe ve Tabiat İlimleri” (Philosophy and the Natural Sciences), Üniversite
Konferansları 1933–1934, İstanbul Üniversitesi Yayınları, 1934. In this opening
lecture of the “General Philosophy” course for the 1933–1934 academic year,
Reichenbach discusses the relationship between the natural sciences and the
“system philosophies” of Descartes, Hume and Kant.
(2) “İlmi Felsefenin Bugünkü Meseleleri” (Today’s Issues of Scientific Philoso-
phy), Üniversite Konferansları 1936–1937, İstanbul Üniversitesi Yayınları, 1937.
In this paper Reichenbach describes scientific philosophy as the analysis of
knowledge, of the language of science.

28 See Reichenbach’s letter to Katz, dated 22 September 1936, HR 013-48-05; Bisbee’s letter to Reichen-
bach dated 12 August 1938, HR 37-03-149; and Reichenbach’s letter of recommendation for Bisbee, dated
30 September 1942, HR 37-03-143.

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Synthese (2011) 181:157–180 171

(3) “Tabiat Kanunu Meselesi” (The Problem of Law of Nature), Üniversite Konfer-
ansları, İstanbul Üniversitesi Yayınları, 1937–1938. This lecture seems to have
formed Chap. 10, on Laws of Nature, of The Rise of Scientific Philosophy.
(4) “İlliyet ve İstikra” (Causality and Induction), Felsefe Semineri Dergisi, Istan-
bul University Yayınları, 1939. Here, Reichenbach discusses Hume’s and Kant’s
views on causality and induction and argues that a probabilistic approach prom-
ises to solve the problem of induction.

6 Reichenbach’s disillusionment with Istanbul University

Despite the fact that Reichenbach had a productive five years at Istanbul University, he
left for UCLA at the end of his contract. The reasons were emphatically not financial.
As we saw earlier, he had a very good contract which allowed him to lead a comfort-
able life. This provided some measure of security, but his position had no retirement
benefits, something that was not unique to his contract. He had two very young chil-
dren and was worried about their future (Kaynardağ 1986a, p. 28). Towards the end of
his contract, the Turkish government asked him whether he would become a Turkish
citizen, but he declined. As Maria Reichenbach put it, “everybody knew we were not
going to be able to put our roots down there…We kept the German conventions and
customs. I do not think there was very much social interaction with the Turks” (Güzel-
dere 2005, p. 20 ). In this context I should perhaps also mention that Reichenbach,
like many refugees, saw his exile in Turkey as a temporary situation. As Sydney Hook
points out in his memoirs, Reichenbach was skeptical that Hitler would come to power
(Hook 1978, p. 34). Even after Hitler’s seizing of power, he did not think that Hitler
was to remain for long, as his assistants noted (Kaynardağ 1986a, p. 28; Berkes 1997,
p. 106).
In his early letters Reichenbach was optimistic about what he could accomplish
at Istanbul University. In a letter to his friend and former colleague Walter Dubislav
soon after his arrival, for example, he wrote that “I have made a very nice hit with
the university. I have a big institute with an auditorium of my own, library, a room
of my own etc, I am to get funds to buy books as well…I’m in charge of the whole
philosophical section and therefore I can do quite a lot. The students naturally haven’t
a clue but they are willing and intelligent.”29 In a similar vein, in a letter to von Laue,
he wrote:

We’ve all been received very heartily at the university. Everywhere, everybody
is very obliging towards us, we can arrange our scientific work, as we see fit.
I have been assigned with the task of making a fresh start with the philosophy
department. You can imagine that I am very happy doing that! I have a nice
institute with a number of rooms, among them an auditorium for philosophy.

29 “In der Universität habe ich es sehr schön getroffen. Ich habe ein großes Institut mit eigenem Hörsaal,
Bibliothek, eigenem Zimmer usw. Auh einen Fonds zum Anschaffen von Büchern soll ich noch krie-
gen…Die Leitung der ganzen philosophischen Sektion habe ich und kann daher allerhand machen. Die
Studenten sind natürlich ohne alle Ahnung, aber gutwillig und intelligent.” (HR 013-09-04. Letter from
Reichenbach to Dubislav, dated 29 November 1933).

