The Early Reception of Russell’s Scientific Philosophy in Turkey
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15173/jhap.v16i4.7359Abstract
This paper presents the early reception of Bertrand Russell’s scientific philosophy in 1930s Turkey, which reflects a strong interest for philosophical currents related to the sciences, such as pragmatism and logical empiricism. It is exemplified by the first translations, one of them by the historian of science Abdülhak Adnan Adıvar (1936), but also by the first presentations of Russell’s philosophy by Mehmet Saffet (1933b), a former student of John Dewey, and Hilmi Ziya Ülken (1936), who worked with Hans Reichenbach during his stay at Istanbul University between 1933 and 1938. The study of this early reception of Russell’s scientific philosophy, which should be situated in the context of the Turkish pedagogical policies in the 1930s, questions the significance it had for early developments in the field of philosophy of science in Turkey but also contributes to writing the early history of analytic philosophy in Europe from a transnational perspective.
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