Nicholas Rescher is a German-American philosopher, polymath, and author, who has been a professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh since 1961.
19 Facts About Nicholas Rescher
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Nicholas Rescher is chairman of the Center for Philosophy of Science and was formerly chairman of the philosophy department.
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Nicholas Rescher is the founder of American Philosophical Quarterly, History of Philosophy Quarterly, and Public Affairs Quarterly.
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Nicholas Rescher was born in Hagen in the Westphalia region of Germany.
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Nicholas Rescher relocated to the United States when he was 10 and obtained a degree in mathematics at Queens College, New York.
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The orientalist Oskar Nicholas Rescher is the first cousin of his father.
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Nicholas Rescher began his career as an academic at Princeton University in 1951.
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Nicholas Rescher joined the philosophy department at the University of Pittsburgh in 1961, becoming the first associate director of its new Center for Philosophy of Science the following year.
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From 1980 to 1981, Nicholas Rescher served as the chairman of the philosophy department.
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In July 1988, Nicholas Rescher changed roles at the Center for Philosophy of Science, resigning as its director and becoming its chairman.
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Nicholas Rescher is a prolific writer, with over 100 books and 400 articles, generating the jest that Nicholas Rescher is not a single person, but a committee sharing the name.
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Philosopher Michele Marsonet, who has published extensively on Nicholas Rescher's philosophy, writes that his prolific publication is in itself the most common objection against Nicholas Rescher, adding "it is, indeed, a leitmotiv of all those unwilling to discuss his ideas".
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Nicholas Rescher is known for his system of pragmatic idealism, which synthesizes British idealism with the pragmatism of the US.
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Nicholas Rescher's work envisions a dialectical tension between our synoptic aspirations for useful knowledge and our human limitations as finite inquirers.
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In 1966, Rescher collaborated with Herbert A Simon on a ground-breaking paper on the theory of causality.
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Nicholas Rescher has contributed to futuristics, and with Olaf Helmer and Norman Dalkey, invented the Delphi method of forecasting.
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Leibniz, Nicholas Rescher has been instrumental in the reconstruction of Leibniz's machina deciphratoria, an ancestor of the famous Enigma cipher machine.
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Nicholas Rescher is responsible for two further items of historical rediscovery and reconstruction: the model of cosmic evolution in Anaximander, and the medieval Islamic theory of modal syllogistic.
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Nicholas Rescher's A Journey through Philosophy in 101 Anecdotes is a successful framework to reach a broader audience in the field.