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I have also been granted a fund to extend the library. My next task is now to win
over the students of natural sciences to philosophy, who keep themselves quite
far from philosophy. It is very nice for me, to have the opportunity for the first
time to have organizational influence on the philosophical teaching and with the
influence of the ordinarius…In the seminar I speak German, French and English
with the students, all mixed up, additionally there is the Turkish translation so
that there is a babylonic chaos of languages. But one gets used to that as well and
I am quite pleased with the progresses of my students, who are now learning for
the first time to discuss independently. It also seems that the students are quite
satisfied with us German professors and that does make one happy.30

In another early letter, he even found teaching history of philosophy somewhat

interesting. He wrote: “I am now giving lectures on the history of philosophy; that is
quite interesting if one takes the people more in a psychological sense and adds some
general sociological points of view to it.”31 However, by the end of the 1933–1934
academic year, Reichenbach’s optimism was gone, and he expressed regret over not
having accepted Oxford University’s offer.32 When Sydney Hook contacted him about
giving a series of lectures at NYU, he was ready to accept the offer with the hope that
it might become a permanent one. In a number of letters, Reichenbach complained
that the level of students was very low, that the university administration—not with-
standing a few idealists—did not quite understand what a scientific education was
supposed to be, that the country was too poor to sustain a modern scientific university,
that the Turkish reform from above, a sort of “enlightened absolutism,” was not quite
working, and that he felt completely isolated. He wrote:

We are always forced to decrease the level of instruction and to turn the uni-
versity into some sort of a higher secondary school. I can’t talk at all about the
things which interest me, so scientifically I am wholly isolated…The country
doesn’t seem to be ripe for such things that interest me; my ideas of a scien-

30 “In der Universität sind wir alle sehr herzlich empfangen worden. Man kommt uns überall mit großer
Bereitwilligkeit entgegen, und wir können die wissenschaftliche Arbeit einrichten, wie wir für richtig hal-
ten. Mir ist die Aufgabe zugefallen, den Betrieb der Philosophie hier auf neue Beine zu stellen. Sie können
sich denken, daß ich das sehr gern mache! Ich habe eine schönes Institut, darunter eigenem Hörsaal für
Philosophie. Ein Fonds zur Erweiterung der Bibliothek ist mir auch bewilligtt worden. Meine nächste
Aufgabe ist nun, die Studenten der Naturwissenschaften die sich hier ganz von der Philosophie fern hielten
bisher, für die Philosophie zu gewinnen. Es ist für mich sehr schön, daß ich nun zum ersten Mal Gelegenheit
habe, in den philosophischen Lehrbetrieb organisatorisch und mit dem Einfluß des Ordinarius einzugrei-
fen. (…) Im Seminar “spreche ich durcheinander Deutsch, Französisch und Englisch mit den Studenten,
daneben wird auch noch ins Türkische übersetzt, so daß ein babilonisches Sprachengewirr herrscht. Aber
daran gewöhnt man sich auch und ich bin schon ganz zufrieden mit den Fortschritten meiner Studenten,
die jetzt zum erstenmal lernen, selbstständig zu diskutieren. Es scheint übrigens, daß auch die Studenten
mit uns deutschen Professoren ganz zufrieden sind, und das freut einen doch!” (HR 013-49-11. Letter from
Reichenbach to von Laue, dated 10 January 1934).
31 “Ich halte jetzt Vorlesungen über Geschichte der Philosophie; das ist ganz interessant, wenn man die
Leute mehr psychologisch nimmt und ein paar allgemeine soziologische Gesichtspunkte hinzunimmt…”
(HR 013-46-12. Letter from Reichenbach to Carl Hempel, dated 25 February 1935).
32 HR 013-41-73. Letter from Reichenbach to Ernst Cassirer, dated 27 July 1934.

