14 Facts About Herbert Feigl

The son of a trained weaver who became a textile designer, Feigl was born in Reichenberg, Bohemia, into a Jewish family.

Herbert Feigl matriculated at the University of Vienna in 1922 and studied physics and philosophy under Moritz Schlick, Hans Hahn, Hans Thirring, and Karl Buhler.

Herbert Feigl became one of the members of the Vienna Circle in 1924 and would be one of the few Circle members to have extensive conversations with Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper.

Herbert Feigl received his doctorate at Vienna in 1927 for his dissertation Zufall und Gesetz: Versuch einer naturerkenntnistheoretischen Klarung des Wahrscheinlichkeits- und Induktionsproblems.

Herbert Feigl published his first book, Theorie und Erfahrung in der Physik, in 1929.

In 1930, on an International Rockefeller Foundation scholarship at Harvard University, Herbert Feigl met the physicist Percy Williams Bridgman, the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine, and the psychologist Stanley Smith Stevens, all of whom he saw as kindred spirits.

In 1930, Herbert Feigl married Maria Kaspar and emigrated with her to the United States, settling in Iowa to take up a position in the philosophy department at the University of Iowa.

In 1940, Herbert Feigl accepted a position as professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota, where he remained for 31 years.

Herbert Feigl was appointed Regents Professor of the University of Minnesota in 1967.

Herbert Feigl believed that empiricism is the only adequate philosophy for experimental science.

Herbert Feigl was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto and he was, in the paradigmatic sense, a philosopher of science.

Herbert Feigl wrote the introduction to the 1974 edition of Moritz Schlick's General Theory of Knowledge and wrote a memoir of Schlick for a published collection of Schlick's papers.

Herbert Feigl retired in 1971 and died of cancer on 1 June 1988 in Minneapolis.

Herbert Feigl was joined in death by his wife Maria the following year; they were survived by their son Eric O Feigl, a professor of physiology at the University of Washington.