Hans was the second son of a Jewish merchant, Bruno Reichenbach, who had converted to
Protestantism. He married Selma Menzel, a school mistress, who came from a long line of Protestant professionals which went back to the
Reformation.[7] His elder brother
Bernard played a significant role in the
left communist movement. His younger brother,
Herman was a music educator.
Reichenbach received a degree in
philosophy from the
University of Erlangen in 1915 and his
PhD dissertation on the
theory of probability, titled Der Begriff der Wahrscheinlichkeit für die mathematische Darstellung der Wirklichkeit (The Concept of Probability for the Mathematical Representation of Reality) and supervised by
Paul Hensel and
Max Noether, was published in 1916. Reichenbach served during
World War I on the Russian front, in the German army radio troops. In 1917 he was removed from active duty, due to an illness, and returned to
Berlin. While working as a physicist and engineer, Reichenbach attended
Albert Einstein's lectures on the
theory of relativity in
Berlin from 1917 to 1920.
In 1920 Reichenbach began teaching at the
Technische Hochschule Stuttgart as Privatdozent. In the same year, he published his first book (which was accepted as his
habilitation in physics at the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart) on the philosophical implications of the
theory of relativity, The Theory of Relativity and A Priori Knowledge (Relativitätstheorie und Erkenntnis Apriori), which criticized the
Kantian notion of
synthetica priori. He subsequently published Axiomatization of the Theory of Relativity (1924), From Copernicus to Einstein (1927) and The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928), the last stating the logical positivist view on the theory of relativity.
Reichenbach distinguishes between axioms of connection and of coordination. Axioms of connection are those scientific laws which specify specific relations between specific physical things, like
Maxwell’s equations. They describe empirical laws. Axioms of coordination are those laws which describe all things and are
a priori, like
Euclidean geometry and are “general rules according to which the connections take place”. For example the axioms of connection of gravitational
equations are based upon the axioms of coordination of
arithmetic.[12]
Another distinction of his was between the 'context of discovery' and 'context of justification'. The way scientists come up with ideas is not always the same as the way they justify them, and so as separate objects of study Reichenbach distinguished between them.[13]
In 1926, with the help of Albert Einstein, Max Planck and
Max von Laue, Reichenbach became assistant professor in the physics department of the University of Berlin. He gained notice for his methods of teaching, as he was easily approached and his courses were open to discussion and debate. This was highly unusual at the time, although the practice is nowadays a common one.
In 1928, Reichenbach founded the so-called "
Berlin Circle" (
German: Die Gesellschaft für empirische Philosophie; English: Society for Empirical Philosophy). Among its members were
Carl Gustav Hempel,
Richard von Mises, David Hilbert and
Kurt Grelling. The
Vienna Circle manifesto lists 30 of Reichenbach's publications in a bibliography of closely related authors. In 1930 he and
Rudolf Carnap began editing the journal Erkenntnis.
When
Adolf Hitler became
Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Reichenbach was immediately dismissed from his appointment at the University of Berlin under the government's so called "Race Laws" due to his Jewish ancestry. Reichenbach himself did not practise Judaism, and his mother was a German Protestant, but he nevertheless suffered problems. He thereupon emigrated to
Turkey, where he headed the department of philosophy at
Istanbul University. He introduced
interdisciplinary seminars and courses on scientific subjects, and in 1935 he published The Theory of Probability.
Reichenbach died unexpectedly of a heart attack on April 9, 1953. He was living in Los Angeles at the time, and had been working on problems in the
philosophy of time and on the nature of
scientific laws. As part of this he proposed a three part model of time in language, involving speech time, event time and — critically — reference time, which has been used by linguists since for describing
tenses.[14] This work resulted in two books published posthumously: The Direction of Time and Nomological Statements and Admissible Operations.
Archives
Hans Reichenbach manuscripts, photographs, lectures, correspondence, drawings and other related materials are maintained by the Archives of Scientific Philosophy, Special Collections, University Library System, University of Pittsburgh.[4] Much of the content has been digitized. Some more notable content includes:
Weyl's Extension of the Riemannian Concept of Space, Appendix[18]
Selected publications
1916. Der Begriff der Wahrscheinlichkeit für die mathematische Darstellung der Wirklichkeit (Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Erlangen).