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tific philosophy do require a higher level of scientific education. Under these

circumstances, it seems that America is a better option for me.33

Although Reichenbach asked to be released from his contract in 1936, the ministry
of education refused to let Reichenbach go. Naturally, Reichenbach felt very bitter
and, according to Hook, gave up studying Turkish “as a gesture of retaliation” (Hook
1978, p. 35).34
Reichenbach’s complaints about and, indeed, disappointment with his academic
life in Turkey are closely connected to his vision of the university discussed earlier.
Istanbul University, for Reichenbach, simply fell short of that vision in many respects,
as his letters indicated. Furthermore, the way the 1933 university reform was carried
out from above (e.g., by firing dozens of Turkish faculty members, replacing them
with émigré professors who were appointed as department heads) also caused much
resistance, resentment and envy among the remaining Turkish academicians who saw
themselves being practically as being reduced to second-class status. As Hirsch wrote
in his memoirs, if the émigré professors were informed from the beginning about the
1933 university reform, its aims, its difficulties and how it fit into the larger series of
socio-political reforms, “many misunderstandings, frictions and crises” between them
and their Turkish colleagues could have been avoided (Hirsch 1997, p. 211) Finally,
and this was the decisive factor, Reichenbach felt extremely isolated intellectually. His
intellectual isolation had two aspects. On the one hand, he missed the Berlin Circle,
his interactions with students such as Carl Hempel and the members of the Vienna
Circle, especially Carnap. On the other hand, he was worried that the Berlin Circle
was being forgotten, with the result that scientific philosophy was being represented
exclusively by the members of the Vienna Circle. It is perhaps for this reason that in his
“public university lectures” published in Turkish (listed in the previous section) there
is no mention of the Vienna Circle or even Carnap. He also realized that the future of
scientific philosophy was in the US, the country to which Vienna Circle philosophers
were moving one by one. He feared that staying in Istanbul would have meant that
his distinctive version of logical empiricism, with its strong endorsement of scientific
realism and its emphasis on probability theory as the key to a host of problems in sci-
entific methodology and epistemology, would have fallen into oblivion (Gerner 1997,
p. 151). Thus, he desperately tried to find a job in the US. After the NYU incident, he
made another effort in 1936 by asking Einstein to recommend him to Princeton. His
hope was that if Carnap, who had received offers both from Princeton and Chicago,
declined Princeton’s offer, he himself might get it. Unfortunately, this did not happen.
Apparently, Princeton did not want to hire any Jews (Gerner 1997). Reichenbach was
finally offered a job at UCLA through Charles Morris’s efforts.

33 Letter from Reichenbach to Hook, dated 31 January 1935 (HR 013-46-99). See also letters from
Reichenbach to Kurt Lewin dated 13 December 1934 (HR 013-49-36) and to Cassirer dated 27 July 1934
(HR 013-41-73).
34 In this period Reichenbach also exchanged a number of letters with Louis von Rougier who was teaching
in Egypt at the time. In these letters, which invite a comparative analysis of the experiences and difficulties
encountered by the two philosophers who were living in two different non-European countries, one can see
how hard Reichenbach tried to find a position in the USA. See Padovani (2006) for a detailed study of the
Reichenbach-Rougier correspondence.

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Although Reichenbach felt an acute intellectual isolation from the philosophical

