Inspirational Quotes by Hilary Putnam (American Philosopher)

Hilary Whitehall Putnam (1926–2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist. A prominent figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He made significant contributions to mathematical logic, philosophy of mind and language, epistemology, and metaphysics.

Born in Chicago, Putnam graduated in philosophy and mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1948. He began a PhD program under Willard Van Orman Quine at Harvard but finished it at the University of California-Los Angeles in 1951 under Hans Reichenbach and Rudolf Carnap. Putnam held teaching positions at Northwestern University and Princeton and was a professor of science philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1961–65) and professor of philosophy at Harvard (1965–2000, then emeritus.)

Much of Putnam’s early work was on problems arising out of physics, mathematics, and logic, but he worked productively in all the main philosophy areas. He argued strongly for a conception of philosophy that makes it essential to a responsible view of the real world and our place in it. He is best known for his semantic externalism, antireductionist philosophy of mind, and tenacious defense of realism.

Putnam’s notable publications are Philosophical Papers (3 vols., 1975, 1975, 1979,) Meaning and the Moral Sciences (1978,) Reason, Truth and History (1982,) Many Faces of Realism (1987,) Representation and Reality (1988,) and Renewing Philosophy (1992.)

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