1920. Relativitätstheorie und Erkenntnis Apriori (
habilitation thesis,
Technische Hochschule Stuttgart). English translation: 1965. The theory of relativity and a priori knowledge. University of California Press.
1922. "Der gegenwärtige Stand der Relativitätsdiskussion." English translation: "The present state of the discussion on relativity" in Reichenbach (1959).
1924. Axiomatik der relativistischen Raum-Zeit-Lehre. English translation: 1969. Axiomatization of the theory of relativity. University of California Press.
1924. "Die Bewegungslehre bei Newton, Leibniz und Huyghens." English translation: "The theory of motion according to Newton, Leibniz, and Huyghens" in Reichenbach (1959).
1927. Von Kopernikus bis Einstein. Der Wandel unseres Weltbildes. English translation: 1942, From Copernicus to Einstein. Alliance Book Co.
1928. Philosophie der Raum-Zeit-Lehre. English translation: Maria Reichenbach, 1957, The Philosophy of Space and Time. Dover.
ISBN0-486-60443-8
1930. Atom und Kosmos. Das physikalische Weltbild der Gegenwart. English translation: 1932, Atom and cosmos: the world of modern physics. G. Allen & Unwin, ltd.
1931. "Ziele und Wege der heutigen Naturphilosophie." English translation: "Aims and methods of modern philosophy of nature" in Reichenbach (1959).
1935. Wahrscheinlichkeitslehre: eine Untersuchung über die logischen und mathematischen Grundlagen der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung. English translation: 1949, The theory of probability, an inquiry into the logical and mathematical foundations of the calculus of probability. University of California Press.
1948. "Philosophy and physics" in Faculty research lectures, 1946. University of California Press.
1949. "The philosophical significance of the theory of relativity" in Schilpp, P. A., ed., Albert Einstein: philosopher-scientist. Evanston: The Library of Living Philosophers.
1954. Nomological statements and admissible operations. North Holland.
1956. The Direction of Time. University of California Press. Dover 1971.
ISBN0-486-40926-0
1959. Modern philosophy of science: Selected essays by Hans Reichenbach. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Greenwood Press 1981:
ISBN0-313-23274-1
1978. Selected writings, 1909–1953: with a selection of biographical and autobiographical sketches (Vienna circle collection). Dordrecht: Reidel. Springer paperback vol 1:
ISBN90-277-0292-6
1979. Hans Reichenbach, logical empiricist (Synthese library). Dordrecht: Reidel.
1991. Erkenntnis Orientated: A Centennial volume for Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach. Kluwer. Springer 2003:
ISBN0-7923-1408-5
1991. Logic, language, and the structure of scientific theories: proceedings of the Carnap-Reichenbach centennial, University of Konstanz, 21–24 May 1991. University of Pittsburgh Press.
^Michael Friedman, Dynamics of Reason: The 1999 Kant Lectures at Stanford University (CSLI/University of Chicago Press, 2001), p. 32.
^
abNikolay Milkov, "The Berlin Group and the Vienna Circle: Affinities and Divergences", in: N. Milkov & V. Peckhaus (eds.), The Berlin Group and the Philosophy of Logical Empiricism. Springer, pp. 3–32. esp. pp. 13–14 (2013).
Adolf Grünbaum, 1963, Philosophical Problems of Space and Time. Alfred A. Knopf. Ch. 3.
Günther Sandner, The Berlin Group in the Making: Politics and Philosophy in the Early Works of Hans Reichenbach and Kurt Grelling. Proceedings of 10th International Congress of the
International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science (HOPOS), Ghent, July 2014. (
Abstract.)
Carl Hempel, 1991, Hans Reichenbach remembered, Erkenntnis 35: 5–10.
Wesley Salmon, 1977, "The philosophy of Hans Reichenbach," Synthese 34: 5–88.
Wesley Salmon (ed.), 1979, Hans Reichenbach: Logical Empiricist. Springer.