world, we should not lose sight of the fact that he shared the same academic space with
first-rate scholars such as Mises, Aster, Freundlich, Prager, Hippel, Rüstow and Auer-
bach, whose intellectual backgrounds and interests intersected with his in one way or
another. He tried hard to make the most of this and so formed a small philosophical
circle that included Aster, Auerbach, Rüstow (who was also teaching pre-Socratic phi-
losophy in the philosophy department); this group participated in the formal and infor-
mal philosophical seminars Reichenbach organized. To these seminars also attended
Eleanor Bisbee and Reichenbach’s assistants, especially Neyire Adil-Arda, whom
Reichenbach thanked very generously in the preface to Experience and Prediction:
“The ideas of this book have been discussed in lectures and seminars at the University
of Istanbul. I welcome the opportunity to express my warmest thanks to friends and
students here in Istanbul for their active interest which formed a valuable stimulus in
the clarification of my ideas, especially my assistant Miss Neyire Adil-Arda, without
whose constant support I should have found it very much harder to formulate my
views” (Reichenbach 1938, p. viii). In the same preface Reichenbach also thanked
Bisbee, among others, for “help in linguistic matters and reading of proofs” of his
book.
Bisbee, who at the time was a teacher of philosophy at the American College for
Girls in Istanbul, had received her PhD from the University of Cincinnati in 1929.
Before coming to Istanbul in 1936, she was an assistant professor at her alma mater.
Specializing in logic and Greek philosophy, she also taught scientific method and prob-
lems of philosophy.35 She published several reviews and articles (especially on logical
forms of propositions) in Journal of Symbolic Logic, Philosophy of Science, Journal
of Philosophy and Philosophical Review. Bisbee became friends with Reichenbach
and his family, visited them often and did more than helping him “in linguistic matters
and reading of proofs” of Experience and Prediction. She wrote one of its earliest
reviews to help Reichenbach become better known in the US. In a letter to him, she
said: “Thank you for your comments on my review of Experience and Prediction. My
impatience to get it published was to get into print some personal remarks about you to
remind American readers of your arrival in America and of your special interests.”36
While Reichenbach was able to establish a small, modest circle of philosophy,
I came across no evidence to the effect that Reichenbach had any serious scholarly
interaction with mathematicians Prager and Mises or with physicist Hippel, despite
the fact that they were all outstanding scientists. Reichenbach’s almost nonexistent
relationship with Mises is the most puzzling. Reichenbach and Mises were colleagues
at Berlin University, and fate brought them together again in Istanbul. Here were two
distinguished professors on exile, whom one would expect would collaborate fruit-
fully, especially since they were both interested in probability theory and both held
the frequency interpretation of probability. This was not the case. As the hiring pro-
cess regarding Aster revealed, Reichenbach and Mises did not get along well. Even
though Reichenbach wrote The Theory of Probability (published in 1935) and Mises

35 Extracted from Bisbee’s letter of application to American College for Girls, which, incidentally includes
a letter of recommendation from John Dewey as well. Courtesy of the Robert College archives.
36 HR 037-05-146. Letter from Bisbee to Reichenbach, dated 9 December 1938.

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wrote Positivism (published in German in 1939) in Turkey, neither of them thanked

the other in his preface. Whereas Reichenbach’s book contains a number of references
to Mises’ various views and works in relation to the theory of probability, Mises’
book contains only two references to Reichenbach. Reichenbach both acknowledges
Mises’ contributions to the theory of probability and at the same time takes pains to
distinguish his views from those of Mises. For instance, he writes: “An essential feature
of my theory of order is that it deals with all possible forms of probability sequences
and is not restricted to sequences of one type of order, such as normal sequences. In
this respect my probability theory differences from others—in particular, from that
developed by R. von Mises” (Reichenbach 1949, p. 132). By contrast, Mises totally
ignores Reichenbach’s theory of probability in his book. Of the two references he
gives to Reichenbach, the first one criticizes Reichenbach’s rule of induction, and the
other dismisses as “metaphysical” Reichenbach’s view that probability is an objective
feature of natural events (Mises 1951, pp. 171–174 and 187). Thus, while Mises found
Reichenbach too metaphysical, Reichenbach found Mises too positivistic! One can-
not help feeling that what separated the two were emblematic of the continuing divide
between the practising mathematician and the philosopher of science, in addition to
personal differences. The discussion continued for several years between Reichen-
bach and the mathematician Hilda Geiringer, who was Mises’ assistant at Istanbul
University and who later married Mises.37
Finally, mention should be made of the social and political mood in Turkey in
the thirties as another factor behind Reichenbach’s decision to leave. It should be
recalled that the Turkish Republic was born out of an independence war won against
the Western imperialist powers that had invaded Anatolia. The Republic was only
10 years old in 1933, the year when Reichenbach came to teach at Istanbul University.
The process of modern nation building, which relied heavily on a nationalist ideology,
was still continuing with full speed in the thirties. Being a victim of Nazi nationalism,
Reichenbach naturally felt no sympathy for any form of nationalism. To this must be
added Turkey’s love-and-hate relationship with the European West. Turks on the one
hand wanted to have a modern country, but on the other hand were afraid of losing
their cultural identity. Modernization in the Turkish experience meant Westernization,
but “the West” also signified “the enemy” that had invaded the country a decade ago.
A series of political, legal and cultural reforms were being carried out to Westernize
a traditional society, but they were being imposed from above, causing a kind of a
schizophrenia, schism and resistance. This was equally true of the 1933 university
reform, which relied heavily on the émigré scholars who occupied the positions of
many Turkish academicians who were fired. In the case of Reichenbach, even though
he was admired, the scientific philosophy he represented and was trying to implement
was foreign to Turkey. Philosophy in Turkey at the time had no unity or direction;
most philosophers practiced Islamic philosophy, and those educated in the West were
under the influence of French thinkers such as Bergson and Durkheim. They were
interested more in social and political, historical and metaphysical issues than with
natural science.

37 For more on the differences between Reichenbach, Mises and Geiringer, see Stadler’s and Galavotti’s
articles in this issue.

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176 Synthese (2011) 181:157–180

As the war neared, life became more difficult for all German refugees. The Nazi
government started putting pressure on them through diplomatic channels. For exam-
ple, they were sent questionnaires and asked whether they would attest to their wives’
and their own status as Aryans (Tachau 2002, p. 242). Some of them, though not the
academicians, lost their passports or German citizenship. The Nazi government was
also pressuring the Turkish government, and as a result the political mood was also
changing, “becoming more chauvinistic somehow” as Maria Reichenbach put it. So,
the Reichenbachs left for UCLA in the summer of 1938.

7 Concluding remarks

Despite the many hardships Reichenbach faced, as we saw, he was extremely produc-
tive in Turkey. As one commentator put it, “although isolated from the philosophical
world and deeply aware of the lack of his old Berlin circle, Reichenbach was extremely
productive during the Istanbul years. In fact, it appears that he turned the isolation and
adversity to a positive advantage.”(Traiger 1984, p. 507) Furthermore, in Istanbul
Reichenbach found a secure home for himself and his family, however temporary and
imperfect it was. He was loved and respected by his students, assistants and many of
his colleagues, even by those who found his philosophy incomprehensible. He became
friends with many of them, often took them on long walks in Istanbul and even went
to skiing with them in Uludağ near Bursa. He is still remembered as a great, innova-
tive teacher who brought fresh air to the philosophy department and indeed as one of
the giants of 20th century philosophy of science.38 His impact in Turkey, limited as it
was, is felt even today as the conference that occasioned this special issue attests. How
lucky we are that philosophy of science proper was introduced to us through him, and
indeed philosophy of science became a respected discipline in Turkey thanks to him.
His colleagues knew this, and his administrators knew this, despite their occasional
misbehavior. What better proof for this can I present than reminding the reader of
the fact that when he left in 1938, his successor was planned to be Philipp Frank,
though, alas, without success.39 Despite his disillusionment with Istanbul University,
Reichenbach genuinely cared about the future of scientific philosophy in Turkey and
expressed some optimism during his last year in a letter to Frank: “I myself would be
most pleased, for I could not imagine anyone else who could continue my work here as
well as you could. A tradition in scientific philosophy has already been founded here,
with a few very nice young people; and I would go away with a very heavy heart if I
had to see how this position falls in the hands of a philosopher of the customary sort.”40

38 See the interviews with Turkish philosophers such as Macit Gökberk, Vehbi Eralp and Bedia Akarsu in
(Kaynardağ 1986a).
39 At the time Frank was at the university of Prague. He then moved to USA and became a professor of
physics and mathematics at Harvard.
40 “(…) am meisten wäre ich selbst froh, denn ich könnte mir niemand denken, der so gut wie meine
Arbeit hier fortsetzen würde wie Sie. Es ist hier doch schon eine Tradition in wissenschaftlicher Philoso-
phie geschaffen, mit ein paar sehr netten jungen Menschen; und ich würde sehr schweren Herzens weggehen
wenn ich zusehen müßte, wie diese Stelle in die Hände eines Philosophen der üblichen Sorte fiele.” (HR
013-44-08. Letter from Reichenbach to Philipp Frank, dated 26 February 1938).

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Synthese (2011) 181:157–180 177

The exile in Turkey also affected Reichenbach through the Turkish language.
Although Reichenbach never learned to speak Turkish, he showed interest in its gram-
mar and familiarized himself with it to some degree. In a chapter called “Analysis of
Conversational Language” of his Elements of Symbolic Logic, Reichenbach analyzed
the tenses of verbs and noted that Turkish has an extended tense which many other
languages lack (Reichenbach 1947, p. 291). Later in the same book he also pointed
out that Turkish was richer in moods than English. Thus, he wrote that in addition to
subjunctive and conditional, Turkish possesses “a special mood expressing probabil-
ity, i.e. a mood indicating that the truth of the sentence is none too well established;
this mood is expressed by the suffix ‘miş’. Thus ‘gitmiş’ means ‘he probably went
away’ whereas ‘gitti’ means ‘he went away”’ (Reichenbach 1947, p. 338). While the
translation of ‘gitmiş’ into English is not quite right, what Reichenbach says of ‘miş’
in the rest of the quotation is accurate. Nevertheless, not having an adequate command
of Turkish (possibly as a result of stopping studying Turkish to protest Istanbul Uni-
versity’s refusal to grant him leave for NYU), Reichenbach missed the use of ‘miş’.
‘Miş’ is used in contexts where one has no direct knowledge of something oneself, but
knows of it by inference based on the evidence one has. That certain languages, such
as Turkish, have a special mood for reflecting the inferential nature of at least some
of our knowledge would have certainly pleased the author of Experience and Predic-
tion, according to which our knowledge of both physical and psychical phenomena is
essentially inferential.
Finally, there is good reason to think that Experience and Prediction might not have
been written at all under different circumstances. It was the first book Reichenbach
wrote in English, and it seems that Reichenbach wrote it specifically for American
readers, with the hope that it would help him get a job. In a letter to Kurt Lewin, he
wrote: “As you know our direction is now popular in the US and you are right that
Carnap’s appointment will further strengthen this. These days I am writing a book
about general epistemological issues in English in order to get it published in Chicago
with Morris’s help.”41 In a similar vein, he wrote perceptively in early 1935 as follows:
Under these circumstances, it seems that America is a better option for me, now
that Germany has dropped out of the ranks of Kulturländer…I have the impres-
sion that it is America with its sense of the concrete and the technical that should
be better disposed for my natural scientific philosophy than Europe, where it is
still the mystical-metaphysical speculations that are seen as true philosophy.42
This was the letter sent to Sydney Hook (dated 31.1.1935) in reply to his invitation
to NYU. Toward the end of the letter Reichenbach wrote:

41 “Unsere Richtung ist ja jetzt in U.S.A beliebt und Sie haben ganz recht daß die Berufung Carnaps das
noch vermehren wird. Ich schreib zur Zeit ein neues Buch über sehr allgemeine erkenntnistheoretische
Dinge auf Englisch, um es dann mit Morris’ Hilfe in Chicago zu publizieren.” (HR 013-49-35. Letter from
Reichenbach to Kurt Lewin, dated 24 September 1936).
42 “Unter diesen Umständen scheint mir Amerika eine günstigere Aussicht für mich, nachdem jetzt Deu-
tschland ausgeschieden ist aus der Reihe der Kulturländer (…) Ich habe das Gefühl, daß gerade Amerika mit
seinem Sinn für das konkrete und technische mehr Verständnis haben müßte für meine naturwissenschaf-
tliche Philosophie als Europa, wo noch immer die mystisch-metaphysischen Spekulationen als die wahre
Philosophie angesehen werden.” (HR 013-46-99. Letter from Reichenbach to Hook, dated 31 January 1935).

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178 Synthese (2011) 181:157–180

I plan a book with less of a mathematical nature about the method of knowledge
in natural sciences, in which I expose in more detail my theory on induction
developed in the theory of probability. Should the plan with your university
be realised already in the autumn of 1935, I could write this book in the form
of lectures and could write directly in English. I would like this also because
I would like very much to publish such a book in English.43

The Reichenbach of the 1930s was not the Reichenbach of 1918. He was no longer
a young idealist and an aspiring philosopher but an internationally known scholar who
was trying hard to distinguish his brand of scientific philosophy from that of the Vienna
Circle. He needed to be at the frontier so that he could make his impact felt, and the
newly emerging frontier was the US, as more and more philosophers and scientists
were moving to this country. He thought that Experience and Prediction could be a
pivotal stepping stone for securing a position in the US. And I believe not just the fact
that it was written, but the very form it took was also due to his exile. In these respects
there is a striking similarity between Reichenbach’s arguably most influential book
Experience and Prediction and Auerbach’s masterpiece Mimesis, which is considered
to be the founding text of comparative literature. Auerbach wrote his book in the same
city in the early forties under similar conditions.
In the closing paragraphs of his book he wrote:

I may also mention that the book was written during the war and at Istanbul,
where the libraries are not well equipped for European studies. International
communications were impeded; I had to dispense with almost all periodicals,
with almost all the more recent investigations, and in some cases with reliable
critical editions of my texts. Hence it is possible and even probable that I over-
looked things which I ought to have considered and that I occasionally assert
something which modern research has disproved or modified. I trust that these
probable errors include none which affect the core of my argument. The lack of
technical literature and periodicals may also serve to explain that my book has
no notes. Aside from the texts, I quote comparatively little, and that little it was
easy to include in the body of the text. On the other hand it is quite possible that
the book owes its existence to just this lack of a rich and specialized library. If it
had been possible for me to acquaint myself with all the work that has been done
on so many subjects, I might never have reached the point of writing. (Auerbach
1968, p. 557)

I think this is largely true of Reichenbach and his Experience and Prediction
as well.

43 “Ich plane ein Buch von weniger mathematischer Art über die Erkenntnismethode der Naturwissens-
chaft, in dem ich meine in der Wahrscheinlichkeitslehre entwickelte Theorie der Induktion in breiterer
Form darlege. Sollte sich der Plan mit ihrer Universität schon zu Herbst 1935 verwirklichen, so könnte ich
dieses Buch etwa in der Form von Vorlesungen ausarbeiten und sogleich in englischer Sprache schreiben.
Das wäre mir auch deshalb angenehm, weil ich sehr gern ein derartiges Buch auf Englisch herausbringen
möchte.” (HR 013-46-99. Letter from Reichenbach to Hook, dated 31 January 1935).

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Synthese (2011) 181:157–180 179

Acknowledgements I thank Elliott Sober, Friedrich Stadler and especially Flavia Padovani for helpful
comments and suggestions. I benefited also from Koray Karaca’s knowledge and insights about the topic
at the initial stages of this research. I am grateful to Feza Günergün without whose help I would not be
able to locate Hans Reichenbach’s file at the Istanbul University archives. I thank the Dean of the Faculty
of Letters of Istanbul University for allowing me to use it. I owe thanks also to Çiğdem Yazıcıoğlu for
allowing me to use Eleanor Bisbee’s file at the Robert College archives. I am especially grateful to Brigitte
Parakenings from the Konstanz University Archives for her guidance and supplying Hans Reichenbach’s
letters, published by permission of the University of Pittsburgh. All rights are reserved. I thank Beril Sözmen
for translating them and her comments on an earlier version of this paper. The research for this paper was
partially supported by the Turkish Academy of Sciences. I thank them for their support.

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